Saleh DarwishVerified by Kube-Ops Academy

Badges

• First labFinish your first lab.

• Enterprise GitLab CI/CD & Security Scanner Modernization

  Maintained reusable GitLab CI/CD templates supporting Kubernetes deployments and secure image delivery. Evaluated Dependency Scanning V2 and Gradle resolution, investigated Docker-executor runner restrictions, build-storage constraints and registry pull failures. Supported scanner image mirroring and digest checks for an air-gapped environment while preserving existing application delivery behavior.

  • GitLab CI/CD
  • GitLab Runner
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Dependency Scanning
  • Container Scanning

• GPU-Accelerated AI Models on Kubernetes

  Deployed and validated four Qwen AI models for vision-language inference, embedding and reranking on NVIDIA GPU-enabled Alibaba Cloud ACK in a restricted DEV environment. Used vLLM and Argo CD GitOps, configured GPU resource requests and scheduling, and resolved startup and resource-allocation issues. Verified model availability and synchronization; this was a DEV validation, not a production service.

  • Kubernetes
  • Alibaba Cloud ACK
  • NVIDIA L20
  • vLLM
  • Qwen
  • Argo CD

• Rancher API Audit Logging & Centralized Archival

  Implemented centralized Rancher API audit logging with three audit sidecars and six Vector collectors. Configured daily archival, 30-day retention and Active Directory user attribution. Validated end-to-end audit capture and archiving using 2,046 unique audit event IDs to support operational traceability and security investigations.

  • Rancher Prime
  • Kubernetes
  • Vector
  • Linux
  • NFS
  • Active Directory

• GitLab Container Registry Storage Optimization

  Reclaimed approximately 3.66 TiB of GitLab Container Registry storage through controlled garbage collection. Audited image dependencies across five Kubernetes clusters and 5,629 workload-image records before cleanup. Applied snapshot safeguards, validated registry health and investigated post-cleanup findings. No production impact attributable to the operation was identified.

  • GitLab Container Registry
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Linux
  • Bash
  • Storage Management

• GitLab Security Gate & DevSecOps Automation

  Designed and implemented GitLab Security Gates for enterprise CI/CD pipelines, evaluating SAST, Dependency Scanning and Secret Detection findings before protected builds or deployments. Configured Audit and Block modes, Critical/High severity enforcement, approved exceptions and fail-closed checks when required scanner evidence is missing. Validated rollout across multiple application projects while preserving existing delivery workflows.

  • GitLab CI/CD
  • DevSecOps
  • SAST
  • Dependency Scanning
  • Secret Detection
  • Security Gates

• Enterprise Air-Gapped Kubernetes Platform Deployment

  Deployed Rancher Prime and the SUSE Observability backend on the ACK management cluster, with monitoring agents across five clusters in an air-gapped environment. Mirrored vendor images to a private registry and configured Helm, storage and ingress. Deployed NeuVector on the management cluster, integrated its Rancher UI extension and validated access. Resolved offline installation, scheduling and storage issues.

  • Kubernetes
  • Alibaba Cloud ACK
  • Rancher Prime
  • SUSE Observability
  • NeuVector
  • Helm