URI GAKURU KARANJA

Cloud Engineer | DevOps Engineer | Systems Administrator
Nairobi, Kenya | +254 708 318 239 | urigakuru@live.co.uk
Professional Summary
AWS Certified Solutions Architect with 7+ years in healthcare IT and 5+ years running production cloud infrastructure on AWS/Azure, Veeam, Cove and Acronis cloud backup solutions. Specializes in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/CloudFormation), CI/CD, Linux administration, and data engineering. Cut infrastructure costs by more than 35%, sustained a 99.99% systems and network uptime, and led a 9-person team to a 97%+ issues resolution rate. Targeting Cloud Engineer, Systems Administrator or DevOps Engineer roles.
Technical Skills
Cloud Platforms: AWS (EC2, S3, VPC, IAM, Lambda, RDS, CloudFormation, CloudWatch, CloudFront, DynamoDB, ECS, EKS, Route53, ALB, Auto Scaling, AWS Backup, API Gateway), Azure, Acronis Cloud
Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, AWS CDK
Helpdesk & ITSM: ManageEngine ServiceDesk, SolarWinds, Azure DevOps, Spiceworks, Jira, Endpoint Central
Programming/Scripting: Python, Bash, PowerShell, SQL (T-SQL)
Container & Orchestration: Docker, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
CI/CD & Version Control: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Git, GitOps
Configuration Management: Ansible
Operating Systems: Linux (RHEL, Ubuntu, Amazon Linux), Windows Server
Virtualization: VMware ESXi, Hyper-V, Proxmox
Monitoring & Logging: Amazon CloudWatch, Zabbix, PRTG, Prometheus, Grafana
Networking: VPC, VPN, SD-WAN, DNS, DHCP, Load Balancers, Security Groups, NACLs
Data Engineering: ETL Pipelines, Data Warehousing, Data Modeling (Star Schema), Medallion Architecture
Security: IAM, Security Groups, AWS Certificate Manager, Data Encryption, FortiManager, FortiVPN, Fortinet Endpoint Manager (EDR/XDR)
Professional Experience
Systems Analyst
Gertrude's Children's Hospital, Nairobi | March 2026 – Present
ICT Support Lead
Gertrude's Children's Hospital, Nairobi | July 2023 – February 2026
ICT Support Specialist
Gertrude's Children's Hospital, Nairobi | January 2019 – June 2023
AWS Cloud Projects & Technical Portfolio
Recipe Sharing Platform – Auto-Scaling Web Application
Technologies: EC2, ALB, Auto Scaling, S3, CloudFront, DynamoDB, CloudFormation, FastAPI, React.js
Portfolio Website with Full CI/CD Pipeline
Technologies: S3, CloudFront, Route 53, ACM, GitHub Actions, HTML/CSS/JavaScript
Modern Data Warehouse – SQL & ETL Project
Technologies: SQL Server, T-SQL, ETL, Data Modeling, Medallion Architecture
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Automation Projects
Technologies: Terraform, AWS CLI, Bash, Python
Technical Writing & Community Engagement
Certifications
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (Renewal in progress)
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
VMware Certified Professional – Data Center Virtualization 2024
NDG Linux Essentials (Cisco Networking Academy – July 2023)
Fortinet Network Security Expert
Certified Risk Analyst
AMD Telemedicine Certified Administrator
In Progress:
AWS Certified SysOps Administrator — Target: Q3 2026
Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) — Target: Q4 2026
Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) — Target: Q4 2026
Education
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Zetech University, Nairobi | Expected July 2027 (In Progress)
Diploma in Information Science
Moi University, Kenya | November 2018
Key Achievements