Kenan Alptekin

About

Platform Engineer · Marietta, GA

I'm a platform engineering leader who designs and operates large-scale, multi-region infrastructure for global engineering teams.

Today I lead architecture and technical direction for a developer platform spanning the US, Europe, and Australia — with a focus on multi-cloud resilience, distributed databases, and real-time data infrastructure.

I care about reducing operational toil through automation, raising the reliability bar with thoughtful architecture, and helping engineering teams move faster.

Personal

Outside of work I'm based in Marietta, GA, with my wife, our two daughters, and our dog Avalon. My main hobby away from tech and the homelab is Brazilian jiu-jitsu — it keeps me sane and humble in equal measure.

Kenan with his dog Avalon
Me and Avalon.
Kenan with his first Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor, Professor Corvo
My first BJJ instructor, Professor Corvo.

Experience

Lead Platform Engineer · Arrive (ParkMobile) Apr 2026 – Present
  • Driving multi-cloud, active-active architecture across AWS and GCP on a distributed-database foundation to cut cloud-provider failure risk and serve read/write workloads across regions.
  • Leading architecture and technical direction for the Global Platform across the US, Europe, and Australia.
  • Designing next-generation data-pipeline architecture for real-time analytics, reducing reliance on third-party ingestion tooling.
  • Setting technical direction on cross-cutting initiatives across database platforms, streaming infrastructure, and disaster recovery.
Senior Platform Engineer · Arrive (ParkMobile) Jun 2025 – May 2026
  • Architected and maintained a multi-region Kubernetes developer platform (US/EU/AU) using Helm and GitHub Actions.
  • Implemented Crossplane + Argo CD for self-service infrastructure provisioning via custom Kubernetes resources, with security and compliance guardrails.
  • Designed granular RBAC for multi-region, multi-tenant clusters.
  • Orchestrated automated Aurora PostgreSQL workflows: zero-downtime migrations, version upgrades, and backup strategies.
  • Operated observability with Prometheus, Grafana, Vector, and Tempo.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer · ParkMobile, LLC Mar 2021 – Jun 2025
  • Operated production Kubernetes and Terraform-managed cloud infrastructure across multiple environments.
Site Reliability Engineer · ParkMobile, LLC Mar 2019 – Mar 2021
  • Built and managed all cloud resources with Terraform; ran Dev/QA/Prod Kubernetes clusters.
  • Centralized logging into Elasticsearch for monitoring and alerting; defined SLIs for availability and latency.
  • Built CI/CD pipelines (CircleCI, Jenkins) and authored Helm charts for Kubernetes deployments.
Senior System Architect · CPG Aug 2016 – Feb 2019
  • Migrated services to AWS and GCP; designed isolated VPC networks for Dev/QA/Prod.
  • Implemented Google as an OAuth 2.0 identity provider and IAP-based, VPN-less BeyondCorp access.
  • Managed a multi-terabyte Aurora MySQL database; automated CI/CD with Docker and Ansible across hundreds of customer sites.
Systems & Broadcast IT Engineer · CNN Apr 2011 – Aug 2016
  • Built and supported mission-critical video production and broadcast IT systems for all CNN networks.
  • Moved deployments toward Chef-based automation; contributed across configuration management and testing.

Skills

Platform & Orchestration
Kubernetes · Crossplane · Argo CD · Helm · RBAC · Multi-tenancy
Cloud
AWS · GCP · Multi-cloud active-active · Multi-region
Data
PostgreSQL / Aurora · Zero-downtime migrations · Distributed databases · Real-time pipelines
IaC & CI/CD
Terraform · GitHub Actions · CircleCI · Jenkins · Docker · Ansible
Observability
Prometheus · Grafana · Vector · Tempo · Elasticsearch / ELK
Practices
Distributed systems · Disaster recovery · SLIs / SLOs · Self-service platforms

Education

Southern Polytechnic State University
B.S., Computer Science · 2007 – 2011

Certifications

Linux Foundation Certified Systems Administrator (LFCS)
The Linux Foundation · Issued Dec 2020

Languages

English (Native / bilingual) · Turkish (Professional working)