Phanikar's CV

Message
WhatsAppLinkedIn

Phanikar Palepu

Senior Cloud Security & Infrastructure Manager & Cybersecurity Leader

Hyderabad, India

Profile summary

Strategic Senior Cloud Security & Infrastructure Manager with 21 years shaping enterprise technology outcomes in multilingual environments. Known for directing multi-region cloud transformations, securing mission-critical infrastructure, and governing large-scale engineering operations. Committed to delivering resilient architectures and maintaining high-availability systems under strict compliance frameworks.

Career highlights

MPLS Network Migration: Led a 23-member team through the phased AFNET 1.0-to-2.0 MPLS migration across 172 edge locations and five data-centre regions with near-zero disruption.

Cloud Infrastructure Automation: Implemented Amazon EKS and ECS orchestration with CloudFormation Infrastructure as Code and AWS CodePipeline CI/CD to enable repeatable deployments.

Threat Detection Architecture: Architected threat-detection and fraud-defence capabilities for RAPTOR AI using AWS WAF, geo-blocking, and rate-limiting controls.

Key skills

TechnicalAWS EC2 Docker Kubernetes GitHub Actions GitLab Git AWS WAF Python Linux AWS Cloud Infrastructure Cloud & Digital Transformation DevOps & CI/CD Automation
ProfessionalVPC S3 IAM CloudFront CloudWatch CloudTrail CloudFormation ECS EKS Elastic Beanstalk CodePipeline Azure Entra ID Azure Functions Azure DevOps Azure Blob Terraform Ansible Packer Jenkins Zero Trust SOC 2 FedRAMP ITIL-4 OWASP ZAP SecurityScorecard BitSight Microsoft Sentinel Splunk QRadar ArcSight CrowdStrike Microsoft Defender SentinelOne Cortex XDR MITRE ATT&CK IOC/TTP Analysis Threat Hunting Incident Response VPC Design Transit Gateway Direct Connect ALB/NLB Route 53 PrivateLink VPN Gateway MPLS BGP OSPF VLAN QoS SD-WAN IPSec VPN DDoS Mitigation VSAT/Satcom AFNET MPLS Prometheus Grafana ELK Stack Zabbix ManageEngine Cisco AppDynamics IBM Instana VPC Flow Logs NetFlow Wireshark SIEM EDR XDR Log Analysis Event Correlation Shell PowerShell Jira HP Service Manager v9.4 Maximo SCCD IBM ICD IMMOLS RHEL CentOS Ubuntu Windows Server 2012/2016/2019 Red Hat OpenShift Cloud Strategy & Architecture Cybersecurity & Zero Trust IT Infrastructure Leadership Multi-Region & High Availability Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Governance Risk & Compliance SOC 2 & FedRAMP Readiness Cloud Security & IAM ITIL 4 Service Management Cost Optimization & FinOps Team Leadership & Capability Building Vendor & Stakeholder Management Programme & Budget Management Incident Response & Threat Management

Professional experience

TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING LEADERSHIPApr 2005 - Mar 2025
Indian Air ForceMultiple Locations, India

Shaped technology strategy and steered digital transformation across mission-critical defence systems, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise networks throughout India. Directed large-scale engineering operations and managed technical teams to maintain high-availability environments and secure operations.

  • Led a 23-member team through the phased AFNET 1.0-to-2.0 MPLS migration across 172 edge locations and five data-centre regions, delivering the transformation with near-zero disruption.
  • Architected secure Kubernetes Master and Bastion topology, executed physical-to-virtual migrations, and implemented disaster recovery, backup, Single Sign-On, and vulnerability-management capabilities.
  • Implemented Amazon EKS and ECS orchestration with CloudFormation Infrastructure as Code and AWS CodePipeline CI/CD, enabling repeatable and controlled deployments.
  • Authored SOPs, technical specifications, and RFPs for infrastructure procurement programmes valued up to 20 Crore, while managing budget, procurement, and Pan-India IT service delivery under ITIL-4 governance.
MANAGER – CLOUD SYSTEMSApr 2025 - Present
INFRASTRUCTURESECURITY &

Directs cloud systems and infrastructure strategy for multi-region AWS environments supporting enterprise SaaS platforms across regulated markets. Steered engineering operations by mentoring an 11-engineer team, embedding infrastructure as code, and governing email routing gateways.

  • Architected threat-detection and fraud-defence capabilities for RAPTOR AI using AWS WAF, geo-blocking, and rate-limiting controls.
  • Delivered SOC 2 audit-readiness evidence and defined a FedRAMP pathway to support public-sector and regulated-industry opportunities.
  • Executed Kerberos RC4-to-AES migration for AWS Managed Microsoft AD security modernization ahead of schedule.

Education

MBAJun 2022
Suresh Gyan Vihar University, Jaipur

IT Management

Integrated PGPDec 2022
Eurasian Management & Administrative School, Moscow

Strategic Management

B.Sc.Jan 2012
Alagappa University

Mathematics

Certifications

Project Management Professional (PMP®)PMI2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z
AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C03)AWS2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z
HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (003)HashiCorp2025-01-01T00:00:00.000Z
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – AssociateAWS2023-01-01T00:00:00.000Z
Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)Microsoft2022-01-01T00:00:00.000Z
ITIL-4 FoundationITIL
Project Management Professional (PMP®) – PMI, 2026PMP®
HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (003), 2025003

Languages

English · Professional

Telugu · Professional

Hindi · Professional