SM_
Available for opportunities

Stoichko
Maerkov

|

Kubernetes, CI/CD, automation, Linux, monitoring — designing secure high-availability environments in iGaming and telecom. Focused on reliability and performance at scale.

Sofia, Bulgaria
maerkov@devops ~ kubectl get nodes
NAME     STATUS  ROLES      AGE  VERSION
master-01Readycontrol-plane4yv1.29.0
worker-01Readyworker4yv1.29.0
worker-02Readyworker3yv1.29.0
worker-03Readyworker2yv1.29.0
$ansible-playbook deploy.yml --diff
20+
Years Experience
4+
Years DevOps/SRE
50+
Projects Completed
100+
Servers Managed

Skills & Technologies

20+ years of hands-on experience across the full infrastructure stack — from bare-metal to cloud-native.

Container & Orchestration

KubernetesExpert
DockerExpert
HelmAdvanced
ArgoCD
Microservices
Containerization
2 Expert level

CI/CD & Automation

GitLab CIExpert
JenkinsExpert
AnsibleExpert
TerraformLearning
GitHub Actions
Bitbucket
3 Expert level

Monitoring & Observability

PrometheusAdvanced
GrafanaAdvanced
ZabbixExpert
Loki
Alertmanager
SolarWinds
1 Expert level

Scripting & Programming

BashExpert
PythonAdvanced
Perl
PowerShell
GoLearning
1 Expert level

Infrastructure & OS

Linux/UnixExpert
VMwareExpert
VaultAdvanced
KVM
Ceph
Windows Server
2 Expert level

Networking & Security

Cisco ASA/ISEExpert
OSPF/BGPAdvanced
Palo Alto
FortiGate
VPN
Wireshark
1 Expert level

Cloud Platforms

AWSIntermediate
AzureIntermediate
Hybrid Cloud
IaC
4 technologies

Databases & Services

MySQL/MariaDB
PostgreSQL
Redis
Nginx
Apache
Postfix
6 technologies

AI Engineering

PythonAdvanced
TypeScriptAdvanced
GoLearning
LangChain
LlamaIndex
AutoGen
CrewAI
7 technologies

LLM & Vector Stores

LLM Orchestration
Agentic Frameworks
Supabase Vector
Vector Databases
Embeddings
RAG Pipelines
6 technologies

Data & MLOps

Snowflake
Databricks
Amazon S3
Weights & Biases
MLflow
Experiment Tracking
6 technologies

Work Experience

DevOps Engineer

EGT Digital
Apr 2025 — Nov 2025
  • Kubernetes platform operations & Helm deployments for iGaming workloads
  • CI/CD pipeline management (GitLab/Jenkins) and automation with Ansible and Bash
  • High-availability infrastructure management and monitoring with Prometheus/Grafana
  • Performance optimization and reliability engineering for production environments serving millions of users

Senior DevOps Engineer

E-Card
Jan 2023 — Apr 2025
  • Infrastructure automation and configuration management — faster deployment, easier maintenance
  • Developed scripts to automate manual tasks, improving system efficiency by 40%
  • Implemented HashiCorp Vault for secrets management and security policies
  • Designed and maintained comprehensive monitoring stack with Prometheus/Grafana
  • Secured network and systems through best-practice security policies
  • Containerization and orchestration for improved scalability and reliability

Senior System Administrator

EOS Matrix
Sep 2021 — Nov 2022
  • Full responsibility for IT infrastructure including servers, storages, and networks
  • Deployed and maintained automated services for core business systems
  • Infrastructure optimization and performance tuning across 50+ servers

Senior Core Administrator / DevOps

Maxtelecom Ltd. / Ti.com Ltd.
Mar 2014 — Apr 2020
  • Administered operating systems and databases of core network and application servers
  • Deployed cloud and billing infrastructure for LTE/4G equipment
  • Network infrastructure design and maintenance for telecom operations
  • Automation of routine tasks and system monitoring using Python and Bash

IT Administrator

Datecs Ltd.
Nov 2010 — Mar 2014
  • Administration and maintenance of computer and network systems
  • Development and maintenance of public services and websites
  • System security and backup management for critical business data

Senior System Administrator

Profonika plc. (Eurohold Bulgaria)
Sep 2008 — Jul 2010
  • Administration of telecom & system infrastructure in Eurions-Bulgaria and Euroins-Romania
  • Technical development on Asterisk VoIP platform
  • Cross-border infrastructure management across two countries

Key Projects

High-impact projects with measurable outcomes across iGaming, telecom and enterprise infrastructure.

Kubernetes Migration

Migrated monolithic applications to microservices architecture on Kubernetes — improved resilience, independent scaling, and zero-downtime deployments.

+40% scalability · 99.9% uptime
KubernetesDockerHelmGitLab CI

CI/CD Pipeline Implementation

Designed and implemented end-to-end CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI and Jenkins with automated rollbacks and environment promotion gates.

-60% deployment time
JenkinsGitLab CIAnsiblePython

Infrastructure as Code Transformation

Automated entire infrastructure provisioning using Ansible and Terraform, eliminating manual configuration errors across multi-cloud environments.

-80% provisioning time
AnsibleTerraformPythonAWS

Enterprise Monitoring Stack

Implemented comprehensive observability with Prometheus, Grafana, and Loki for 100+ servers — real-time visibility, proactive alerting, and incident correlation.

100+ servers covered
PrometheusGrafanaLokiAlertmanager

Certifications

Cisco CCNA

Cisco Certified Network Associate

Certified

AWS Solutions Architect

Amazon Web Services

Certified

Certified Kubernetes Administrator

Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Certified

HashiCorp Terraform Associate

HashiCorp

Certified

Bachelor in Telecommunications Engineering

Technical University of Sofia · 2002 — 2010

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