Hi, I’m Richard Bonnette, an IT professional with over a decade of experience spanning IT support, system administration, cloud technologies, and DevOps practices. I started as an IT Technician and evolved into a System Administrator at Seedbox, expanding my expertise in infrastructure, automation, and cloud architecture. At Thales Canada, I designed, deployed, and scaled AKS environments for development teams, helping modernize software delivery and promote a cloud-native mindset. I’m a self-taught problem-solver with strong adaptability, empathy, and a passion for continuous improvement. I enjoy collaborating with teams, coaching developers on Kubernetes, GitOps, IaC, and cloud-native best practices, and applying automation to reduce toil and accelerate delivery.

Richard Bonnette

Hi, I’m Richard Bonnette, an IT professional with over a decade of experience spanning IT support, system administration, cloud technologies, and DevOps practices. I started as an IT Technician and evolved into a System Administrator at Seedbox, expanding my expertise in infrastructure, automation, and cloud architecture. At Thales Canada, I designed, deployed, and scaled AKS environments for development teams, helping modernize software delivery and promote a cloud-native mindset. I’m a self-taught problem-solver with strong adaptability, empathy, and a passion for continuous improvement. I enjoy collaborating with teams, coaching developers on Kubernetes, GitOps, IaC, and cloud-native best practices, and applying automation to reduce toil and accelerate delivery.

Available to hire

Hi, I’m Richard Bonnette, an IT professional with over a decade of experience spanning IT support, system administration, cloud technologies, and DevOps practices. I started as an IT Technician and evolved into a System Administrator at Seedbox, expanding my expertise in infrastructure, automation, and cloud architecture. At Thales Canada, I designed, deployed, and scaled AKS environments for development teams, helping modernize software delivery and promote a cloud-native mindset.

I’m a self-taught problem-solver with strong adaptability, empathy, and a passion for continuous improvement. I enjoy collaborating with teams, coaching developers on Kubernetes, GitOps, IaC, and cloud-native best practices, and applying automation to reduce toil and accelerate delivery.

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Language

English
Fluent

Work Experience

DevOps Engineer at Thales Canada
July 1, 2019 - November 1, 2025
Led design, deployment, and maintenance of secure and scalable AKS clusters for internal development teams, enabling project-specific Kubernetes environments aligned with Thales’ digital transformation initiatives. Coached developers on Kubernetes, GitOps, and infrastructure as code (IaC) best practices. Migrated infrastructure from Terraform to Terragrunt for flexibility and reduced deployment complexity. Achieved ~30-minute cluster provisioning when Azure throttling allowed. Scaled AKS fleet from ~80 to ~200 clusters by consolidating configuration responsibilities and leveraging GitOps. Introduced FluxCD to migrate cluster configuration from IaC-driven to GitOps-driven workflows, simplifying maintenance. Built a standardized base platform using cloud-native tools: Ingress-Nginx, External-DNS, Cert-Manager with Lets Encrypt, Linkerd for mTLS and service mesh, Prometheus & Grafana for metrics and dashboards, Helm for application deployment, Terraform / Terragrunt, Azure.
System Administrator at Seedbox
March 1, 2012 - July 1, 2019
Maintained local infrastructure, including domain controllers, servers, and core office systems. Performed hardware replacements, on-call incident response, and general systems support. Responsible for maintaining and updating PCI-DSS documentation and audit schedules. Implemented and improved operational workflows across infrastructure and cloud systems. Key achievements: Migrated from Highwinds CDN to AWS CloudFront, reducing operational costs. Designed and implemented a content ingestion and distribution workflow for the Multimedia team. Deployed Cloudability (FinOps tool) to deliver cost visibility per project and implement anomalous-cost alerting. Used Terraform, CodePipeline, and AWS Lambda to automate deployment of multiple free-tour websites.

Education

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Qualifications

AWS Cloud Solutions Architect - Expired
January 11, 2030 - February 11, 2026

Industry Experience

Software & Internet, Professional Services