Mobile Broadband Provider — Scaling DevOps for Decentralized Infrastructure

A mobile broadband provider at the forefront of decentralized connectivity was entering a period of rapid technical expansion. Their engineering ambitions were significant: modernize a complex Kubernetes-based platform, mature their CI/CD pipelines, and build the observability and infrastructure-as-code foundations necessary to support a geographically distributed edge computing architecture.

The organization's infrastructure spanned AWS EKS clusters, Istio service mesh configurations, GitLab-based deployment pipelines, and colocated hardware at mobile data centers supporting bidirectional workloads. As their platform grew, so did the need for specialized DevOps expertise to decompose legacy technical debt, standardize infrastructure provisioning, and establish production-grade monitoring across an increasingly complex stack.

They needed engineers who could operate independently across multiple workstreams, navigating an environment where cloud-native practices intersected with the unique demands of mobile broadband infrastructure.

We conducted a first-principles assessment of the provider's infrastructure requirements and delivered a curated shortlist of peer-vetted engineers. Ultimately, we embedded two Senior DevOps Engineersin phased deployments, each assigned to complement distinct areas of the organization's technical roadmap.

The first specialist focused on the platform's core infrastructure layer:

• Service Mesh & Internal Tooling:Architected and deployed Istio service mesh integrations for the organization's proprietary internal package management system, enabling secure, observable inter-service communication.
• Monitoring & Alerting: Designed and implemented a comprehensive monitoring and alerting framework, establishing the observability foundation the engineering team needed as the platform scaled.
• Infrastructure Stewardship:Provided ongoing oversight of overall architectural soundness, identifying opportunities to streamline and modernize the platform's operational posture.

The second specialist was embedded shortly after, targeting the CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code workstreams:

• EKS Cluster Standardization: Led the effort to achieve AWS EKS cluster parity, cleaning up fragmented infrastructure-as-code and consolidating DNS, IP, and context configurations across environments.
• GitLab Pipeline Engineering: Designed and implemented pipeline abstractions, troubleshot complex deployment patterns around Firebase, and resolved deep Git internals issues affecting build reliability.
• Greenfield Terraform on GCP: Codified previously hand-created GCP infrastructure into repeatable Terraform modules, replacing manual provisioning with auditable, version-controlled deployments.
• Load Balancer & Kubernetes Troubleshooting: Diagnosed and resolved default timeout issues with misbehaving Kubernetes plugins, improving reliability across the provider's load balancer architecture.
• Monitoring Optimization: Implemented a monitoring and alerting tool as a strategic stop-gap, then optimized vendor dependencies to reduce complexity and operational overhead.
• Embedded Systems Debugging: Led a multi-week investigation into a KAS-based embedded Linux testing system, ultimately tracing a persistent build failure to a hidden version dependency — resolving an issue that had resisted conventional troubleshooting across the team.