About Nikola
Expert IT Engineer | Systems Architect | DevOps Strategist
20+ years’ experience delivering scalable, secure, and high-availability solutions across banking, cloud, media & enterprise-grade platforms.
🚀 From leading CI/CD infrastructure for financial institutions to architecting fault-tolerant systems on IBM Cloud and Dockerized environments, I specialize in bridging application delivery with infrastructure excellence. I possess deep technical expertise in Linux and Windows systems, automation (Ansible, Bash, Python), cloud technology (AWS, Azure, OpenStack), container ecosystems (Docker, Kubernetes), and secure messaging (RabbitMQ, WebSphere MQ, ActiveMQ).
✔️ Notable achievements:
• Migrated core banking applications at Van Lanschot Kempen (full stack: OS–App–CI/CD)
• Delivered scalable DevOps pipelines (Azure DevOps, Git, Jenkins)
• Architected HA environments and performed mission-critical upgrades (e.g., F5 LTM, VMware, Puppet/Ansible orchestration)
• Supported VIP clients at Netflix & IBM Cloud, with 24/7 service reliability mindset
🎯 My focus: High-impact engineering delivery, infrastructure modernization, automation, and solving the “unsolvable”. Available for both project execution and long-term partnerships.
📩 Let’s talk if you need a senior-level technologist to lead or rescue your infrastructure, accelerate DevOps maturity, or unlock full-system visibility and resilience.
English
Native or bilingual
Dutch
Basic
German
Basic
Serbian
Native or bilingual
Croatian
Native or bilingual
Bosnian
Native or bilingual
Slovenian
Conversational
Macedonian
Conversational
Remote only
Primarily works remotely
Experience
- Van Lanschot Kempen NVExpert IT Engineer, Expert Application Manager, Expert Systems EngineerAugust 2021 - Today (4 years and 10 months)• Spearheading the implementation of core banking applications into production environments, ensuring seamless deployment, compliance, and system integrity.• Administering and maintaining a heterogeneous infrastructure across Linux and Windows servers, encompassing patch management, system updates, and high-availability assurance.• Leading infrastructure and application-level automation using Ansible, streamlining configuration management, provisioning, and deployment processes across environments.• Managing, upgrading, and supporting a containerized environment based on Docker (Mirantis), ensuring modular, scalable, and resilient operations.• Conducting deep-level troubleshooting during the application testing lifecycle, closely collaborating with functional and QA teams to expedite root cause analysis and resolution.• Driving excellence in technical documentation, ensuring traceability, audit-readiness, and knowledge transfer across teams.• Developing and maintaining robust automation scripts in Bash and Python, covering application delivery workflows, system maintenance, and environment health checks.• Overseeing Git repository management within Microsoft Azure, enabling version control, team collaboration, and continuous integration practices.• Designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps, enhancing the automation of software delivery and reducing time-to-market.• Acting as a key interface with functional testing
- Netflix International B.V.Technical Research AnalystMay 2020 - July 2021 (1 year and 2 months)Amsterdam, Netherlands• Handling in-depth technical and product based questions and escalations from customer service centers around the globe• investigating and documenting complex technical issues impacting the service• preventing negative impacts to the service and the customers by identifying trends and articulating them into actionable follow ups and takeaways• assisting our Global Escalations team in coordinating the Customer Service response to service issues and outages• Inovating and improving the service all together• troubleshooting all main stream platforms and operating systems, hardware, software, networking configurations, and internet connectivity issues• Implementing innovative methods and driving positive charge in the customer service operation
- IBM Cloud - SoftlayerLinux/IT Systems Engineer in Advanced Customer SupportMarch 2018 - January 2020 (1 year and 10 months)Amsterdam, Netherlands• Providing support for the VIP and Enterprise Customers with the IBM Cloud products and platform.• Resolving technical issues related to bare metal servers, virtual servers, storage, and networking• Working with modern cloud technologies on daily bases to provide the best possible support by leading the customers to the solutions and if possible educate the customers in order to avoid other issues in the future.• Architecture, configuration, management and monitoring Linux Servers
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Education
- Graduated IT Science and Business Information Systems Engineer2010Graduated IT Science and Business Information Systems Engineer
- Mechanical ComputerTechnical School "Peter Drapšin"1999Mechanical Computer