About Me

Building infrastructure that lasts.

I wrote my first program at 6 and ran my first public Linux server at 12. What started with BASIC on a hand-me-down computer became a 26-year obsession with making systems work.

I've architected platforms for UK Government departments where downtime isn't an option, led DevOps and SRE teams across ministries, and delivered over £75M in cost savings by replacing expensive vendors with elegant, open-source solutions.

I still run a 24-node Raspberry Pi cluster at home (pictured) that hosts production workloads—including this website. Partly because I love tinkering, partly to prove that good infrastructure doesn't need a massive budget.

24-node Raspberry Pi Kubernetes cluster running in my home lab
24
Pi Cluster Nodes

24 Raspberry Pi cluster at home

First program written at age 6

First Linux server at age 12

Open source enthusiast

Skills

Technical Expertise

Kubernetes
95%
Cloud Architecture
90%
Platform Engineering
92%
Infrastructure as Code
88%
DevSecOps & Security
85%
SRE & Observability
87%

I've shipped 20+ open source projects because I believe the best tools should be available to everyone—Kubernetes operators, security plugins, developer utilities, and more.

That Pi cluster in the photo? It runs K3s, Longhorn storage, Victoria Metrics, and hosts this website—proving that production-grade infrastructure doesn't require enterprise budgets.

I bring that same mindset to every engagement: pragmatic, cost-conscious, and obsessively focused on solutions that ship, scale, and let everyone sleep through the night.

"The best infrastructure is the kind nobody notices."
Homelab

What's Running on the Cluster

Production-grade services running 24/7 on 24 Raspberry Pi nodes. This website is served from right here.

Core Infrastructure

  • Cilium CNI & Ingress
  • CoreDNS
  • Cert-manager
  • ArgoCD GitOps
  • Reloader
  • Descheduler
  • VPA

Storage & Databases

  • Longhorn distributed storage
  • CloudNativePG (PostgreSQL)
  • Redis & Dragonfly
  • InfluxDB
  • JetStream NATS

Monitoring (Victoria Metrics)

  • Victoria Metrics cluster
  • Victoria Logs
  • Grafana dashboards
  • Tempo tracing
  • vmagent & vmalert

Security & Policy

  • Kyverno policies
  • External Secrets
  • Goldilocks
  • Kubemirror

Applications

  • Telegram Bot Platform (20+ microservices)
  • raczylo.com website
  • n8n workflows
  • Outline Wiki
  • AdGuard Home DNS
  • Zitadel identity
  • Quake game server

Backup & Utilities

  • Velero backups
  • Jobs Manager Operator
  • Image scanning
  • ClamAV antivirus
Experience

Work History

A journey through startups, enterprises, and government departments.

Jul 2020 · Present

Technical Architect and DevOps Lead

UK Government Department

Terraform, Pulumi, Kubernetes, Docker, AWS Stack, AWS EKS, K3S, Cilium, Vault, OIDC, Github Actions, Helm, ArgoCD, Argo Rollouts, Bash, Golang, Python, NodeJS, Change Management, Release Engineering, SRE capability

May 2019 · Jun 2020

SRE Team Lead

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)

SRE Capability, Change Management, CI / CD pipelines, Terraform, Golang, Python, Docker

Feb 2015 · Jun 2019

Head of DevOps Profession

Ministry of Justice (MoJ) UK

Python, Golang, CloudFormation, AWS Stack, Kubernetes, Docker, Change Management, Release Engineering, SRE capability

Aug 2012 · Oct 2014

Senior Systems Administrator / DevOps Engineer / SRE

Hailo Networks Ltd

Python, Golang, Ruby, AWS Stack, Docker, Jenkins

Mar 2012 · Aug 2012

Senior Systems Administrator

MarkcoMedia Ltd.

Python, Jenkins

Jan 2011 · Mar 2012

Senior Systems Administrator

Zugo Services Ltd

Python, Jenkins

2007 · Dec 2010

Various roles ( Poland )

Available upon request

Python, Jenkins, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, C, C++, PHP, Linux, Bash

Let's Connect

Want to get in touch or stay up to date with my work? I'm always open to discussing new projects, opportunities, or just chatting about technology.