Platform Engineering Leader: reliable, cost-efficient platforms at scale
I am Anas Semesmieh, Engineering Manager – Platform Engineering at Pickles Auctions in Sydney. I lead a 15-person organisation across SRE, cloud infrastructure and platform core that supports ~120 engineers in Australia, Malaysia and India, and I own reliability, security and cost as one outcome.
🏆 Featured Wins
- Cut Azure and licensing cost by 50% at run-rate (2024 to mid-2025) through rightsizing, reservations, legacy clean-up and policy as code.
- Consolidated ~500 repositories and ~1,300 pipelines from Bitbucket and Azure DevOps onto GitHub in 6 months, with about 4 hours of commit freeze per team.
- Introduced Infrastructure as Code across the organisation, replacing click-ops: 100% of new resources and ~60% of the existing estate, on Terraform Cloud.
- Launched the Backstage Internal Developer Portal and cut platform-team keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) effort by ~30%.
- Built the platform organisation from zero to 15 people, replacing an 18-person contract DevOps function with an in-house team.
- Built Salty, an AIOps agent that cut platform investigation time by ~60% (internal estimate), and own the AI gateway and guardrails.
👨💻 About
With 15 years in software, cloud and operations, I run platform engineering as one outcome: reliability, security and cost together. I sit on the Architecture Review Board, hire through scenario-based interviews, and report progress in time saved, money saved and efficiency gained. I am looking for a Head of Platform or Head of Engineering role.
💼 Experience
Engineering Manager — Platform Engineering
Lead the platform engineering organisation: SRE, cloud infrastructure and platform core, covering reliability, security, cost and developer experience across Azure and AWS.
- Lead a 15-person platform organisation (SRE, Cloud Infrastructure, Platform Core; three leads) supporting ~120 engineers in Australia, Malaysia and India. Built it from zero from 2021, replacing an 18-person contract DevOps function. The two founding engineers are now the Platform Core and SRE leads.
- Designed and built Salty, an AIOps workspace agent (memory vault, read-only access to six platforms, human-approved knowledge). It cut platform investigation time by ~60% (internal estimate). I also own the AI gateway and guardrails.
- Cut Azure and licensing cost by 50% at run-rate (2024 to mid-2025). I own the Azure, AWS and platform tooling and licensing budgets.
- Consolidated ~500 repositories and ~1,300 pipelines onto GitHub and GitHub Actions in 6 months (2024), one team at a time with no delivery freeze.
- Introduced Infrastructure as Code across the organisation: Terraform from 2022, Terraform Cloud in 2026. 100% of new resources go through IaC and ~60% of the estate is codified.
- Founding member of the Architecture Review Board (since late 2024), setting Architecture Decision Records and bringing the SRE, DevOps and cloud lens at design time and again before production. Drove MongoDB Atlas over Cosmos DB through a performance and cost proof of value.
- Replaced Kong with Azure API Management (early 2026), moving all 95 microservice north-south routes and removing licence cost and upgrade effort.
- Launched the Backstage Internal Developer Portal (mid 2025) with a monthly service-desk-driven catalogue loop for new automations. Platform-team KTLO effort fell by ~30%.
- Run SRE as first responder to production incidents, with SLOs and SLIs per product stream and dashboards for 14 business capabilities. Security gates (GitHub Advanced Security, Dependabot, Wiz, SonarCloud) block findings before merge.
- Product Owner for the shared Storage, Identity and Notification services. Winner of the company AI hackathon (Nov 2024, 100+ engineers) and the Pickles AI Innovator Program (Jun 2026).
Development Lead
Led the CarZapp platform rebuild: .NET Core microservices, Azure cloud-native and serverless solutions, and an Angular/TypeScript web app.
- Implemented Agile (Scrum), source control and CI/CD best practice with Azure DevOps; ran code reviews and pair programming.
- Managed the mobile app accounts and stores, external integrations and hybrid cloud solutions; set the roadmap with product stakeholders.
Technical Consultant (freelance, part-time)
Gave technical consulting and architecture guidance on enterprise solutions; led DevOps best practice and CI/CD adoption.
Solutions Architect / Senior Software Engineer
Led DevOps teams to adopt CI/CD best practice and designed enterprise IoT solutions on premises and in the cloud, including real-time video analytics. Earlier, integrated with Big Data teams and modernised legacy systems to API-based architectures.
Solutions Engineer / Software Engineer
Sitecore (best-practice guidance and troubleshooting), SelfDrvn Enterprise (gamified employee engagement platform) and Nettium (enterprise web applications).
Software Support, Teaching and Training
Software support, teaching and training roles.
IT Administration, Support and Training
IT administration, support and training roles, including network and user support.
🛠️ Skills and Tools
🤝 Soft Skills
🌍 Languages
🎓 Education
🖥️ Open Source and Homelab
I run a production-style homelab with 10+ self-hosted services using native Xcaddy-built Caddy for ingress/TLS, AdGuard Home for DNS filtering and rewrites, Cloudflare Tunnel for explicit remote exposure, and a Docker app stack behind the edge. The full config and operating notes are public on GitHub.
✍️ Blog
Practical notes on platform engineering, Azure architecture, DevSecOps, Docker homelab builds, and leadership lessons from scaling teams and infrastructure.
🎙️ Talks, Podcasts, and Workshops
Public appearances on AI adoption, platform guardrails, leadership under uncertainty, and practical digital transformation.
AI or Die: AAICT AI Workshop (October 2026)
A talk on why leadership, not technology, decides who survives the shift to AI: three years of adoption, the guardrails that made it faster, and the team-memory agent behind my own platform team.
Evolution Exchange Australia Podcast
A panel on AI as augmentation, leadership under uncertainty, and platform teams that make safe change easier.
AADA Workshop: SaaS for Wholesale in Automotive
A practical session on choosing SaaS for wholesale workflows without losing sight of process fit, integrations, or rollout discipline.
📬 Contact
I am looking for Head of Platform and Head of Engineering roles across Sydney and remote-first teams. If your team is scaling platform capabilities, modernizing cloud delivery, or improving engineering effectiveness, I would be glad to connect.
Best way to reach me is email or LinkedIn. I typically respond within 24-48 hours.