About me

Surendra Gulati - Technical and Solution Architect

I am a multi-skilled solution architect with more than 20 years of experience in different roles and functions.

I am highly motivated and I am experienced in directly working with clients and teams, utilising SMART goals to accomplish tasks, and managing stakeholders at all levels. I can understand business expectations & needs and translate them into appropriate end-to-end technical solutions.

I am a quick learner and an adaptable problem solver. Furthermore, I am also passionate about new and emerging technologies and standards. My experience includes analysis, design, consulting, deployment, project management and cloud based systems.

Technical Expertise

  • Excellent knowledge and experience of Devops practices using tools like TeamCity, Azure Devops, Ansible, Terraform, SonarCloud etc.  
  • In-depth knowledge and a substantial working experience of application, data and solution architecture development
    Excellent knowledge (and certification) of CMSs like Sitecore, Kentico and EpiServer
  • .NET and .NET Core application development using latest technologies like EF Core, Web Pages, SignalR etc.
  • Experienced in SQL Server data design, optimization and security, including writing complex procedures
  • Good experience of OLTP and data warehousing using SQL server
  • Performance tuning and optimization of web applications and databases
  • Excellent knowledge and experience of implementing security principles

Skills Highlight: Cloud Solutions

My experience in cloud solutions involves moving on-premise infrastructure to the cloud, directly setting up bespoke solutions in the cloud and monitoring these systems. This helps businesses improve their agility, cut costs and increase service reliability.

I have set up different types of architectures in the cloud using IaaS, PaaS and SaaS services. I use a wide variety of these services, including:
  • App services and Web Apps
  • relational & non-relational databases
  • storage & messaging services
  • containers and registries
  • monitoring services
  • virtual machines
  • Firewalls and load balancers
In automating the setup of these infrastructures, I have gained significant experience with cloud-agnostic technologies like Terraform and Ansible.

Skills Highlight: DevOps

I extensively use DevOps practices to accelerate application development, facilitate deployment and ease maintenance.

Going beyond basic CI/CD, I incorporate more advanced DevOps techniques. I have implemented functional, performance and security testing in DevOps pipelines. I have also utilized real-time issue tracking to link issues to solutions in application deployment.

I implement DevOps practices across a variety of applications, for example, .NET, PHP & Python applications. To do this, I can use Docker-based, Web Apps, or VM-based solutions.

In my work, I utilize tools like TeamCity, Azure DevOps, Apache JMeter, SonarQube, Selenium & headless browsers and Powershell & batch scripts, etc.

Skills Highlight: Architecture Development

I have developed various applications and solutions architecture for small to medium size organizations. I can analyze, understand and helps organizations to improve overall enterprise architecture. 
Having experience with TOGAF methodologies and helps me understanding the big picture and creating the architectures in a more structured way utilizing existing assets in the best possible way. This also includes understanding the stakeholder's requirements and concerns, assessment of technology stack, cost, risk, etc.
Understanding the overall solution and enterprise architecture vision also helps in defining the architecture of applications and their interfaces. 
At the application level, I have designed various kinds of architecture e.g. layered, microservices and event-driven. 
I have good experience in preparing high-standard technical artifacts and deliverables.

Full Stack Development

I have excellent experience of full-stack web development and can work on application development for analysis to deployment using latest DevOps techniques. I have extensive experience in front-end and back-end technologies e.g.

  • Programming languages like C#, C++, PHP and python
  • .NET and .NET core frameworks including EF, SignalR, Blazor etc.
  • Database systems like SQL Server, MongoDB including advanced query languages and performance tuning.
  • Frameworks like React and Vue including CSS3, Jquery, Node, Express and various other javascript frameworks and technologies
  • Extensive experience of working with CMS systems like Kentico, Episerver, Sitecore, Umbraco, WordPress, etc. including design and development of bespoke integrations with external systems e.g. CRMs, PMS and payment systems.
  • Designing, creating and integrating with SOAP and REST services.
  • Good experience of implementation of oAuth and OpenId using Identity server#
  • Unit testing frameworks like NUnit, Xunit, MSTest, etc
  • Dependency injection systems like Ninject, Autofac, Castel Windsor
I have huge experience in implementing design patterns, following coding standards, using  SOLID design principles, and implementing them in test and behaviour-driven development (TDD and BDD). I have worked in Agile teams following agile practices from Scrum and Kanban.

Current Learning and Development

In my spare time, I have been learning about machine learning algorithms and their implementations in Python. To complement this, I have also been learning about MLops, specifically Azure ML Services & Azure DataBricks, including the use of pipelines to preprocess data, utilize ML algorithms, measure their accuracy, adjust hyperparameters and deploy them as services.

I do have extensive experience in building Docker images and implementing docker-compose based applications. However, to make these solutions scalable, I have recently started exploring Kubernetes to orchestrate these services.