DevOps & Platform Engineer · Founder of Sud0ops

Alex-Jay Beukes

Cape Town, South Africa

I am a DevOps and platform engineer in Cape Town, and the founder of Sud0ops. I look after cloud platforms that already carry real customers, and I improve them without taking them down. Through Sud0ops I help small businesses, growing teams and NPOs pick the right technology and build it properly. I do not just advise, I get into the codebase and build.

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Open to build

Based in: Cape Town, South Africa
Day job: DevOps Engineer, Rhino Africa
Founder: Sud0ops, since December 2025
Focus: AWS platforms, CI/CD, reliability, security and cloud cost
Top credential: AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Professional
Way in: AWS re/Start, not a degree

About

My Story

How a bartender became a cloud engineer, and why that still shapes the work.

I did not follow a traditional path into tech. I came in through AWS re/Start, not a degree, and I paid for that change with bar shifts in Cape Town. For a year I held both jobs: engineering by day, behind the bar at night. That shaped my standards early: discipline, resilience, and staying sharp when things move fast.

I started at Skywalk Innovations as an AWS cloud developer and grew into DevOps lead for the AWS Equity Equivalent Investment Programme, which helps South African businesses reach AWS Partner standing. I introduced CI/CD where there was none, standardised monitoring across every client, and took client solutions through AWS Well-Architected reviews.

Today I am a DevOps engineer at Rhino Africa, responsible for cloud governance, platform reliability and delivery standards. Through Sud0ops I was technical consultant to HelperHub, a live payroll and HR platform, and I volunteer as technical advisor to ProVision Alliance, a youth-focused NPO.

Most businesses do not have an infrastructure problem, they have an operations problem. Fragile deployments, manual processes, and systems held together by workarounds. That is what I fix, calibrated to each team's real needs and abilities.

Principles

How I Work

The rules I hold myself to, on every platform I touch.

Improve it without taking it down

Most of what I build sits under systems that already carry customers. Migrations and cutovers happen in phases, with zero downtime, never as one big switch.

Root cause first

When something breaks, I find out why before I change anything. Then I prove the fix under load before it ships.

Standards that hold without me

I standardise how infrastructure is built and how code reaches production. Then I automate the checks, so the standard holds when I am not in the room.

Decisions people can make

I write up options, cost and risk in plain language, so a non-technical founder can make the call with confidence.

Verified Credentials

Certifications

AWS-heavy, with FinOps.

Professional

AWS Certified Solutions Architect

Amazon Web Services

Verification link pending

Associate

AWS Certified Developer

Amazon Web Services

Verification link pending

Foundational

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

Amazon Web Services

Verification link pending

Practitioner

FinOps Certified Practitioner

FinOps Foundation

Verification link pending

Graduate

AWS re/Start

Amazon Web Services

Verification link pending

Verify all badges on Credly

Experience

The Path So Far

From behind the bar to leading cloud reliability.

DevOps Engineer

Apr 2026 to Present

Rhino Africa·Cape Town

Accountable for cloud governance, platform reliability and delivery standards across the AWS estate. Built keyless CI/CD on OIDC and the shared infrastructure as code, and led production migrations with zero downtime.

Founder

Dec 2025 to Present

Sud0ops·Cape Town

Helping SMEs, NPOs, and small businesses scale with technology calibrated to their real needs and abilities. Not just advice: getting into the codebase and building alongside the team.

DevOps Engineer & AWS EEIP Programme DevOps Lead

Jun 2023 to Mar 2026

Skywalk Innovations·Cape Town

DevOps lead for the AWS Equity Equivalent Investment Programme. Introduced and standardised CI/CD across every client, cut environment setup time by about half with AWS CDK, and moved clients to proactive monitoring on OpenTelemetry.

AWS Cloud Developer

Jun 2022 to Jun 2023

Skywalk Innovations·South Africa

Built and deployed cloud applications on AWS: serverless with Lambda, content delivery with CloudFront, data on RDS and DynamoDB, compute on EC2, and CI/CD with AWS developer tools.

Graduate

2022

AWS re/Start·Cape Town

Cloud fundamentals, Python, Linux, and debugging. The launchpad from behind the bar into a career in technology.

Bartender

Dec 2020 to Jun 2023

Baghdad Café·Cape Town

Paid for my move into technology with bar shifts, through AWS re/Start and my first year as an engineer.

Sud0ops Engagements

Selected Work

Consulting and technical work that helps businesses run and grow properly.

HelperHub

Technical Consultant

Technical consultant to a live payroll and HR platform for South African employers. Set the migration strategy from a legacy PHP monolith to a modern platform, delivered a security uplift on the live system with zero downtime, and rebuilt the release process.

Visit siteCase study coming soon

Bashies

Technical Build

Built the online store on Shopify, with a fast, SEO-optimised React landing page.

Visit siteCase study coming soon

Happy Shisha

Digital Enablement

Digital enablement and a social platform for a growing hospitality brand, bringing its sub-brands and services online.

Visit siteCase study coming soon

ProVision Alliance

Volunteer Technical Advisor (NPO)

Technical advisor to a youth-focused NPO. Delivered the website, domain, email and hosting, which removed a blocker to their funding applications, and onboarded them to nonprofit programmes, including Microsoft's.

Visit siteCase study coming soon

Toolkit

What I Work With

A full-stack DevOps skill set, AWS-heavy, built for reliability and cost efficiency.

CI/CD & Containers (GitHub Actions, Docker)

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, AWS CDK)

AWS Cloud Architecture

Observability (OpenTelemetry, Grafana)

Identity & Security (OIDC, IAM)

FinOps & Cost Optimisation

Scripting (Python, Bash)

AI & Agent Workflows (Claude Code)

Let us build something that lasts.

Whether it is stabilising your infrastructure, automating the work that slows your team down, or building the thing you have been putting off, I am happy to talk it through.

alex@sud0ops.com Connect on LinkedIn