I'm Ian Nicholls, a highly experienced Platform / DevOps / DevSecOps / SRE engineer with a track record of delivering highly available IaaS, SaaS and PaaS solutions across Hospitality, Banking, Advertising, Telecoms and Public sectors. I am proficient across Linux and Windows and have eight years' ISO 27001 experience, driving secure, compliant operations. I have built, secured and maintained systems at hardware, software, virtual and OS levels, with a knack for automation and problem solving. I love turning big ideas into solid architectures and continually looking for improvements. I’m a self-motivated communicator who can work with customers and internal teams at all levels, including CxO. I enjoy learning new technologies, staying hands-on with build systems, and I’m exploring AI tools to further improve reliability and security.

Ian Nicholls

I'm Ian Nicholls, a highly experienced Platform / DevOps / DevSecOps / SRE engineer with a track record of delivering highly available IaaS, SaaS and PaaS solutions across Hospitality, Banking, Advertising, Telecoms and Public sectors. I am proficient across Linux and Windows and have eight years' ISO 27001 experience, driving secure, compliant operations. I have built, secured and maintained systems at hardware, software, virtual and OS levels, with a knack for automation and problem solving. I love turning big ideas into solid architectures and continually looking for improvements. I’m a self-motivated communicator who can work with customers and internal teams at all levels, including CxO. I enjoy learning new technologies, staying hands-on with build systems, and I’m exploring AI tools to further improve reliability and security.

Available to hire

I’m Ian Nicholls, a highly experienced Platform / DevOps / DevSecOps / SRE engineer with a track record of delivering highly available IaaS, SaaS and PaaS solutions across Hospitality, Banking, Advertising, Telecoms and Public sectors. I am proficient across Linux and Windows and have eight years’ ISO 27001 experience, driving secure, compliant operations. I have built, secured and maintained systems at hardware, software, virtual and OS levels, with a knack for automation and problem solving. I love turning big ideas into solid architectures and continually looking for improvements.

I’m a self-motivated communicator who can work with customers and internal teams at all levels, including CxO. I enjoy learning new technologies, staying hands-on with build systems, and I’m exploring AI tools to further improve reliability and security.

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Experience Level

Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Intermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate
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Language

English
Fluent

Work Experience

Senior Platform Engineer (Contract) at Netcompany / NHS England
April 1, 2025 - Present
Ensured the GP Registration application adhered to NHS red lines for Immutable Backups and Disaster Recovery using AWS tooling with Terraform; detected, documented and enhanced CI/CD GitHub pipelines for speed, security and stability; guided the team on best practices and project-wide improvements; contributed to NHS-wide security policy affecting the Digital Spine and assisted NHS AWS Admins with infrastructure tuning.
Senior Platform Engineer & ISMS Manager (Permanent) at Teavaro Ltd
December 1, 2022 - April 1, 2025
Created Terraform + Chef Elasticsearch, Kibana and Logstash clustered environments; added ISMS Manager role and rolled out KnowBe4 training; achieved ISO 27001 certification; rebuilt Utiq AWS infra into Terraform; created SSL propagation/renewal system; supported multiple environments; updated aging Ubuntu servers and deployed WireGuard VPN.
Senior DevOps Engineer (Permanent) at Teavaro Ltd
July 1, 2021 - December 31, 2022
Overhauled manual AWS deployment with Terraform + Chef; implemented isolated, automated monitoring with ELK, Prometheus, Grafana, BlackBox, Alertmanager; contributed to architectural decisions to streamline deployments; created a vulnerability assessment server for weekly/on-demand testing; built and managed PostgreSQL, MongoDB, RabbitMQ and Elasticsearch clusters for high availability.
Reliability Engineer (Contract) at GovWifi – Government Digital Service (GDS) / Cabinet Office
January 1, 2021 - June 1, 2021
Overseeing the GovWifi infrastructure from Beta to Live; supported 400k users; improved service and processes using CI/CD with Concourse, EC2, Gateway, RDS, Terraform; provided technical/process guidance and best practices.
Senior Systems Administrator at Wanless Systems Ltd
May 1, 2019 - January 1, 2021
Customer-facing AWS IaaS support for a large corporate banking client; drove continuous improvement with Autoscaling, Terraform and Bootstrap; gathered evidence for ISO27001 compliance using Splunk, LibreNMS and AWS CloudWatch; supported Service Delivery Manager teams and in-house IaaS platform; created SaltStack automation for Windows test/live environments.
Infrastructure Manager at Quadriga Worldwide Ltd
April 1, 2014 - May 1, 2019
End-of-life management for customer solution; maintained Nagios and monitored all servers, network stack and services (including ELK); main technical contact for team; administered Cisco and HP switches, Cisco ASA & Fortinet Firewalls; remote management of a small offshore team; led the technical consultant role during post-acquisition platform launch; created compact portable rack systems for demos; hands-on product system role and installation.
Sys Admin / Prod Eng (Contractor to Permanent) at Quadriga Worldwide Ltd
January 1, 2006 - April 1, 2014
Administered and maintained Apache servers, intranet sites, database design/maintenance, LDAP, ELK, CVS/SVN; maintained test/live environments, DR, co-located servers; participated in hardware/software requirements planning; early adopter of Xen virtualization and tailored VM provisioning.
Software Engineer at Alicom Systems Ltd
January 1, 2000 - November 1, 2005
Software development role contributing across product lines; delivered features and improvements.
Software Engineer at Bottomline Technologies (Checkpoint Security Services Ltd)
August 1, 1997 - December 1, 1999
Banking/Finance software development in UNIX environments; contributed to product development and QA.
QA Engineer at Banking/Finance
September 1, 1996 - May 1, 1997
Quality Assurance engineer focusing on financial applications and testing processes.
Senior Platform Engineer & ISMS Manager (Permanent) at Teavaro Ltd
December 1, 2020 - April 1, 2025
Created Terraform + Chef Elasticsearch, Kibana and Logstash clusters; implemented ISMS Manager role and training; achieved ISO27001 certification; migrated Utiq AWS infrastructure to Terraformed architecture; implemented SSL propagation with LetsEncrypt; supported multiple environments and refreshed aging servers.
Sys Admin / Prod Eng at Quadriga Worldwide Ltd
January 1, 2006 - April 1, 2014
Administered and maintained Apache servers, intranet sites, databases, LDAP, ELK, CVS/SVN; managed test/production environments, DR, Co-Lo, cabling and air conditioning; evaluated new technologies; contributed to build system automation and Xen virtualization.
QA Engineer at Bottomline Technologies
September 1, 1996 - May 1, 1997
QA Engineer in banking/finance domain; contributed to quality assurance activities.
UNIX Programmer at Bottomline Technologies
May 1, 1997 - August 1, 1997
UNIX programming work in a banking/finance context.

Education

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner at Certification
January 11, 2030 - January 29, 2026
BTEC National Diploma in Computer Science at Bracknell College
January 11, 2030 - January 29, 2026
GCSEs (incl. Maths, English and extended Maths) at Ranelagh Secondary
January 11, 2030 - January 29, 2026
BTEC National Diploma in Computer Science at Bracknell College
January 11, 2030 - January 29, 2026
GCSEs at Ranelagh Secondary
January 11, 2030 - January 29, 2026

Qualifications

ISO/IEC 27001 Implementer
January 11, 2030 - January 29, 2026
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
January 11, 2030 - January 29, 2026
ISO/IEC 27001 Implementer
January 11, 2030 - January 29, 2026
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
January 11, 2030 - January 29, 2026
ISO/IEC 27001 Implementer
January 11, 2030 - January 29, 2026

Industry Experience

Government, Healthcare, Software & Internet, Professional Services, Telecommunications, Financial Services, Travel & Hospitality