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Senior Solutions Architect

Authors

Rendani Tshivhangani

Welcome to my professional experience page. This page provides an in-depth look at my career journey, showcasing my roles, achievements, and contributions to the field of IT and cloud computing.

Professional Experience

Senior Solutions Architect

Red Hat Inc EMEA - South Africa
April 2023 - Present

  • Strategized and optimized Red Hat solutions to meet customer needs, translating technical features into significant business value.
  • Led technical presentations and demos, showcasing Red Hat’s portfolio benefits and aligning solutions with business strategies.
  • Mitigated architectural conflicts within accounts, ensuring smooth integration and adoption of Red Hat solutions, fostering customer loyalty and competitive edge.
  • Helped customers adopt DevSecOps methodology in their environment.
  • Managed the Technical Account Plan, steering strategic direction and accountability in alignment with the overall Account Plan, working closely with enterprise account executives.
  • Utilized deep technical knowledge in Kubernetes, Red Hat Ansible, and RHEL to craft compelling proposals and lead customer-centric workshops.
  • Implemented consultative selling techniques, delivering engaging technical and business discussions with stakeholders, enhancing customer relations and achieving sales targets through proficient use of Salesforce and life cycle selling processes.

AWS Solutions Architect

Amazon EMEA - South Africa
October 2021 - March 2023

  • Utilized AWS Well-Architected Framework to optimize performance, reliability, and costs, achieving an 8.3% cost reduction and saving the client R500,000 annually.
  • Enhanced Athena query performance by 35% via S3 data restructuring and query redesign.
  • Unified AWS partners and clients, focusing on cost efficiency and application reliability.
  • Consistently updated senior stakeholders, aligning with their objectives and budgets.
  • Spearheaded the 2022 "Architect Reliable Applications on AWS" workshop at Pop-Hub, teaching advanced design techniques with a 100% completion rate by 38 attendees and a notable CSAT score of 4.8.

AWS Cloud Engineer

Vodacom SA - South Africa
August 2020 - October 2021

  • Led the transformation of a monolithic WordPress-based web application to a modernized AWS 3-tier application architecture.
  • Enhanced user experience by integrating CloudFront for caching static content, reducing web app load times from 2.3 minutes to 0.9 minutes.
  • Bolstered security with the addition of Amazon WAF and implementing the least privilege access principles across database and application layers.
  • Facilitated the successful upgrade of WordPress and outdated plugins, improving site functionality and security.
  • Automated infrastructure configuration, reducing setup time from 4 hours to 8 minutes.

Senior Technical Officer

Vodacom SA - South Africa
October 2016 - June 2021

  • Rapidly addressed faults, minimizing network downtime and ensuring consistent, high-quality user experiences.
  • Spearheaded the implementation of a problem management process, reducing recurring issues by 85%.
  • Led collaborative meetings, analyzing incidents and trends, resulting in quicker issue identification and preventative measures for potential network challenges.

NOC Engineer - 1st Level Support Engineer

MTN South Africa - South Africa
July 2012 - March 2016

  • Oversaw 24/7 network management, ensuring optimal availability and successfully executing preventative maintenance.
  • Streamlined network operations, directing trouble tickets to Radio Engineers, OMC personnel, HLS, and VAS, ensuring timely resolutions and enhanced network service quality.
  • Championed the development of comprehensive documentation on standards and troubleshooting processes.

Network Switch Engineer

MTN South Africa - South Africa
July 2009 - June 2012

  • Ensured timely execution of routine maintenance procedures and addressed escalated hardware and link faults promptly, significantly reducing network downtime.
  • Conducted ad hoc inspections on contractors, ensuring full compliance with health and safety policies and procedures.
  • Regularly updated critical switch records, including billing backups, weekly dumps, and test loads.

Graduate Transmission Engineer

MTN South Africa - South Africa
February 2009 - June 2009

  • Compiled capacity information and configuration parameters, resulting in reduced network management costs.
  • Proactively forecasted network capacity and traffic, ensuring synchronization with Radio, Core & IP plans in line with MTN's strategic roadmap.

Education

MPhil in Strategic Management

University of Pretoria - South Africa
January 2024 - Present

Postgraduate in Business Administration

University of Johannesburg - South Africa
January 2022 - January 2023

Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Business

Emeritus in collaboration with MIT Sloan and Columbia Business School Executive Education - Online
February 2021 - November 2021

National Diploma in Electrical Engineering

Tshwane University of Technology - South Africa
January 2004 - December 2006

Skills

  • Python, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, C Programming, Rails, SQL, NoSQL
  • AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Docker, Jenkins, Terraform
  • Linux, Microservices, OpenShift, Kubernetes, Ansible, Node.js, Cybersecurity
  • IT Troubleshooting, System Administration, Automation, API Management
  • Agile and Scrum Methodologies, Machine Learning and AI
  • Cloud Migration, DevOps, Cloud Architecture, ITIL, TOGAF

Conclusion

Feel free to reach out if you would like to connect or collaborate on a project!

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