anand@platform-engg get resume

all systems operational

Anand K M
ships infrastructure that doesn't page you at 3am.

Software Engineer in Platform Engineering & DevOps at H&R Block, Trivandrum. I build the systems underneath the systems — Kubernetes clusters, service mesh routing, zero-downtime release pipelines, and the automation that keeps them boring in a good way.

AKSIstioTerraformAzure DevOpsPrometheus / Grafana
0AKS clusters managed
0% uptime target
0services on the mesh

about

The engineer behind the pipelines

I'm a DevOps Engineer and cloud infrastructure enthusiast who enjoys turning complex infrastructure problems into simple, reliable systems.

My journey started with curiosity. Back in my school days, I broke my Windows installation while experimenting with software. Instead of giving up, I booted Fedora from a USB and started exploring Linux. What began as curiosity gradually became a career built around understanding how systems work.

Today, I work extensively with Kubernetes, Azure, AKS, Istio, Terraform, CI/CD, and cloud-native infrastructure, building and operating production platforms at scale. I enjoy the parts of engineering where there isn't always a straightforward answer — debugging an unexpected failure, understanding why something behaves differently in production, or finding a better way to automate a repetitive process.

DevOps Toolkit: Azure, Kubernetes, Istio, Helm, Linux, Terraform (TFE), Docker, Git & GitHub, NGINX, Prometheus & Grafana, Azure DevOps, CI/CD, Drift Detection, Cross-team Collaboration.

More recently, I've been exploring the world of AI infrastructure and LLM inference — experimenting with local LLMs, running models on my own infrastructure, and learning how technologies such as vLLM, GPU scheduling, Kubernetes inference platforms, and LLM-D fit into the cloud-native ecosystem.

Currently Exploring: AI Infrastructure, LLM Inference (vLLM, LLM-D), GPU Scheduling, Kubernetes Inference Platforms, Cloud-Native Architectures.

Happy to share that I've successfully passed the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) exam. ☸️

I believe the best way to learn technology is to build, break, troubleshoot, and build it again.

Outside of infrastructure, I enjoy chess, volleyball, experimenting with technology, and exploring new ideas just for the sake of understanding how they work.

This website is my little corner of the internet where I document what I'm learning, what I'm building, and the things I find interesting.

Always learning. Always experimenting. Always building.

roleDevOps Engineer
orgH&R Block India Pvt. Ltd.
locationTrivandrum, IN
focusCloud-Native Platforms · CI/CD · Reliability
status open to interesting problems
Photo of Anand K M
Add a profile photo at assets/profile.jpg to display it here.
Anand K M Platform Engineer · Trivandrum, IN

stack

Services running in production

Every card below is something I use to ship and operate real workloads — not a syllabus.

Cloud & Platforms

  • Azure
  • AKS
  • AWS

Containerization & Orchestration

  • Kubernetes
  • Docker
  • Helm
  • Istio (incl. Ambient Mesh)

IaC & Automation

  • Terraform (TFE)
  • Azure DevOps
  • n8n

Monitoring & Observability

  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • Datadog
  • App Insights

Networking & Web

  • NGINX
  • DNS
  • Load Balancing

Source Control & Collaboration

  • Git
  • GitHub
  • Azure DevOps Repos

Operating Systems

  • Linux
  • Windows
  • Mac OS

log

CHANGELOG.md

Career history, formatted the way I format everything else.

v2.0.0 Jul 2025 — present

Software Engineer, Platform Engineering & DevOps

H&R Block India Pvt. Ltd. · Trivandrum

  • promoted from Associate Software Engineer
  • Experience in build release and deployment management
  • Build automation scripts and infrastructure provisioning via TFE
  • Upgraded and managed 15+ Kubernetes clusters and the Istio service mesh across environments, and implemented circuit breakers for 25+ services, improving mesh stability by 30% and significantly enhancing fault tolerance
  • Acted as the go-to incident responder for high-severity outages, quickly diagnosing and resolving application downtime issues to restore services within strict SLAs and minimize business impact
  • Created custom NGINX rules and upgraded NGINX images across major environments, directly resolving security team-reported issues and enhancing performance
  • Enhanced CI/CD pipelines and boosted team productivity by modernizing legacy tasks, optimizing pipelines, and automating certificate deployment, reducing build failures by 20%
v1.0.0 Jul 2023 — Jul 2025

Associate Software Engineer

H&R Block India Pvt. Ltd. · Trivandrum

  • initial release onboarded onto the Platform Engineering team
  • Designed, implemented, and maintained CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps
  • Monitored and troubleshot pipeline failures and optimized performance
  • Created and maintained Helm charts; deployed and managed containerized applications on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and other Kubernetes platforms
  • Maintained comprehensive documentation for installation, deployment, and DevOps workflows
  • Enhanced CI/CD pipelines and boosted team productivity by modernizing legacy tasks, optimizing pipelines, and automating certificate deployment, reducing build failures by 20%

deployments

Things running in the wild

production

AI DevOps Assistant

A Teams-native chatbot that answers infrastructure questions and triggers routine DevOps tasks, built on n8n workflows powered by Azure OpenAI — replacing dashboard-digging with a chat message.

n8nAzure OpenAIMS Teams
production

Blue-Green Release Pipeline

Zero-downtime deployment strategy using namespace-level isolation and Istio Virtual Services, with a Traffic Controller pipeline handling APIM / ORP and shared-service integration.

AKSIstioAzure DevOps
scaling

Multi-Cluster AKS Operations

Day-2 operations across multiple Azure Kubernetes Service clusters — Helm-managed workloads, NGINX ingress, and full-stack observability via Prometheus, Grafana, and Datadog.

KubernetesHelmDatadog

achievements

Milestones unlocked

Tracked like everything else here — with a status dot and a green check.

Certified Kubernetes Administrator

2026

Passed the CKA exam, validating production-level Kubernetes administration skills.

Zero-Downtime Blue-Green Rollouts

2025

Designed namespace-isolated blue-green deployments with Istio traffic routing, cutting release risk across production.

Spot Recognition — Going the Extra Mile

2025

Recognized for owning and implementing the Istio Circuit Breaker feature to strengthen application resiliency.

♟️

Technopark Chess Champion

2026

Won the Chess Tournament conducted by Prathidhwani as part of Prathidhwani Games 2026. 🏆

beyond work

$ whoami --outside-prod

The other processes running in the background. Hover a node to bring it into focus.

♟️Chess
🏐Volleyball
🖥️Linux
🌐Networking
🎨Visual/design sense
✍️Technical content writing
📸Image editing / visual creation
🔧Hardware tinkering
🧪Experimenting with new technology
🧩Problem solving
🧠Understanding complex concepts
📚Self-learning
🔍Troubleshooting
🎯Strategic thinking
🗣️Explaining technical concepts simply
Learning enthusiasm
🧭Curiosity
🌱Growth mindset
🏃Marathoner

contact

$ contact --init

Open to platform engineering, SRE, and DevOps conversations.

anand@platform-eng: ~

$ whoami

Anand K M — Software Engineer, Platform Engineering & DevOps

$ cat contact.yaml

email: anand.km.devops@gmail.com github: anandkmcloud linkedin: Anand K M location: Trivandrum, IN

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