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Rutger Clarke

Platform Engineer · Azure Infrastructure · IaC · Developer Experience

Birstall, West Yorkshire · Hybrid (Leeds)

[email protected] spinstate.dev LinkedIn

Summary

Platform engineer at Buro Happold designing and operating Azure infrastructure that product teams build on without filing tickets. AZ-104-certified, building idempotent Terraform pipelines, golden-path modules, and policy-driven guardrails that let developers self-serve compliant infrastructure.

Skills & Stack

Cloud & Infrastructure

Azure Terraform Bicep Azure CLI Entra ID Docker k3s Kubernetes

CI/CD & Automation

GitLab CI Ansible Terraform Docker Compose Traefik Pixel Streaming

Observability

Prometheus Grafana Loki Alertmanager Uptime Kuma

Platform Governance & FinOps

Azure Policy RBAC FinOps Cost Analysis Agile GDPR

Experience

Platform Engineer, Azure Infrastructure

Buro Happold · April 2026–present · Hybrid (Leeds)

  • Unreal Engine pixel streaming platform: Architected and deployed Azure infrastructure for streaming interactive 3D model renders from Unreal Engine to browser clients: GPU-enabled VM scale sets with ephemeral OS disks behind a load-balanced ingress, with session management and autoscaling tuned for concurrent streaming. Ephemeral OS disks eliminated fixed premium SSD costs, reducing compute spend by 45% while increasing capacity headroom for peak sessions.
  • Platform engineering & IaC: Own the Terraform module library and IaC pipeline that product teams use to provision Azure infrastructure. State locking, plan/apply separation, and environment promotion give repeatable, auditable, idempotent deploys with zero drift on re-apply. Modules cover subscriptions, resource groups, RBAC, networking, and monitoring, so teams get a compliant foundation without writing it from scratch.
  • Developer experience & golden paths: Built reusable self-service templates that reduced infrastructure provisioning lead time from days to minutes. Product teams spin up compliant environments without filing tickets or waiting for infrastructure review. Azure Policy definitions enforce baseline controls so teams move fast within guardrails rather than gated by them.
  • Cloud governance & FinOps: Cost optimisation across Azure subscriptions: budget alerts, resource right-sizing, tagging strategy aligned to cost centres, and policy-driven waste elimination. Reduced monthly cloud spend through subscription rationalisation and automated lifecycle management.
  • Automation: Replaced manual portal workflows with Azure CLI automation for operational tasks. Every repeatable action is codified; no click-ops.

Platform Engineer, Cycle Kirklees

2025–present · Volunteer · £0 budget

  • Architected and built a self-hosted production platform: Eleventy static site, Express/TypeScript signup gateway, and self-hosted domain email on Proxmox/OPNsense.
  • Designed an Internal Developer Platform pattern: Sveltia CMS + GitLab CI/CD giving non-technical committee members a self-service publishing workflow with zero infra knowledge required.
  • Stood up Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, and Alertmanager with 10 alert rules routed to Telegram; 30-day metric and log retention.
  • Security: Cloudflare Turnstile, rate limiting, CORS allowlist, helmet, GDPR consent capture, non-root Docker containers, Zod-validated flows with SQLite state machines.
  • Achieved £0 marginal infrastructure cost using free tiers (Cloudflare, Resend, Telegram, Umami) on self-hosted hardware.

Self-Hosted Platform Engineer, spinstate.dev

2024–present · Personal platform

  • Built a bare-metal Kubernetes platform (k3s) on Proxmox with 20+ services, targeting 99.9% availability.
  • Implemented infrastructure-as-code with Terraform (Proxmox provider) and Ansible for configuration management, with role-based composability across layers.
  • Self-hosted GitLab CE with isolated CI/CD runners, SSL termination via Traefik, and automated deployment pipelines.
  • Zero-trust network segmentation with VLANs, deny-by-default inter-VLAN routing, and least-privilege access controls.

£1M Transformation Programme Lead

National charity · 2023–2025

  • Delivered a six-workstream programme on time and on budget, including infrastructure and tooling modernisation workstreams alongside governance and operations.
  • Established a governance model (steering cadence, risk management, benefits tracking) that remained in place after programme close.

IT Operations Manager

National charity · 130+ staff · 2019–2023

  • Azure/AD governance: Owned Azure subscription structure, Entra ID (Azure AD) conditional access, and RBAC for 130+ staff.
  • Stabilised core services while modernising tooling without disruption; improved asset visibility and lifecycle planning.
  • Managed vendor oversight, budget visibility, and procurement controls alongside day-to-day operations.

Certifications

AZ-104

Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate

CKA (In progress)

Certified Kubernetes Administrator

AZ-900

Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals

Agile Practitioner

Delivery governance and adaptive planning

Additional: PRINCE2 Practitioner, Full Stack Bootcamp.

Selected Writing