Platform engineering · Guatemala City

Jairo Marcos Cano

I build the cloud platforms other engineers deploy onto.

Senior Platform Engineer with more than 12 years in infrastructure, DevOps and cloud. At Geotab I own the infrastructure for the Routing and Optimization domain on the company-wide Google Cloud and GKE platform: Terraform modules, infrastructure as code and lifecycle. Before that I rebuilt delivery pipelines, taught computer science, and ran bootcamps for banks and global IT firms.

LinkedInjmarcos.cano@gmail.com

Selected work

Geotab · 2019 – present

The code and internal systems stay at the company. These write-ups cover the problem, the decisions and the outcome, with system names generalized.

6GKE clusters, US / EU / Asia
44services on the platform

Leaving the data center for GKE

Problem
A routing and optimization domain ran on legacy hosting split between on-premises data centers and AWS, as larger applications that were hard to scale and release independently.
Approach
I led the move in two stages. First a lift-and-shift to Google Cloud to get out of the old hosting. Then a re-platform until every workload ran as its own microservice on GKE, provisioned with Terraform.
Outcome
The domain runs fully cloud native across three regions, with each service scaling from dozens to hundreds of nodes as load requires.
  • GKE
  • Terraform
  • Helm
  • Microservices
100%of changes reviewed in Git

The whole domain as code

Problem
Infrastructure for dozens of services across several regions needs to look the same everywhere, and every change needs an owner and a record.
Approach
Reusable Terraform modules define the building blocks. Terragrunt manages each environment on top of them. Helm charts describe every service, and Argo CD applies them, so Git is the only way a change reaches an environment.
Outcome
Every change to every environment is made and reviewed through Git. New environments and services come from the same modules instead of hand-built copies.
  • Terraform
  • Terragrunt
  • Helm
  • Argo CD
  • GitOps
−34%Google Cloud cost, 2026

Cutting cloud cost by a third

Problem
A domain that scales to hundreds of nodes per service can spend a lot on Google Cloud, and the bill needs an owner.
Approach
I took on governance for the domain's infrastructure. Because everything is defined in Terraform and deployed through Argo CD, a cost change goes through the same pull request flow as any other change, so it is reviewed, rolled out gradually and can be reverted.
Outcome
Google Cloud costs for the domain fell by 34% in 2026.
  • FinOps
  • Governance
  • GCP

Earlier work

Mobi / BSM Technologies · 2017 – 2019
Delivery pipeline

Weeks to hours

Rebuilt the delivery pipeline in under 8 months. The result was one-click deployments to any environment and a business that decides when and what to release. Release lead time dropped from weeks to hours.

Containerization

48+ applications, 16+ clusters

Moved more than 48 monolith-style applications to independently deployable services on Docker Swarm, across more than 16 multi-AZ clusters, with approvals and releases through Octopus Deploy.

Teaching and community

2018 – 2024
Universidad Francisco Marroquín · 2018 – 2020

Computer science instructor

Taught computer science to undergraduates in Guatemala City.

Docker Guatemala

Community lead

Led the local Docker community and received an honorable mention for community leadership at DockerCon 2020.

kontinu.io · 2020 – 2024

Bootcamps for banks and IT firms

Founded a consultancy that ran cloud-native, DevOps and Extreme Programming bootcamps for two of Guatemala's largest banks and a global customer-experience and IT services company, including sessions that taught HR and recruiting teams how engineering roles work.

Contract work

Healthcare platforms

Led DevOps and cloud engineering as a contractor for Olinqua in Australia on Azure, and for DXC Technology and Dedalus on OpenShift.

Stack

Cloud
Google Cloud (GKE), Microsoft Azure (Landing Zones), AWS
Infrastructure as code
Terraform, Terragrunt, reusable module design
Kubernetes and GitOps
Kubernetes, GKE, OpenShift, Helm, Argo CD, Docker
CI/CD
GitLab CI, Jenkins, Octopus Deploy, Ansible, Chef
AI-assisted engineering
Orchestrating local and cloud AI agents for infrastructure and platform work
Programming
Go, Python, Node.js, Bash, Java, C
In progress

Reference platform on GitHub

A small public repo that rebuilds the patterns above from scratch, with no company code:

  • A Terraform module for a GKE cluster
  • Argo CD managing a sample service through Helm
  • A policy-as-code guardrail that blocks an unsafe change before it merges
  • Cost labels on every resource