V Risi Jnr.
VP Lead Platform Engineer – Cloud · Absa
Johannesburg, South Africa · 21+ years in IT
Profile
Name: V Risi Jnr.
Title: VP Lead Platform Engineer – Cloud
Employer: Absa
Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
Experience: 21+ years in IT infrastructure, cloud engineering, and platform operations
Focus: AWS cloud infrastructure, AI/ML platform engineering, enterprise architecture
Career History
BCX — Junior Programmer & Database Administrator
May 2003 – April 2005 · Contracted to Anglo Platinum
First professional role — junior development and database administration in a mining enterprise environment.
- Application development and database administration support
- Technologies: Java, VB6, MS SQL Server 2000, XML
Xerox — 3rd Line Print Specialist
May 2005 – January 2007 · Barclays Bank
Specialist print infrastructure support within a major banking environment.
- 3rd line escalation support for enterprise print infrastructure
- Managed high-volume print services across the Barclays estate
Barclays — 3rd Line Desktop Support Team Lead
February 2007 – December 2011
Progressed from support engineer to team lead over four years within Barclays’ IT operations.
- Led 3rd line desktop support team
- Incident management and SLA ownership
- Achieved multiple Microsoft certifications during this period (MCTS, MCITP, MCP)
SecureLab — System Administrator
January 2012 – August 2013
Broad infrastructure administration covering networking and security appliances.
- Windows Server administration
- Firewall management (Cyberoam — achieved CCNSP certification)
- Antivirus platform management (Kaspersky — achieved certified professional status)
Dell (contracted to Barclays/Absa) — South Africa Support Team Lead
September 2013 – April 2015
Led the South Africa support team during a major domain migration programme.
- Managed the migration of 25,000+ users from legacy domain to new global domain with minimal disruption
- Staff management, logistics coordination, stakeholder communication
Freethinking — Windows Server Support Engineer
Contracted to Absa
Windows Server estate support across the Absa group.
- Incident management and SLA resolution
- Server patching across Africa
- Compliance and security vulnerability management
Freethinking — Server Build Team Lead
Contracted to Absa
Led a team of Linux and Windows server build engineers.
- Team leadership across Linux and Microsoft platforms
- Installation and delivery of thousands of physical and virtual servers
- Data centre migration coordination
- Stakeholder management across delivery teams
Freethinking — Microsoft Server Lifecycle Manager
Contracted to Absa
Senior lifecycle and engineering role covering the entire Windows Server estate.
- Designed and delivered secure server builds via SCCM (physical) and VMware/VRA (virtual)
- Penetration testing and QA for server hardening
- Problem management and root cause analysis
- Migrated hundreds of services from Server 2003/2008/2012 to 2016/2019
- PowerShell scripting for automation and compliance
- Delivered thousands of servers and hundreds of services
- Supported Absa/Barclays IT separation project
Technologies: SCCM, VMware, VRA, PowerShell, Windows Server 2003–2019
Freethinking (contracted to MTN) — Data Analyst
April 2019 – October 2019
Analytics role supporting MTN’s mobile application release programme.
- Analytics for mobile application releases by country
- User journey analysis and KPI reporting
- Presented findings internationally — including Uganda
- Built dashboards in Google Data Studio and Microsoft Power BI
Technologies: Google Firebase, Google BigQuery, Google Data Studio, Microsoft Power BI
Absa — Specialist Platform Engineer – CIB Markets
October 2019 – June 2023 · Permanent
Platform engineering for Absa’s Corporate and Investment Banking Markets division, supporting high-frequency trading infrastructure.
- Windows Server and VMware specialist; collaborated with Linux server team
- CIB Markets trading platform maintenance (BAU operations)
- Set up observability stack: Grafana, Prometheus, Black Box, Loki
- Cloud migration support
- Hardware replacement management for high-frequency trading systems
- AWS Systems Operations support
- Patch compliance and security vulnerability management
- Achieved TOGAF 10 Level 1 & 2 certification
- Built AWS certification portfolio (6 initial, planned to reach full Gold Jacket)
Technologies: Windows Server, VMware, Linux, AWS, Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Black Box, Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes
Absa — VP Lead Platform Engineer – Cloud
June 2023 – Present · Permanent
Current role — senior individual contributor leading cloud platform engineering across the CIB Markets division.
- Infrastructure as Code design and implementation (Terraform, CloudFormation)
- CI/CD pipeline optimisation (GitHub Actions)
- Daily AWS platform health checks and monitoring
- Client AWS account support (non-production and production environments)
- Networking management: VPCs, firewalls, NACLs, proxy whitelists, AWS PrivateLink
- Monitoring alert investigation and response
- Jira request resolution
- GitHub code reviews and documentation maintenance
- Knowledge sharing and technical debt management
- Completed full AWS certification portfolio — 14 certifications, Gold Jacket status
- Azure DevOps (ADO) — pipeline management, work item tracking, and release coordination
Technologies: AWS (full stack), Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, Docker, GitHub, CI/CD, Azure DevOps, Python, FastAPI, Streamlit, Grafana, Prometheus, Loki
Certifications
AWS — Amazon Web Services
| Certification | Level | Status | Expires |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solutions Architect – Professional | Professional | Expired | Oct 2025 |
| DevOps Engineer – Professional | Professional | Active | Jan 2027 |
| Machine Learning – Specialty | Specialty | Active | Feb 2027 |
| Advanced Networking – Specialty | Specialty | Active | Sep 2028 |
| Data Analytics – Specialty | Specialty | Active | Jun 2026 |
| Database – Specialty | Specialty | Active | May 2026 |
| Security – Specialty | Specialty | Active | Mar 2026 |
| Machine Learning Engineer – Associate | Associate | Active | Jan 2028 |
| Data Engineer – Associate | Associate | Active | Jul 2028 |
| Developer – Associate | Associate | Active | Jan 2027 |
| SysOps Administrator – Associate | Associate | Active | Jan 2027 |
| Solutions Architect – Associate | Associate | Expired | Oct 2025 |
| Cloud Practitioner | Foundational | Active | Jul 2028 |
| AI Practitioner | Foundational | Active | Jan 2028 |
AWS Gold Jacket — held all 12 certifiable AWS certs simultaneously (at time of achievement).
AWS Training Badges (Credly)
| Badge | Issued |
|---|---|
| AWS Cloud Quest: Cloud Practitioner | Feb 2024 |
| AWS Cloud Quest: Solutions Architect | Mar 2024 |
| AWS Cloud Quest: Machine Learning | Feb 2024 |
| AWS Cloud Quest: Networking | May 2024 |
| AWS Cloud Quest: Generative AI Architect | Sep 2024 |
| AWS Industry Quest: Financial Services | Feb 2024 |
| AWS Certified ML Engineer – Associate Early Adopter | Jan 2025 |
| AWS Certified AI Practitioner Early Adopter | Oct 2024 |
| Well-Architected Proficient | Dec 2025 |
The Open Group — Enterprise Architecture
| Credential | Issued |
|---|---|
| TOGAF® Enterprise Architecture Practitioner | Dec 2023 |
| Applied TOGAF® Enterprise Architecture Practitioner | Dec 2023 |
Microsoft — Historical & Active
| Certification | Earned | Status |
|---|---|---|
| MCP — Windows XP Professional (Exam 270) | Jan 2008 | Historical |
| MCP — Windows Server 2003 (Exam 290) | Feb 2008 | Historical |
| MCTS: Windows 7, Configuring (Exam 680) | Jul 2011 | Active |
| MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Support Technician on Windows 7 | Jul 2011 | Active |
| MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuration | Dec 2011 | Active |
| MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure, Configuration | Dec 2011 | Active |
| MCP (general) | Apr 2012 | Active |
| MCSA: Windows 7 | Apr 2012 | Historical (retired) |
| MCSA: Windows Server 2008 | Jun 2013 | Active |
| MCITP: Server Administrator on Windows Server 2008 | Jun 2013 | Historical (retired) |
| Microsoft Specialist: Windows 7, Configuring | Dec 2015 | Active |
| Microsoft Specialist: Windows 7, Enterprise Desktop Support Technician | Dec 2015 | Active |
Security & Networking
| Certification | Provider |
|---|---|
| Cyberoam Certified Network Security Professional (CCNSP) | Cyberoam |
| Kaspersky Lab Certified Professional — Antivirus | Kaspersky Lab |
Data & Analytics
| Certification | Provider |
|---|---|
| Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Power BI (DAT207x) | edX / Microsoft |
Training & Courses
Google Cloud — Coursera
18 courses completed
Specialisation: Networking in Google Cloud
- Networking in Google Cloud: Fundamentals
- Networking in Google Cloud: Routing and Addressing
Specialisation: Architecting with Google Kubernetes Engine
- Architecting with Google Kubernetes Engine: Foundations
- Architecting with Google Kubernetes Engine: Workloads
- Architecting with Google Kubernetes Engine: Production
Specialisation: Security in Google Cloud
- Managing Security in Google Cloud
- Mitigating Security Vulnerabilities on Google Cloud
- Google Cloud IAM and Networking for AWS Professionals
Specialisation: Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Cloud Architect
- Google Cloud Fundamentals: Core Infrastructure
- Essential Google Cloud Infrastructure: Foundation
- Essential Google Cloud Infrastructure: Core Services
- Elastic Google Cloud Infrastructure: Scaling and Automation
- Reliable Google Cloud Infrastructure: Design and Process
- Preparing for your Professional Cloud Architect Journey
Standalone Courses
- Serverless Data Analysis with Google BigQuery and Cloud Dataflow
- API Design and Fundamentals of Google Cloud’s Apigee API Platform
- Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure Foundations with Anthos
- Elastic Cloud Infrastructure: Containers and Services
AWS CloudQuest
Builder Level 28 · 125 Reputation · 2,724 rep points · 73 solutions built
| Role | Progress | Badges |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Practitioner | 100% (12/12) | ✓ |
| Machine Learning | 100% (25/25) | ✓ |
| Solutions Architect | 100% (27/27) | ✓ |
| Networking | 100% (26/26) | ✓ |
| Generative AI Architect | 96% (25/26) | ✓ |
| Recertify Cloud Practitioner | 92% (12/13) | — |
| Serverless Developer | 54% (13/24) | ✓ |
| Data Analytics | 39% (9/23) | ✓ |
| Security | 28% (7/25) | ✓ |
| Generative AI Practitioner | 20% (2/10) | ✓ |
Top AWS Services by reputation: S3 (306 pts), EC2 (300 pts), SageMaker (250 pts), Lambda (215 pts), VPC (190 pts)
DeepLearning.AI
PRO Member · 1,472 minutes logged · 2 certificates · 18 completed · 12 in progress
Certificates
| Certificate | Completed |
|---|---|
| PyTorch: Fundamentals | Dec 2025 |
| PyTorch: Techniques and Ecosystem Tools | Jan 2026 |
Completed Courses
| Course | Provider | Level |
|---|---|---|
| Gemini CLI: Code & Create with an Open-Source Agent | Gemini CLI | Beginner |
| Building with Llama 4 | Meta | Beginner |
| Collaborative Writing and Coding with OpenAI Canvas | OpenAI | Beginner |
| Multi AI Agent Systems with crewAI | crewAI | Beginner |
| Building an AI-Powered Game | Together AI, AI Dungeon | Beginner |
| Large Multimodal Model Prompting with Gemini | Google Cloud | Beginner |
| Red Teaming LLM Applications | Giskard | Beginner |
| LangChain for LLM Application Development | LangChain | Beginner |
| Building Systems with the ChatGPT API | OpenAI | Beginner |
| Serverless LLM Apps Amazon Bedrock | AWS | Beginner |
| Embedding Models: from Architecture to Implementation | Vectara | Beginner |
| Intro to Federated Learning | Flower Labs | Beginner |
| Nvidia’s NeMo Agent Toolkit: Making Agents Reliable | Nvidia | Intermediate |
| LLMs as Operating Systems: Agent Memory | Letta | Intermediate |
| Improving Accuracy of LLM Applications | AMD / Lamini / Meta | Intermediate |
| Prompt Compression and Query Optimization | MongoDB | Intermediate |
| Knowledge Graphs for RAG | Neo4j | Intermediate |
| Federated Fine-tuning of LLMs with Private Data | Flower Labs | Intermediate |
In Progress
| Course | Provider | Progress |
|---|---|---|
| PyTorch for Deep Learning (Professional Certificate) | DeepLearning.AI | 75% |
| Building toward Computer Use with Anthropic | Anthropic | 44% |
| Reasoning with o1 | OpenAI | 25% |
| A2A: The Agent2Agent Protocol | Google Cloud / IBM Research | 20% |
| Agentic AI | DeepLearning.AI | 15% |
| Practical Multi AI Agents with crewAI | crewAI | 0% |
| Retrieval Optimization: Tokenization to Vector Quantization | Qdrant | 0% |
| Evaluating AI Agents | DeepLearning.AI | 0% |
| MCP: Build Rich-Context AI Apps with Anthropic | Anthropic | 0% |
| Build AI Agent Systems | DeepLearning.AI | 0% |
| Game Development with AI | DeepLearning.AI | 0% |
| Build with Andrew | DeepLearning.AI | 0% |
DataCamp
27 courses completed · 7 tracks completed
Completed Tracks
- R Programming
- Importing & Cleaning Data with R
- R Programmer
- Text Mining
- SQL Fundamentals
- Python Fundamentals
- Importing & Cleaning Data
Python Courses
- Introduction to Python
- Intermediate Python
- Python Toolbox
- Introduction to Functions in Python
- Introduction to Importing Data in Python
- Intermediate Importing Data in Python
- Cleaning Data in Python
- Introduction to Databases in Python
R Courses
- Introduction to R
- Intermediate R
- Intermediate R: Practice
- Introduction to the Tidyverse
- Writing Functions in R
- Cleaning Data in R
- Introduction to Importing Data in R
- Intermediate Importing Data in R
- Importing & Cleaning Data in R: Case Studies
- String Manipulation with stringr in R
- Sentiment Analysis in R: The Tidy Way
- Sentiment Analysis in R
- Object-Oriented Programming with S3 and R6 in R
- Text Mining with Bag-of-Words in R
SQL Courses
- Data Manipulation in SQL
- Exploratory Data Analysis in SQL
- Intermediate SQL Queries
- SQL for Joining Data
Other
- Pivot Tables in Google Sheets
Microsoft Learn
Level 5 · 15,525 XP · 9 hrs 21 min training
Azure AI Modules (completed Oct 2024)
| Module | Duration |
|---|---|
| Get started with AI on Azure | 36 min |
| Prepare to develop AI solutions on Azure | 31 min |
| Fundamentals of machine learning | 1 hr 54 min |
| Fundamentals of Azure AI services | 37 min |
| Introduction to Azure AI Studio | 48 min |
| Translate speech with the Azure AI Speech service | 47 min |
| Analyze text with Azure AI Language | 54 min |
| Create question answering solutions with Azure AI Language | 46 min |
| Build a conversational language understanding model | 1 hr 5 min |
| Create a custom text classification solution | 58 min |
| Introduction to the Azure Data Science Virtual Machine | 25 min |
Learning Paths completed:
- Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals: AI Overview (Trophy)
- Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals: Get started with artificial intelligence
Additional Training
| Skill / Technology | Course / Provider | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Turbo Pascal | School subject — Eden College | ~1998–1999 |
| Visual Basic 6 | Formal course | 2002 |
| MS SQL Server 2000 | Formal course (combined with VB6) | 2002 |
| XML | Formal course | 2003 |
| Java | Used professionally at BCX / Anglo Platinum | 2003–2005 |
| Kubernetes | ACloudGuru | 2022–2023 |
| Terraform | ACloudGuru | 2022–2023 |
| AWS CloudFormation | ACloudGuru | 2023 |
Skills Summary
Cloud Platforms
AWS (14 certifications), Google Cloud Platform (18 courses), Microsoft Azure (AI modules)
Infrastructure & Automation
Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible, Kubernetes, Docker, VMware, SCCM, VRA
Observability
Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Black Box
Programming & Scripting
Python, PowerShell, R, SQL, Java, VB6
Data & Analytics
Google BigQuery, Google Data Studio, Firebase, Microsoft Power BI
AI / ML
PyTorch, LangChain, AWS SageMaker, Bedrock, RAG systems, agent frameworks (crewAI, LangGraph, Letta)
Enterprise Architecture
TOGAF 10 (Practitioner + Applied), architecture governance
Networking & Security
VPC design, firewall management, NACLs, PrivateLink, CCNSP (Cyberoam), Kaspersky