About
Salem! (kazakh version of "Hi") I'm Maxat Akbanov — a DevOps Engineer based in the beautiful city of Almaty, Kazakhstan 🇰🇿. I've been working in tech for a while now, and somewhere along the way I became deeply passionate about cloud infrastructure, automation, and making systems that just... work reliably at scale.
My journey into IT field actually started back in my school days at the Zhautikov Republican Physics and Mathematics School (Fizmat), a place famous for shaping tech minds. While most kids were just playing video games, I found myself completely fascinated by how computer networks functioned and how software was built. I spent my spare time devouring books on Cisco networking and teaching myself the fundamentals of programming using Pascal and C. That early curiosity at Fizmat completely set the trajectory for my entire career.
Eventually, that passion for systems evolved into a deep focus on security. I studied Information and Systems Security for my Bachelor's at the National Technical University of Ukraine in Kyiv, then went on to do my Master's in Cyber Security at the University of York. During that time I got to dig deep into real-world threats — I even published a few research papers on the WannaCry ransomware. It was intense, but it gave me a perspective on infrastructure that I carry to this day: security isn't an afterthought, it's the foundation.
After university, I worked across all kinds of environments — from large Kazakhstani enterprises like Kazakhtelecom, to early-stage startups like ioka.kz, to globally recognized software companies like EPAM and DataArt. Each one taught me something different about how teams build and ship software. I also spent time as an independent consultant, helping clients design and support their cloud workloads on AWS — things like containerized services on EKS and ECS. Working alone, in small teams, in big distributed ones — it's all shaped how I think about DevOps.
These days I channel everything I've learned about GitOps and ArgoCD into this book. I write articles on LinkedIn too, and I try to stay connected with the local tech community — attending conferences and giving talks at the AWS Cloud Club here in Almaty.
Outside of work, you'll find me playing football or basketball, swimming, hiking in the mountains around Almaty, playing chess, or getting way too invested in an online strategy games. Life's good.
I speak "Tech," but I also speak human. My native tongue is Kazakh, and I'm fluent in Russian and English, with Spanish and Turkish currently "loading" in my spare time. Feel free to message me in any language — I promise to try and understand you. If my reply comes back as a mix of five different dialects and a bit of Bash script, just know I'm trying my best!
See you! / Көріскенше! / До встречи! / ¡Hasta luego! / Görüşürüz!
Maxat 😉
P.S. Technology moves fast. If you find an outdated command, concept, diagram or a better way to structure a manifest, section, or chapter in my books or articles, please reach out via my GitHub, Linkedin or email. Your feedback helps make those book better!