Rhodes · Greece
Cloud & Systems Engineer
I've spent ~15 years building and operating cloud infrastructure, Linux systems, and production environments at companies like Kinsta and Pagely. That operational depth lately feeds also into data engineering and dashboards that actually get used. Outside my full-time role, I take on selected fractional projects where I can own infrastructure health end-to-end.
What I do
My foundation is systems and cloud. I know how machines, networks, and applications behave under pressure. That operational depth now shapes the data work: pipelines built to survive production, not just demos. A fractional engagement is only worth the cost if the engineer brings breadth alongside depth.
Stable, secure infrastructure — designed and operated so your business never has to think about it.
Cloud environments sized to what you actually need — no paying for capacity that goes unused.
A full review and lockdown of your setup so vulnerabilities don't turn into expensive problems.
Containerised workloads managed to run reliably in production, not just in development.
Infrastructure codified from source — self-rebuilding, consistently deployed, not dependent on any single person.
Monitoring and alerting that flags something is wrong before your customers notice.
When things break at 3 AM, they get fixed — not escalated to someone who isn't available.
Hyperscalers
Infrastructure as Code
Operating Systems
Server Software & Databases
Containers & Virtualisation
Observability & Log Management
Systems that capture your data, make sense of it, and put it in front of the people who need it.
Operational logs captured and structured so you have full visibility into what's happening across your systems.
Connections built between your data sources so information flows reliably without manual intervention.
Raw data modelled into clean, structured formats your team can query and trust.
Self-service reporting that gives your team a clear view of operational health and business performance.
Everything runs on your own infrastructure — no lock-in, no dependency on third-party subscriptions.
Warehouses & Databases
Ingestion & Transformation
BI & Dashboards
Integrations, platforms, and automations that eliminate manual work and keep your systems connected.
Platforms built and maintained to handle real traffic and real revenue, not just demo conditions.
Backend logic and APIs that power your product and keep your tools connected.
Manual, repetitive work replaced with reliable automated workflows that run without supervision.
AI-powered agents that take over tasks your team is currently doing by hand.
Platforms connected so data moves where it needs to, automatically.
Languages
Frameworks & CMS
Version Control & CI/CD
AI & Agents
Experience
I manage infrastructure operations across a global managed WordPress platform serving thousands of hosted environments. Day to day that means managing large-scale LXC container fleets, administrating Kubernetes clusters, and maintaining the automation that keeps provisioning and configuration consistent at scale. A significant part of the role is data engineering work. I co-operate a large Elasticsearch cluster handling the platform's full log volume, build Logstash ingestion pipelines, and maintain the dashboards that engineering and operations teams rely on daily. I also contribute to infrastructure knowledge sharing and technical mentoring.
Pagely is one of the most recognised managed WordPress hosting platforms in the world, and was acquired by GoDaddy during my tenure. My role was hands-on technical support for enterprise-grade WordPress deployments running on AWS (EC2, RDS, CloudFront, S3) alongside Docker container support, Ansible configuration management, and complex infrastructure diagnosis for some of the most business-critical WordPress environments in production.
Senior infrastructure role at Greece's leading domain registrar and hosting provider. I handled the full range of hosting environments (shared, dedicated, VPS) including server provisioning, security hardening, and advanced WordPress troubleshooting. Beyond the technical work, I built internal tools and automations using Laravel, contributed to monitoring and incident response, and mentored first-level support staff on infrastructure concepts and escalation procedures.
Over a decade of freelance work with small and medium-sized businesses, covering WordPress and WooCommerce development, server administration, business tooling, and system integrations. That foundation has evolved into a structured service practice. I offer services on infrastructure and data engineering resource, providing the kind of senior technical coverage that makes sense for companies that need the expertise without a full-time hire.
Let's Talk
LinkedIn is the easiest way to reach me. Send a short message with what you're working on and I'll get back to you.
Common Questions
It's what friends and partners call me. Liakos is the nickname that stuck — a natural shortening of Ilias that anyone who has worked with me for more than five minutes ends up using. The personal site lives at liakos.io for the same reason: it's less formal than a full name, easier to remember, and a more honest reflection of how these working relationships actually feel. If you end up working together, you'll probably be using it too.
We work to a uniform SLA across all retainer plans. Response times are tiered by severity — how quickly I respond depends on what's broken and how badly it's affecting your business. For a complete outage — server down, database crashed, site fully inaccessible — you get an initial response and action plan within 4 hours. For significant degradation — intermittent errors, severe slowdowns, a broken checkout — the response window is 12 hours. For routine administrative tasks — new configurations, extension installs, file restores, consultation requests — 48 hours. These are maximum times to first response and an agreed action plan, not guaranteed resolution times. What the SLA guarantees is that you won't be left waiting in silence.
No. Retainers run month to month with a 30-day notice period on either side. The engagement starts with a fixed-price audit, which has no strings attached — if the audit doesn't lead to an ongoing arrangement, that's fine. The goal is to earn the retainer by demonstrating value first, not to lock you in upfront.
Access is granted through your existing tooling — typically SSH keys, a VPN, or cloud IAM roles with scoped permissions. I don't ask for shared passwords or broad root access where it can be avoided. At the start of an engagement we agree on the minimum access needed for the scope of work, document it, and you retain full control. When the engagement ends, access is revoked cleanly and I provide a handover document covering everything that was built or changed.
Well, in most cases. The fractional infra role is complementary, not competitive — most developers don't want to own infrastructure and most IT generalists aren't operating at the cloud and data layer. I work within your existing workflows, communicate through whatever tools your team uses, and document everything so your people are never dependent on me for context. The goal is to raise the floor of what your team can handle, not to create a new dependency.
Nothing breaks and nothing disappears with me. Part of how I work is that infrastructure is codified, documented, and owned by you from day one — not held in my head or in accounts I control. At the end of any engagement I provide a structured handover: runbooks, access credentials returned or revoked, architecture documentation, and a walkthrough for whoever takes over. You should be in a better position when we finish than when we started, regardless of what comes next.