Hello, world!

When I was a kid, I built with Lego blocks; today, I build on AWS.

Builder
YouTuber
Learner
Rafal Krol slightly smiling in a black t-shirt standing in front of a staircase

Cloud

I have many years of professional experience designing, building, deploying, maintaining and operating modern cloud architectures on AWS and hybrid environments. I participated in migrations to AWS from on-prem, created entire landing zones, and implemented multi-account networking - all using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools (Terraform, AWS CDK and Pulumi). I wrote an article on one of my solutions that got featured on the AWS Partner Network (APN) blog.

DevOps

Standing up and destroying an uncountable number of resources using Infrastructure as Code (IaC), shifting testing left with powerful automation that the dev teams don't even need to think about (Continous Integration), increasing innovation velocity and agility through seamless, error-prone deployments (Continous Delivery/Deployment). All of that while fostering closer inter- and intra-team collaboration by removing process friction. Yes, I'm into DevOps so much that my JRT is named Devo.

Multi-lang

I've developed APIs, SDKs, backend services, and internal tooling throughout my career using TypeScript, Go and Python. I am currently learning Haskell to grasp the functional programming paradigm better, and I am a Rustacean in the making. Having cooperated with Firmware and Mobile teams, I've dabbled in C, Objective-C, Swift, Java and Kotlin ecosystems. I can do basic frontend stuff, as demonstrated by this website, but I love the blackness of the terminal and prefer CLIs to GUIs. I ran apps directly on hosts, inside Docker containers, ECS tasks, Kubernetes pods and serverless in AWS Lambdas orchestrated by Step Functions; I'm looking forward to compiling software to WebAssembly (WASM) binaries.

Bookworm

I read books every day, listen to lo-fi music when I code, play video games when I can, pump iron three times a week and walk my JRT three times a day.

Subject Matter Expert

I have worked directly with C-level management, customer reps and other business stakeholders. I held presentations, planned budgets, prepared technical briefs, gave reports, participated in performance reviews of my colleagues, and ran technical interviews with potential prospects.

Mentor

I firmly believe that education is king and the key to a better, more sustainable, and inclusive future. On my small part, I have played the role of a mentor both within and outside the workplace, and I cohosted over 40 videos aimed at helping people to restart their careers in IT. I have been a member of AWS Community Builders since 2021, published blog posts to Dev.to, presented to a local AWS User Group meetup, and I'm kicking off a YouTube channel.

Certificates

Whenever I do something, I give one hundred and ten. That's why I have many certificates, and that's why there will be even more.

  • A badge in the form of a turquoise hexagon standing on one of its vertices with the words - AWS Certified, Solutions Architect, Professional - on it.
  • A badge in the form of a turquoise hexagon standing on one of its vertices with the words - AWS Certified, DevOps Engineer, Professional - on it.
  • A badge in the form of a purple hexagon standing on one of its vertices with the words - AWS Certified, Advanced Networking, Specialty - on it.
  • A badge in the form of a purple hexagon standing on one of its vertices with the words - AWS Certified, Data Analytics, Specialty - on it.
  • A badge in the form of a purple hexagon standing on one of its vertices with the words - AWS Certified, Security, Specialty - on it.
  • A badge in the form of a blue hexagon standing on one of its vertices with the words - Solutions Architect, Associate - on it.
  • A badge in the form of a blue hexagon standing on one of its vertices with the words - Developer, Associate - on it.
  • A badge in the form of a blue hexagon standing on one of its vertices with the words - SysOps Administrator - on it.
  • A black badge with the words - Terraform, Certified Associate, HCTAO-002 - on it.