Chapter 01 · Telecom
2021
Bharti Airtel
Real-time network operations: PostgreSQL schemas and Django APIs behind a NOC dashboard for telecom infrastructure.
- Python
- Django
- PostgreSQL
- REST API
- Jenkins
- Docker
Head of Information Technology · SimDaaS Autonomy
Open to conversations · IT leadership, cloud, DevOps
NIKHILRAI.
Senior Software & DevOps Engineer
I design, ship and run the platforms engineering teams depend on: microservices, CI/CD, infrastructure as code and the cloud underneath, from first commit to production.
- shipping to production since
- 2021shipping to production since
- products across 4 sectors
- 6products across 4 sectors
- clouds: Azure, AWS, DigitalOcean
- 3clouds: Azure, AWS, DigitalOcean
Based in India02About
Software and operations, in one frame.
I'm Nikhil Rai, an engineer from India. I started on the network operations side at Bharti Airtel, moved into building products at IIT Kanpur startups, and today I lead IT and infrastructure at SimDaaS Autonomy.
My work sits where software meets operations: microservices architecture, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code and the monitoring around it. I've delivered for media, cybersecurity, aerospace and telecom teams, and I mentor the people I work with on DevOps, cloud and secure delivery.
Away from the terminal I'm usually behind a camera. Photography and infrastructure ask for the same habit: get the fundamentals right and everything else comes into focus.
03Experience
Where I've worked.
Chapter 01 / 04
Leadership
Chapter 01 · Leadership
Aug 2026 – Present
Head of Information TechnologyCurrent
IIT Kanpur · Joined as Software Development Engineer II · Aug 2025 – Aug 2026
- Own SimDaaS' IT infrastructure, cloud ecosystem, software deployment platform and internal business applications, keeping them secure, reliable and cost-effective.
- Define and enforce the company IT security policy across device security, access control and acceptable use, and own incident response for IT security issues.
- Own all cloud accounts, deployments and billing; enforce tagging, environment segregation and right-sizing, with cost alerts and guardrails against unplanned spend.
- Run end-to-end license management for SimDaaS software products, including the licensing portal and an audit trail of issuance, renewals and revocations.
- Design, build and host the server-side API layer for SimDaaS applications across cloud and on-prem environments, with availability and monitoring.
- Technical owner of the hardware team's software platforms, from architecture and CI/CD to releases and production support, working with hardware, firmware, cloud and product teams.
Chapter 02 · AI & Cloud
SkyAI Technologies
Sep 2024 – Oct 2025
Software Engineer / AI and Cloud Engineer
IIT Kanpur
- Led development and cloud management for two AI-driven and microservices-based products, delivering scalable solutions for the media sector.
- Architected and managed microservices deployments on DigitalOcean, utilizing Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform for infrastructure automation.
- Implemented CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins and SonarQube to ensure high code quality and streamlined deployments.
- Integrated Razorpay for secure payment gateways, enhancing user experience in commercial applications.
Chapter 03 · Security & Scale
Cyber3ra
Nov 2022 – Sep 2024
Software Engineer
IIT Kanpur
- Led development of three high-impact products, including a cybersecurity platform, a creative talent marketplace, and an aerospace application, leveraging microservices and advanced DevOps practices.
- Architected microservices-based systems, deployed on Azure, AWS, and DigitalOcean, using Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform for scalability and automation.
- Designed event-driven architectures with Kafka and RabbitMQ for reliable asynchronous communication.
- Implemented CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins and SonarQube, and configured Sentry and BetterStack for real-time monitoring and logging.
- Mentored cross-functional teams on DevOps best practices, cloud management, and secure application development.
Chapter 04 · Foundations
Bharti Airtel
Nov 2021 – Nov 2022
NOC Developer
Gurugram, Haryana
- Led database development for a network operations dashboard, enhancing data management and real-time monitoring for telecommunications infrastructure.
- Contributed to network operation tools development, integrating REST APIs for automation and monitoring.
- Supported deployment pipelines with early adoption of microservices principles for scalable solutions.
Key products
Network Operations Dashboard
- Python
- Django
- PostgreSQL
- REST API
- Jenkins
- Docker
Education
Bachelor of Technology in Information Technology
Veer Bahadur Singh Purvanchal University, Jaunpur, U.P. · 2021
04The journey
Five years, one pipeline.
Chapter 02 · Cybersecurity · Aerospace & defence
2022
Cyber3ra
A bug-bounty and CTF platform, a creative-talent marketplace and an aerospace & defence app, on event-driven microservices across three clouds.
- Kafka
- RabbitMQ
- Terraform
- Azure
- AWS
- Sentry
Chapter 03 · AI · Media cloud
2024
SkyAI Technologies
An AI chatbot product and a high-traffic news platform, run on Kubernetes with CI/CD and code-quality gates.
- Kubernetes
- Docker
- Jenkins
- SonarQube
- DigitalOcean
- Razorpay
Chapter 04 · Deeptech · Autonomy
2026
SimDaaS Autonomy
Head of Information Technology: infrastructure, cloud cost and security, licensing, and the software behind the hardware team.
- Terraform
- Kubernetes
- Access control
- Grafana
- Prometheus
- Cost guardrails
Next chapter: yours?
If you are building something that has to stay up, I would like to hear about it.
Start a conversation05Work
Things I've shipped.
Products I built and ran in production, and the open-source tools I'm working on now.
Products06
Open source
- seatbelt for AI agents
Reads the shell commands an AI coding agent is about to run and blocks or asks before the dangerous ones: leaked secrets, production deletes, prompt injection. Zero dependencies.
- Python
- AI safety
- DevSecOps
- cloud-ownerlens
Finds unused cloud resources nobody owns, infers who they belong to, scores the waste and asks before anyone touches anything. Read-only by design.
- Python
- AWS
- FinOps
- ScamSaathi
An offline, multilingual scam shield for farmers, students and families, with a trusted-person alert loop. Checks messages, links and apps in Hindi or English.
- Flutter
- Django
- Security
- Scenario-Based V&V Tool
A prototype for verification and validation of autonomous vehicles and ADAS: Latin Hypercube scenario generation, surrogate TTC evaluation and coverage analysis.
- Python
- Streamlit
- Autonomy
- Stock Trading Simulator
A full-stack, real-time trading simulator with virtual money, live market data, portfolio tracking and analytics.
- Python
- Real-time
- Full stack
Live from GitHub
Updates every hour
- 1,253
- contributions in the last year
- 131
- active days
- 18
- longest streak (days)
LessMore
Recently pushed
- NigraniSelf-hosted monitoring & alerting dashboard for Docker projects. Sits on Prometheus + Loki; alerts from Sentry, Kubernetes, AWS CloudWatch, Datadog and Azure Monitor; notifies Slack, Teams, Telegram, email. One container.Python2 days ago
- portfolioOpen-source developer portfolio: Next.js 16, three.js particle morph, GSAP scroll film, OTT-style profiles, free AI chat, PWA, English/Hindi. Fork it and make it yours.TypeScript6 days ago
- ScamSaathiOffline, multilingual scam shield for farmers, students and families, with a trusted-person (Saathi) alert loop. Flutter + Django.Dart13 days ago
- seatbelt-for-AI-agentsA seatbelt for AI coding agents: reads the shell commands an agent is about to run and blocks or asks before the dangerous ones. Secrets, prod deletes, prompt injection. Zero dependencies.Python13 days ago
06Notes
Notes from the work.
Write-ups of the open-source tools I'm building: what problem each one solves and how it stays safe.
- 19 Oct 2026 · 2 min readA seatbelt for AI coding agentsAgents now run aws, kubectl, terraform and git on real machines. seatbelt reads each shell command before it runs and stops the dangerous ones, without a network call.
- AI safety
- DevSecOps
- Python
- 18 Oct 2026 · 2 min readFinding the owner of forgotten cloud resourcesCost tools say what's expensive. cloud-ownerlens finds unused resources, works out who owns them, records what they answered, and can't change anything.
- FinOps
- AWS
- Python
- 19 Oct 2026 · 2 min readScamSaathi: an offline scam shield in Hindi and EnglishA scam check for the people scammers target most: farmers, students and their families. It runs on the phone, explains why, and can tell someone you trust.
- Security
- Flutter
- Django
From my LinkedIn
07Stack
Tools I reach for.
Grouped the way I use them, from the language up to the dashboards that watch it.
Languages01
- Python
- JavaScript
Frameworks02
- Django
- Django REST Framework
- Wagtail
- React
- Vue.js
Frontend03
- HTML
- CSS
- Bootstrap
- Vuetify
Data04
- PostgreSQL
- MySQL
- MongoDB
- SQLite
- Redis
Messaging05
- Kafka
- RabbitMQ
- Celery
Cloud06
- Azure
- AWS
- DigitalOcean
Platform07
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- Terraform
- Jenkins
- SonarQube
- Nginx
- Gunicorn
- Linux
- GitHub
Observability08
- Grafana
- Prometheus
- Sentry
- BetterStack
Tooling09
- REST API
- JWT
- Razorpay
- Postman
- Python unittest
- Web Scraping
IT & governance10
- IT security policy
- Access control
- IT asset management
- Cloud cost governance
- License management
- Incident response
08Moments
Off the clock.
Conferences, campuses and the evenings in between.
Work with me
Need a hand with your infrastructure?
Short, well-defined projects for startups and small teams. Scope and timeline are agreed in writing before any work starts.
DevOps and CI/CD
From manual deploys to a pipeline that tests, builds and ships on every merge.
- Docker
- Jenkins or GitHub Actions
- Kubernetes
- Rollbacks
Cloud cost review
Find what you pay for and nobody uses, then cut it safely with the owners in the loop.
- AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean
- Unused resources
- Ownership
- Budgets
Security baseline
The basics that stop most incidents: who has access, where secrets live, what gets backed up.
- Access policy
- Secrets
- Backups
- Monitoring and alerts
Python backend or API
Django and REST services built to be boring in production: observable, tested, documented.
- Django and DRF
- PostgreSQL
- Celery and queues
- Sentry
Tell me what you run today and where it hurts. I reply with a plan and a fixed scope.
09Contact
Let's build something reliable.
Infrastructure, DevOps, Python, or photography: my inbox is open.
Shell
Prefer a terminal?
Type help and press Enter.
nikhil@infra: ~ (zsh)
Last login: ttys001 from edge.ap-south-1
Type help and press Enter.
Pass it on.
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Support the open source
seatbelt, cloud-ownerlens, ScamSaathi and this portfolio are free. Sponsoring keeps them maintained.