caspar@tallinn:~$ whoami Caspar Ruul

DevOps Technical Lead in Tallinn. I build and run platforms on Kubernetes, AWS and GitOps.

Download CV (PDF)
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caspar@tallinn:~$ cat about.md

Ten years in operations.

I’m Caspar Ruul, a DevOps and platform engineer in Tallinn. After two years as a sous chef, where I learned to work under pressure, I spent six years as a system administrator at Prominion: Linux and Windows servers, Asterisk phone systems, the pager at night. In 2022 I joined Delfi Meedia, automated our on-premise Kubernetes with Terraform and Ansible, and helped carry the news platform to AWS. Since 2024 I lead the team’s technical work: EKS playbooks, a multi-environment ArgoCD, Crossplane compositions and a developer portal where teams order their own databases and buckets. I hold the CKA. Alongside DevOps I use AI every day for coding, research, learning and planning, experiment with self-hosted agents and automation, and keep an eye on self-learning agents. I like short iterations: find the need, build a prototype, get feedback from users, and move from idea to production fast. Hiring for that? Write to me.

caspar@tallinn:~$ git log --graph --career

same log, two A4 pages

  1. 2024-06 – now

    DevOps Technical Lead

    Delfi Meedia, Tallinn

    • Developed standardised maintenance procedures for EKS clusters and their in-cluster dependencies.
    • Wrote operational playbooks for AWS services such as RDS Aurora MySQL.
    • Introduced an OCI-based Helm registry for managing and distributing charts.
    • Built a multi-environment ArgoCD setup, bootstrapped from a central tooling cluster that provisions a dedicated ArgoCD per EKS environment, with automatic service discovery through the SCM generator.
    • Extended ArgoCD's app-of-apps pattern with Crossplane composites, packaged in central Helm charts, so teams provision S3 and RDS themselves; added a Port.io developer portal with GitLab pipelines and Python write-back of infrastructure YAML.
    • Optimised EKS cost by tuning node groups and Auto Scaling Groups, and scaling clusters down.

    tags: EKS, ArgoCD, Crossplane, Helm, OCI registry, Port.io, GitLab CI/CD, RDS Aurora MySQL, ElastiCache, OpenSearch, Amazon MQ, S3, Python, Cost optimisation

    Abstract sculpture: an orange sphere on a central plinth, linked to three small cubes

  2. 2022-04 – 2024-06

    DevOps Engineer

    Delfi Meedia, Tallinn

    • Automated on-premise VMware with Terraform and Ansible for VM creation and configuration.
    • Moved on-premise Kubernetes from hand-built to automated provisioning (Terraform for VMs, Ansible for the cluster): three production clusters and one for development and testing.
    • Took part in the move from on-premise to AWS, with CI/CD in GitLab and ArgoCD.
    • Introduced the Istio service mesh for service-to-service traffic and observability.
    • Fixed Prometheus cardinality problems, reworked Grafana dashboards and added Loki and Promtail for logs.
    • Put the news platform behind Cloudflare protection, managed in Terraform.

    tags: Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible, VMware, AWS, Istio, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Promtail, Cloudflare, GitLab CI/CD, ArgoCD

    Abstract sculpture: blocks leaving a server stack and settling inside a glass cloud

  3. 2016-04 – 2022-04

    System Administrator

    Prominion, Tallinn

    • Ran Linux and Windows servers and Asterisk PBX systems.
    • Integrated SAP Contact Center with the PBX and hardphones.
    • Wrote custom SAP Contact Center integrations in PHP, Python and Node.js.
    • Built IVR solutions in Python and MSSQL.
    • Built customer-facing wallboards and dashboards with Nginx, Apache, jQuery and MySQL.
    • Carried the on-call pager and handled incidents.

    tags: Linux, Windows Server, Asterisk PBX, SAP Contact Center, Python, PHP, Node.js, MSSQL, MySQL, Nginx, Apache, On-call

    Abstract sculpture: nested arches with an orange signal wave running through them

  4. 2012-04 – 2014-03

    Sous Chef

    Mack Bar-B-Que, Tallinn

    • Ran kitchen operations and food preparation.
    • Coordinated the line so every plate went out right.
    • Learned to organise and lead under pressure.

    tags: Leadership, Operations, Quality control, Team coordination

    Abstract sculpture: a glowing orange ember under grill bars, order tickets on a rail
20°E21°E22°E23°E24°E25°E26°E27°E28°E29°E30°E 57.5°N58°N58.5°N59°N59.5°N Gulf of Finland Baltic Sea ESTONIA TALLINN 59.4370° N 24.7536° E
map.svg: Tallinn, Estonia. Every job on this page was within a few kilometres of here.

caspar@tallinn:~$ ls ~/record

projects/

Move to AWS On-premise to AWS, from contributor to the driver who finished it Delfi Meedia
Immutable backups Automated AWS backups with immutable data, driven by resource tags Delfi Meedia
Developer portal Self-service on EKS, Helm, ArgoCD, Crossplane and Port.io Delfi Meedia
Automatic IVR Debt-collection calls routed to the right collector with no input Prominion
Predictive dialer Tuned the dialer for more efficient outbound campaigns Prominion

certifications/

Certified Kubernetes Administrator CNCF Jan 2024, valid to Jan 2027
GitOps Fundamentals Codefresh Jul 2024
GitOps at Scale Codefresh Jul 2024

education/ languages/

BSc Computer Science Tallinn University Tallinn 2019 – 2022
Estonian Native
English Professional working

caspar@tallinn:~$ mail caspar

Building a platform team, or need one kept running? Write to me.

Caspar Ruul

+372 5646 5040
Tallinn, Estonia

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CV as PDF