Nishat Afshan

I led the Infrastructure core workstream for the VMware Developer Platform (VDP)—a multi-cloud, cloud-native platform that orchestrates Kubernetes clusters running VMware microservices in Docker containers. Designed for 99.99% uptime, VDP is built on a foundation of high automation, rigorous CI/CD pipelines, and robust testing to ensure stability and scalability at enterprise scale. VDP is accredited with SOC2, ISO, PCI, FedRAMP High, IRAP, and HIPAA standards. VDP follows Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles, with the entire platform state—including AWS infrastructure, Kubernetes clusters, and services—version-controlled in GitLab. All changes are subject to strict change management and are validated continuously in CI environments. To ensure high availability and resilience, we maintain proven runbooks and leverage Rundeck for automated recovery. Systems are designed with self healing capabilities. I also wore the SRE Manager hat for VDP from time to time, participated in on-call escalation rotations to support service continuity and incident resolution. In parallel, I led the development of the VCF Management Service Platform (VMSP), an on-prem Kubernetes-based platform for deploying and managing VCF management components.

Key Achievements:

• Spearheaded major development efforts such as the VDP 2.0 control plane redesign and launch, VDP UI development, the role elevation operator design and implementation, observability & monitoring stack improvements—among many other initiatives driving the platform’s continued evolution.
• Led critical migration: Orchestrated migration of 1,000+ customers from legacy platform to VDP within 3 months under tight deadlines, enabling hardware reallocation and infrastructure optimization
• Built and scaled teams: Owned end-to-end hiring process from identifying roles and required skills to requisition creation and approval; partnered with recruiters to shortlist profiles, conducted technical interviews, led onboarding programs, and mentored new hires through their growth into experienced VMware engineers.
• Mentored and trained engineers, fostering skill development and knowledge sharing to build a high-performing engineering team.
• Ensured operational excellence: Maintained 99.99% uptime through rigorous change management, self-healing capabilities, and proactive SRE practices
• People leadership: Led a team of 8 direct reports and influenced 50+ engineers across several teams, driving performance management, compensation planning, and career growth initiatives that promoted ownership and professional development.
• For VMSP, I led the Bootstrap and Kafka-as-a-Service workstream from concept to delivery, overseeing requirements, architecture, implementation, and production releases.

Departed July 2025 due to organizational restructuring that eliminated all remote positions in Dublin; relocation to Cork was not feasible.

Led DevOps Transformation & Operational Management
Directed enterprise-wide digital transformation and operational management for engineering teams, driving adoption of DevSecOps practices and modern software delivery frameworks.

Key Achievements:

• Drove digital transformation: Delivered an enterprise DevSecOps platform adopted across departments; coached teams on modern DevOps concepts and best practices.
• Established in house software development skill center: Created an in-house skill center by defining team structure, role expectations, and required competencies; secured approval to hire 6 resources (1 architect, 5 engineers).
• Scaled engineering organization: Owned the full hiring lifecycle—requisitions, recruitment, interviewing, and onboarding—ensuring smooth integration and sustained delivery velocity.
• Reduced costs and technical debt: Replaced proprietary frameworks with an open-source Spring Boot microservices architecture using Angular and Java, achieving major cost savings.
• Built complete DevSecOps ecosystem: Implemented end-to-end toolchain including Jira, Jenkins, Selenium, SonarQube, Nexus, Docker, and Ansible automation.
• Strengthened security posture: Introduced Nexus IQ (SCA) and SonarQube (SAST); evaluated enterprise-grade SAST tools such as Coverity and Checkmarx.
• Standardized DevOps practices: Conducted enterprise DevOps audit, defined Alstom’s DevOps footprint, and proposed a scalable, industry-aligned framework.
• Architected OAuth2-based SSO: Partnered with cross-domain architects to deploy a secure, token-based single sign-on solution.
• Delivered operational leadership: Managed demand, stakeholders, vendors, budgets, objectives, and appraisals to drive performance and accountability.

Scrum Master & Infrastructure Lead for BPM productServed as a full-time Scrum Master and DevOps professional, driving Agile transformation, team empowerment, and CI/CD implementation across global engineering teams.

Key Highlights:

• Agile Leadership: Transformed two teams into self-organizing Agile Scrum teams; facilitated sprint ceremonies, ensured backlog health, and improved delivery predictability.
• Servant Leadership: Coached teams on Agile principles—collaboration, accountability, and transparency—fostering continuous improvement and cross-functionality.
• Operational Excellence: Managed backlog prioritization, sprint velocity tracking, and defect resolution to maintain quality and focus.
• Infrastructure & DevOps: Led infrastructure migration from Berlin to Bangalore; established CI/CD pipelines, automated builds, and environment setups using Jenkins & Docker.
• Automation & Tooling: Implemented automated Docker environments (Ubuntu/CentOS7), Flexera/InstallAnywhere setup, and test environments for faster feedback cycles.
• Quality & Delivery: Oversaw build and release processes, maintained environment stability, managed licenses and servers, and ensured project quality metrics were consistently achieved.
• Collaboration & Mentorship: Partnered with cross-functional stakeholders, conducted code reviews, and mentored engineers to resolve technical challenges and strengthen team capability.

Briefly contributed as a developer to a big data analytics initiative, collaborating closely with the KNIME team to deliver key components.

• Led development and owned critical modules for Cleartrip.com, a major online e-commerce travel platform offering flight booking, cab services, train bookings, and package services. Responsible for air search, booking, and corporate booking modules serving high-traffic customer base. Managed small development team, providing technical guidance and mentorship using Core Java, Servlets, Spring (IoC), REST & SOAP web services, Memcache, Redis, and MVC architecture.

• Foundation experience as software developer working in scrum development teams, responsible for coding and testing across multiple enterprise organizations.