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Golden Kubestronaut · first in Romania
Andrei Badescu

Senior DevOps Engineer

The Access Group · Bucharest, Romania

Andrei Badescu

5+ years building and running production platforms. I manage and modernise the Kubernetes, cloud and CI/CD infrastructure behind 120,000+ healthcare and personal-safety IoT devices across the UK and Spain, and I am Romania’s first Golden Kubestronaut.

Email me LinkedIn GitHub
IoT devices on infrastructure I manage across the UK and Spain
120,000+
CNCF and Linux Foundation certifications: Romania’s first Golden Kubestronaut
16/16
years of enterprise DevOps at Bitdefender, Luxoft and The Access Group
5+
hosting platforms in production: Azure, AWS and bare metal
3

Experience

5+ years in DevOps, from intern to senior engineer, across cybersecurity, IT services and healthcare IoT.

  1. Dec 2024 – Present

    Bucharest, Romania

    The Access Group

    • Senior DevOps Engineer

    Manage and modernise the infrastructure behind 120,000+ IoT devices across the UK and Spain, on four healthcare and personal-safety projects.

    Projects: IntelliCare · Oysta · Assure · DV, a domestic-violence protection service with Vodafone Spain

    • Multi-cloud ownership

      Own the infrastructure in every environment, from development to production, across Azure, AWS and Vodafone-hosted bare metal: Linux, mostly self-managed Kubernetes, and AKS.

    • Infrastructure as code

      Standardised IaC and configuration management with Terraform, Terragrunt and Ansible, backed by Bash and Python automation and reproducible environments, to cut configuration drift and manual changes.

    • Kubernetes upgrades

      Lead phased Kubernetes and Docker/containerd upgrades and workload tuning, with compatibility checks, etcd recovery rehearsals and tested rollback plans.

    • GitOps and progressive delivery

      Introduced Argo CD, Argo Rollouts, Helm and Kustomize, with canary and blue-green releases and trunk-based development.

    • CI/CD

      Improved Azure DevOps pipelines with automated testing, private build agents, immutable image promotion and gated database migrations.

    • Database resilience

      Led the PostgreSQL migration to Azure managed services, with high availability, replication, failover and verified disaster recovery.

    • DevSecOps

      Distroless images, vulnerability remediation, IAM/RBAC, network security, and central secrets with Entra ID, Key Vault and the Secrets Store CSI Driver.

    • Observability

      Built metrics, logs, dashboards and alerting with OpenTelemetry, Grafana, New Relic and EFK (Elasticsearch, Fluent Bit, Kibana).

    • Incident response

      Lead on-call incident response and root-cause analysis across Kubernetes, networking, databases and messaging, turning findings into preventive fixes and runbooks.

    • Developer experience and FinOps

      Improved developer experience and release management, and drove cloud cost optimisation through capacity planning, consolidation and decommissioning.

    • Kubernetes
    • AKS
    • Azure
    • AWS
    • Terraform
    • Terragrunt
    • Ansible
    • Argo CD
    • Argo Rollouts
    • Helm
    • Kustomize
    • Azure DevOps
    • PostgreSQL
    • OpenTelemetry
    • Grafana
    • EFK

  2. Jun 2022 – Dec 2024

    2 yrs 7 mos

    Bucharest, Romania

    Luxoft

    • DevOps Engineer

    Moved into a more senior role with greater responsibility, and completed my Computer Science degree on schedule while working as a DevOps Engineer.

  3. Jul 2021 – Jun 2022

    1 yr

    Cluj-Napoca, Romania

    Bitdefender

    • Junior DevOps Engineer Oct 2021 – Jun 2022
    • DevOps Engineer Intern Jul 2021 – Oct 2021

    Started my DevOps career at 19, while still at university, at one of the world’s leading cybersecurity companies.

Certifications

17 active certifications: all 16 required for Golden Kubestronaut, plus HashiCorp Terraform Associate.

Golden Kubestronaut

The Linux Foundation · Oct 2026 · first in Romania

Awarded for earning all 16 certifications in the programme, including the complete CNCF portfolio and the full Kubernetes track.

16/16

certifications in the programme

What is Golden Kubestronaut?

Kubernetes

Kubestronaut: all five Kubernetes certifications.

  • CKA Aug 2026

    Certified Kubernetes Administrator

    The Linux Foundation

    Verify on Credly
  • CKS Aug 2026

    Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist

    The Linux Foundation

    93/100, six days after the CKA

    Verify on Credly
  • CKAD May 2026

    Certified Kubernetes Application Developer

    The Linux Foundation

    Verify on Credly
  • KCSA

    Kubernetes and Cloud Native Security Associate

    The Linux Foundation

  • KCNA

    Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate

    The Linux Foundation

Platform engineering and Linux

  • CNPE Sep 2026

    Certified Cloud Native Platform Engineer

    The Linux Foundation

    Verify on Credly
  • CNPA

    Certified Cloud Native Platform Engineering Associate

    The Linux Foundation

  • LFCS Sep 2026

    Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator

    The Linux Foundation

    Verify on Credly

Cloud native projects

  • CAPA

    Certified Argo Project Associate

    The Linux Foundation

  • CGOA

    Certified GitOps Associate

    The Linux Foundation

  • PCA

    Prometheus Certified Associate

    The Linux Foundation

  • OTCA

    OpenTelemetry Certified Associate

    The Linux Foundation

  • ICA

    Istio Certified Associate

    The Linux Foundation

  • CCA

    Cilium Certified Associate

    The Linux Foundation

  • KCA

    Kyverno Certified Associate

    The Linux Foundation

  • CBA

    Certified Backstage Associate

    The Linux Foundation

Infrastructure as code

  • Terraform Oct 2026

    HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (004)

    HashiCorp, an IBM company

    Verify on Credly

Skills

What I use to build, ship, secure and run platforms, grouped the way the work is.

  • Cloud and hosting

    • Azure
    • AKS
    • AWS
    • Bare metal
    • Entra ID
    • Key Vault
    • Ubuntu Server
    • Talos Linux

  • Kubernetes and containers

    • Kubernetes
    • Docker
    • containerd
    • etcd
    • Helm
    • Kustomize
    • Cilium
    • Istio

  • Infrastructure as code

    • Terraform
    • Terragrunt
    • Ansible
    • Bash
    • Python

  • CI/CD and GitOps

    • Azure DevOps
    • GitHub Actions
    • Argo CD
    • Argo Rollouts
    • Canary and blue-green
    • Trunk-based development
    • Immutable image promotion

  • Observability

    • OpenTelemetry
    • Prometheus
    • Grafana
    • New Relic
    • Elasticsearch
    • Fluent Bit
    • Kibana

  • Security

    • Distroless images
    • Vulnerability remediation
    • IAM and RBAC
    • Network security
    • Secrets Store CSI Driver
    • Kyverno

  • Data and reliability

    • PostgreSQL
    • High availability
    • Replication and failover
    • Disaster recovery
    • Incident response
    • Root-cause analysis

  • Ways of working

    • FinOps
    • Capacity planning
    • Release management
    • Developer experience
    • AI-assisted engineering

Projects and open source

What I build outside the day job, the same way I build at work.

  • Since 2021

    Homelab

    Kubernetes on Talos Linux running the self-hosted apps I use every day. Set up the way I would for a customer: infrastructure and configuration as code, GitOps, monitoring, and backups I have actually restored from.

    • Talos Linux
    • Kubernetes
    • GitOps
    • Monitoring
    • Backups

  • Open-source contribution, in review

    kubectl-validate

    Pull request to the Kubernetes SIG manifest validator that adds stdin support: pass - to validate piped YAML, JSON or multi-document streams alongside files and directories, with docs and regression tests. Closes a feature request open since 2023.

    • Go
    • Kubernetes
    • Open source
    View the pull request

  • This site

    andreibadescu.com

    Static Astro build that ships no JavaScript, behind a strict hash-based Content Security Policy. Every push is type-checked and unit- and browser-tested in GitHub Actions with SHA-pinned actions; Cloudflare Pages builds it and serves it from the edge.

    • Astro
    • GitHub Actions
    • Playwright
    • Cloudflare Pages
    View the source

What colleagues say

  • “Working with Andrei was great. He has exceptional Kubernetes knowledge and personally drove major improvements across our platforms, from upgrades to important architectural changes. He’s practical and always ready to help. A great person to have on the team!”
    Sabou Sergiu · Recommendation on LinkedIn
  • “Worked with Andrei on our DevOps team at The Access Group. He knows his stuff, keeps things running smoothly and is always reliable when tackling problems. A solid engineer and a good teammate!”
    Florin Marinescu · DevOps team, The Access Group
All 4 recommendations on LinkedIn

From Facebook games at 13 to Golden Kubestronaut at 24

  1. Age 13

    Started coding in JavaScript, building small Facebook games.

  2. Age 14–18

    Learned C++ and competed in major competitive programming contests across Romania, earning prizes in most of them.

  3. Age 18

    Entered university on a scholarship and finished the first year with a 9.83/10 average.

  4. Age 19

    Began my DevOps career at Bitdefender.

  5. Age 20

    Joined Luxoft in a more senior role with greater responsibility.

  6. Age 21

    Completed my bachelor’s degree on schedule while working as a DevOps Engineer: 9/10 thesis, 10/10 final exam.

  7. Age 22

    Built AI-powered workflows into my daily engineering work.

  8. Age 23

    Became a Senior DevOps Engineer at The Access Group, on infrastructure for 120,000+ IoT devices.

  9. Age 24

    Became Romania’s first Golden Kubestronaut after earning all 16 certifications.

Education

  • West University of Timisoara

    Bachelor’s degree, Computer Science

    2020–2023 · 9.5/10 overall, 10/10 final exam

  • Spiru Haret National College

    Mathematics and Computer Science

    2016–2020 · 9.95/10 in the national mathematics exam

Languages

  • English Native or bilingual
  • Romanian Native or bilingual
  • French Professional working

Let’s talk.

Open to conversations about senior DevOps, platform engineering and SRE roles.

andrei@andreibadescu.com
linkedin.com/in/andreibadescu github.com/andreibadescu
  • Bucharest, Romania
  • EET/EEST (UTC+2/+3)