Andrew Pryde · Cloud Infrastructure Engineer · Bristol, UK
Public Cloud Infrastructure Engineering for Production Systems.
I design and ship cloud infrastructure that is resilient and operable. At Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), I worked primarily on Oracle Kubernetes Engine (OKE) and OCI API Gateway (APIGW) public cloud services.
Currently
Technical Lead, iShamba (part-time)
Part-time technical leadership for iShamba, focused on delivery support and mentoring.
Focus Areas
I help teams design, deliver, and operate production cloud infrastructure with clear technical ownership.
Infrastructure Strategy
Platform scope, roadmap, and boundaries that support reliable delivery and sustainable operations.
Kubernetes & Control Planes
Control plane design, multi-tenancy, and production readiness reviews informed by real incidents.
DevOps & Operations
Incident response leadership, observability, and delivery practices for stable production operations.
How I Can Help
Hands-on public cloud engineering focused on uptime, delivery confidence, and operational clarity.
Infrastructure Architecture
- Cloud architecture design and review.
- Kubernetes platform design, scaling, and operations.
- Production readiness and risk assessments.
DevOps & Reliability
- Incident response, on-call design, and observability.
- Control plane services, operators, and controllers.
- Delivery pipelines for platform and application teams.
Public Cloud Engineering
I build control plane services, infrastructure tooling, and cloud integrations in Go, Java, and Python.
Experience
Senior hands-on infrastructure experience across public cloud services, consultancy delivery, and customer-facing operations.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Consulting Member of Technical Staff (IC5), Cloud Native Group.
- Led redesign and live migration of OKE’s etcd-backed control plane datastore.
- Designed and delivered core Oracle Kubernetes Engine management plane components.
- Built key OCI API Gateway management plane services, adapting Kubernetes design patterns to Java.
- Represented OCI in Kubernetes SIG Cloud Provider and delivered OCI cloud provider and CSI integrations.
- Led engineering on Oracle’s Kubernetes MySQL Operator and OCI Cloud Controller Manager.
- Contributed to OCI Container Instances and mentored engineers progressing into senior technical roles.
Notable Engagements
Operational incident and integration support for enterprise-scale customers including Zoom, ByteDance, and 8x8.
Patents
Named inventor on three granted US patents related to public cloud services:
- US 11,650,830 B2 (Techniques for modifying a compute instance).
- US 12,045,210 B1 (Zero‑downtime migration of strongly consistent distributed database clusters).
- US 11,621,888 B2 (Techniques for migrating worker nodes to a new manager instance).
RocketPod LTD
Technical Director.
Founder delivering public cloud and platform engineering consultancy.
The Mediae Company
Technical Lead.
Technical lead for iShamba: implementation, mentoring, and platform direction.
RocketPod LLP
Technical Director.
Co-founder delivering web and software projects across the public and private sectors.
Early Career
Software Engineer.
- Pryde Design (Freelance): Built websites for SMEs, public sector, and NGOs.
- Microsoft (SDET, 2013): Office International Publishing Group; tooling to test localisation across languages.
- Torchbox (2010): Drupal web development for large NGOs, including Greenpeace UK and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
What You Get
Direct, hands-on infrastructure leadership focused on reliability, operability, and practical delivery.
Outcomes I Optimise For
- Reliability and incident recovery speed.
- Delivery confidence for platform changes.
- Clear ownership and reduced operational toil.
How I Work
- Hands-on and accountable from design to rollout.
- Clear communication during complex delivery.
- Practical plans teams can actually execute.
- Clear technical ownership for complex infrastructure streams.
- Architecture decisions that prioritise operability and cost control.
- Incident response leadership across high-impact outages.
- Customer-facing delivery for demanding integration partners.
- Control plane engineering experience at public cloud scale.
- Pragmatic delivery style that keeps teams moving.
Core Stack
Depth where it matters, breadth where it helps teams deliver safely.
Education
BSc (Hons) Computer Science, University of Bristol.
A-levels: A* Chemistry, A* English Literature, A Maths, A History.
Let’s Talk Cloud Infrastructure.
If you need hands-on support with cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, or DevOps delivery, send over a short brief and I will reply quickly.