Ruslan Sivak | Senior Platform & DevOps Engineer

Timeline & Milestones

Credentials & Certifications

Professional Experience

Dec 2025 - Present

Founder & Principal Engineer, AI Developer Tooling

MD Software

Designing prompt systems and orchestrating AI-native developer platforms. Integrated Azure APIM circuit breakers for region-resilient models, built custom multi-LLM VS Code extension integrations, and developed automated parallel subagent workflows.

Jan 2025 - Dec 2025

Senior DevOps & Platform Engineer (W-2)

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston - FedNow Program

Enforced payments compliance in GitLab CI/CD (approvals, branch protections, Checkov IaC scans). Built GovCloud AI outlier detection tools, and automated VM creation with Packer/Ansible and Prometheus-driven CloudWatch autoscaling.

Sep 2024 - Jan 2025

Principal DevOps Engineer (Contract via The Panther Group)

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston - FedNow Program

Helped architect infrastructure security guidelines and GitLab runner autoscaling strategies during the early stages of the FedNow program.

Jun 2021 - Jul 2024

Associate Director, DevOps Engineer

Moody's Analytics

Contributed to AWS cost governance, helping secure a 31% ($1.3M/yr) compute spend reduction. Helped architect multi-account AWS Landing Zones (15+ accounts) via Terraform/Terragrunt. Rebuilt a geospatial data-pipeline on AWS EMR.

Oct 2018 - Jun 2021

Assistant Director, Senior Software Developer

Moody's Analytics (formerly Reis, acquired 2018)

Led development of secure APIs and Python tools. Mentored junior engineers, integrated security scanning into CI/CD pipelines using Prisma Cloud and Snyk, and containerized legacy financial analytical models.

Nov 2012 - Oct 2018

Senior Developer / Platform Engineer

Reis, Inc. (Acquired by Moody's)

Acted as end-to-end platform owner of core commercial real estate valuation systems. Co-led the technical path to achieve SOC1/SOC2 certification. Built a correlation honeypot recovering $30M+ in legal licensing revenue.

Pre-2012

Technology Director · Chief Software Architect

VShift / iStandFor

Rose to Director of Technology leading cross-functional engineering teams. Architected load-balanced HAProxy, XenServer, and ZFS environments for Fortune 100 enterprise accounts.

Earlier Career (pre-2012): ColdFusion Consultant (Part-Time) at BLAZE inter .NET and Network Administrator at BATU INC.

Certifications

Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate (AI-102)

Microsoft

AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Associate

AWS

Google Cloud Certified: Associate Cloud Engineer

Google

HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (003)

HashiCorp

GitLab CI Fundamentals

GitLab

Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900)

Microsoft

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

AWS

Education

Master of Science, Computer Science

NYU Tandon School of Engineering

Concentration in Information Assurance

CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) Alumnus

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science

NYU Tandon School of Engineering

Core Capabilities

Technical Expertise

Kubernetes & Containers

Platform Engineering (EKS, OKE, k3s)Expert

Container Security (NetworkPolicies, IAM)Expert

GitOps & Helm (ArgoCD, Flux, Charts)Expert

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWS, GCP, Azure & OCI Multi-CloudExpert

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible)Expert

Automation & Scripting (Python, Java, Bash)Advanced

AI & ML Infrastructure

AI Gateway Routing (Azure APIM)Expert

AWS Bedrock & LLM API IntegrationAdvanced

Model Context Protocol & OrchestrationAdvanced

Community & Sharing

Speaking & Open Source Contributions

Creator / Host YouTube

Automotive Tech DIY & Custom Integration

Creator of the YouTube channel @mystical89, focusing on automotive electronics, Bluetooth retrofits (Ford Focus), camera integrations (DongFeng Box), and DIY microcontrollers. Building communities around automotive hobbyist engineering.

Visit Channel

Open Source Subversion & Git

High-Performance Version Control Migration

Long-time contributor in system administration forums, developing best practices for high-performance Subversion server setups, repository layout structures, and seamless migration pathways to modern Git platforms.

View Git Repos

Technical Guide Quora Contributor

Systems Engineering Knowledge Sharing

Active technical contributor on Quora, explaining platform engineering concepts, server configuration strategies, CentOS/RHEL performance tuning, and the practical implementation of secure containerized ecosystems.

Read Answers

Deep Dives

Featured Writings

Security 2025

Hardening Kubernetes Cluster Networking in Highly Regulated Environments

An in-depth guide on configuring least-privilege network policies, managing egress traffic securely, and deploying mutual TLS inside enterprise clusters without compromising network latency.

Read Deep Dive

Infrastructure 2024

PostgreSQL Query Optimization & Database Scaling for DevOps

Investigating index performance, tuning shared buffers, and implementing automated pool connection architectures to handle massive throughput surges in dynamic applications.

Read Deep Dive

Interests & Inspiration

Beyond Tech: Precision & Design

Urban Industrial Artifact Photography

When I'm not configuring platform automation, I document historical and artistic industrial designs. Since the 1980s, I have maintained a 30+ year hobby of photographing and cataloging cast-iron manhole covers from cities worldwide.

What started as an appreciation of overlooked urban design evolved into a study of geometry, local histories, and the resilience of industrial manufacturing. The methodical detail needed to capture and categorize these heavy iron artifacts aligns perfectly with DevOps: finding structured patterns, appreciating physical durability, and making utility beautiful.

Artistic cast-iron manhole cover details at night

30+ Years Cataloging

Get in touch

Let's Build Something Together

I'm always interested in discussing platform engineering, DevOps automation, cloud native security standardizations, or speaking opportunities. Drop me a line or calendar a chat!

Location

Bergen County, NJ