AWS and Azure platform engineering for startups that need a senior pair of hands — without the full-time hire.
I'm Max. I help early-stage and scaling teams design, migrate, and operate production infrastructure on AWS and Azure. Available for short projects and ongoing fractional support.
Based in Europe · Remote · English, German, Polish
Platforms I work with
My day-to-day is AWS and Azure. I go deeper on AWS, but I've architected and operated production workloads on both.
Amazon Web Services
My primary platform. I've designed and run production systems on AWS across compute, data, networking, and observability — from small green-field setups to multi-account migrations.
PRIMARY SERVICES I USE
Microsoft Azure
Where I spend the rest of my time. Strongest on AKS and the networking side — private connectivity, hub-and-spoke designs, and GitOps-driven Kubernetes operations.
PRIMARY SERVICES I USE
What I help with
I come in as an embedded platform engineer — someone who can own the infrastructure work while your team focuses on product. Most engagements cover one or more of the following.
Cloud architecture on AWS & Azure
Designing scalable, cost-aware infrastructure for new products or redesigning what's already there. Strongest on AWS.
Migrations & replatforming
Moving on-premise or legacy workloads to the cloud, or between clouds, with minimal downtime and a clear rollback path.
Compute & containers
Production workloads on EC2, Azure VMs, and managed container platforms — AWS ECS and EKS where Kubernetes earns its keep, simpler setups where it doesn't. Right-sized from day one.
Data platforms
ETL pipelines on Airflow, search and analytics on OpenSearch, managed databases and backup strategies.
CI/CD & developer experience
Build, test, and deploy pipelines that developers actually enjoy using. Comfortable across GitHub Actions, GitLab pipelines, and the AWS-native stack — picking the tool that fits the team, not the other way around.
Networking & reliability
VPC design, private connectivity, load balancing, autoscaling, and the complex traffic-routing work that keeps production quietly doing its job.
Selected work
A few representative engagements. Client names withheld — happy to share details on a call.
PLATFORM · AWS · DATA
Horizontally scalable data collection for a Google Ads analytics product
Designed and built the backend and cloud infrastructure for a SaaS analytics platform ingesting Google Ads data at scale. Owned everything from the API down to the AWS architecture underneath — including OpenSearch cluster sizing, sharding strategy, and the ETL pipelines feeding it via self-hosted Airflow.
PLATFORM · AWS · SERVERLESS
Real-time tracking at serverless scale
Designed and built a real-time tracking platform serving hundreds of customers, with a serverless ingestion layer that scales effectively without limits. Events land in managed OpenSearch for downstream processing and analytics — no clusters to babysit, no capacity planning needed before.
MIGRATION · ON-PREM → AWS
From bare-metal to containers on ECS
Led the end-to-end migration of a legacy web application from on-premise servers to a fully containerized setup on AWS ECS with Fargate. Databases moved to RDS, caching to ElastiCache for Valkey, secrets to Secrets Manager, and the whole thing wired into a GitHub Actions pipeline the team still ships from every day.
KUBERNETES · AZURE · GITOPS
From PoC to production on AKS
Took a proof-of-concept workload and architected its production home on Azure Kubernetes Service — highly available, GitOps-driven with Argo CD and Helm, with secure private connectivity to managed MongoDB and Elastic Cloud. Then stayed on for day-two operations.
DATABASES · BACKUPS
Backup and migration strategy across five database engines
Designed and implemented backup, restore, and migration procedures across MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and MS SQL Server estates. The kind of work you only notice when it's missing.
How I work
I believe the best engagements are clear, collaborative, and leave your team stronger than before.
Flexible engagement scope.
I work on anything from focused short-term projects to ongoing fractional platform support. Whether you need me for 3 months or 3 years, we build something meaningful together.
Embedded, not external.
I join your Slack, your standups, and your engineering meetings. The goal is to leave your team more capable than I found it.
Documentation as a deliverable.
Every engagement ends with runbooks, architecture diagrams, and handover notes. No bus-factor-of-one situations.
Honest about fit.
If what you need is a full-time hire or a different specialization, I'll tell you upfront.
About
I'm a senior platform engineer with a decade of experience building and operating production systems on AWS, Azure, and Kubernetes. Before going independent, I worked across ad-tech, analytics, and SaaS — usually as the person in the room who owned the infrastructure.
These days I work with a small number of clients at a time, mostly startups and scale-ups that need senior platform help without committing to a full-time hire. I care about solid, reliable systems and clear handovers.
I work in English, German, and Polish, and I'm based in Europe.
GET IN TOUCH
Tell me what you're building.
The best way to reach me is email. I usually reply within a day or two. If there's a fit, we'll jump on a short call to talk scope.
softdev@zdero.eu