About Me Link to heading

My name is Vinayak Sundar, but I go by Vinny. I’m a Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer with nearly a decade of experience building and operating large-scale, mission-critical systems — from commercial AWS to classified government environments including GovCloud and Amazon Dedicated Cloud. Currently I work at Anduril Industries, where I design and deploy secure cloud networking and IAM infrastructure for mission-critical defense programs.

Professional Journey Link to heading

My career started in software engineering, spending seven years working on defense programs — building containerization workflows, automating infrastructure, and eventually leading teams. That foundation in classified, hardened environments shaped how I think about infrastructure: security-first, automation-everywhere, and nothing that can’t be audited.

From there I moved into cloud engineering proper — modernizing serverless platforms in AWS GovCloud, leading service expansion into new classified regions, driving operational excellence across Amazon Dedicated Cloud environments, and building proof-of-concept GenAI tooling within air-gapped infrastructure. Today I focus on multi-cloud networking and IAM for mission-critical defense programs.

Throughout my career, I’ve worked with a wide range of technologies including:

• Cloud Platforms: AWS, AWS GovCloud, Amazon Dedicated Cloud, Azure
• Infrastructure as Code: Terraform / OpenTofu, AWS CDK (TypeScript), AWS SAM, CloudFormation, Ansible, Packer
• Containerization & Orchestration: Docker, Podman, Kubernetes (K3s, RKE2), Helm
• Languages: Python, Go, Bash, TypeScript
• CI/CD: GitLab CI/CD, AWS CodePipeline
• Generative AI: AWS Bedrock, AWS SageMaker, LiteLLM, Open WebUI, Claude Code, FastMCP, AWS Strands, OpenCode
• Monitoring & Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, CloudWatch

Certifications Link to heading

AWS Link to heading

HashiCorp Link to heading

NVIDIA Link to heading

Education Link to heading

• M.S. Information Assurance & Cybersecurity — Florida Institute of Technology, 2020
• B.S. Mathematics, Minor in Computer Science — University of Florida, 2017

Projects Link to heading

• Obsidian MCP Server — Built a custom FastMCP server for Obsidian, enabling AI-assisted knowledge base querying and note management via a standardized MCP tool interface.
• Homelab — Self-hosted RKE2 Kubernetes cluster for infrastructure experimentation, container orchestration R&D, and hands-on platform engineering. Documented in the Mini Rack Saga series.
• Self-Hosted GitLab with Passwordless Auth — Deployed GitLab with Keycloak OIDC integration and YubiKey hardware authentication, implementing passwordless zero-trust access for a self-managed DevOps platform.

Why This Blog? Link to heading

This blog serves as my digital notebook—a place where I document my experiments, share solutions to problems I’ve encountered, and explore emerging technologies. Whether it’s setting up SeaweedFS as an on-premises S3 alternative, deploying infrastructure with OpenTofu, or building CI/CD pipelines, I believe in learning by doing and sharing that knowledge with the community.

My articles focus on practical, hands-on implementations rather than theoretical concepts. If I’ve built it, broken it, and fixed it, you’ll probably find it documented here.

Beyond the Keyboard Link to heading

When I’m not working with cloud infrastructure or writing code, you’ll find me on the mats. I’m passionate about martial arts, specifically:

• Gracie Jiu Jitsu: The art of leverage and technique over strength

Martial arts has taught me discipline, patience, and the importance of continuous improvement—principles that translate directly to my work in technology. Just like debugging a complex system, mastering a technique requires breaking it down, understanding each component, and practicing until it becomes second nature.

Let’s Connect Link to heading

I’m always interested in connecting with fellow engineers, cloud enthusiasts, and anyone passionate about technology. Feel free to reach out if you want to discuss cloud architecture, DevOps practices, or even martial arts!

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you find something useful here.