Troels Brahe

Profile

A dedicated DevOps and Performance Engineer with a background in physics and a drive to develop robust, efficient software solutions. Excels in modernizing legacy systems, architecting secure infrastructure, and optimizing development pipelines. Combines deep technical knowledge with a talent for clear communication, process documentation, and strategic planning.

Experience

DevOps & Automation Engineer
Leading Defense & Security Contractor, Denmark | MARCH 2024 - PRESENT
  • Enhanced security for monitoring infrastructure by authoring and deploying a custom SELinux policy for an internal deployment tool.
  • Helped establish and formalize incident handling and response processes from the ground up, improving security posture and response time.
  • Identified and resolved critical performance bottlenecks in CI/CD pipelines, significantly reducing build and deployment times.
  • Proposed a strategic shift towards a modern observability stack, leading to a company investment in a new monitoring platform.
Systems Engineer
TDC NET, Aarhus | MARCH 2019 - FEBRUARY 2024
  • Developed and maintained Alarmnet, a critical system responsible for ~80% of all fire alarm installations in Denmark.
  • Modernized legacy Java EE applications, improving performance and maintainability while introducing agile methodologies (sprints, GitLab, Jira, Confluence).
  • Built and enhanced software solutions using Angular, Python, PHP, and C++ for Linux platforms and data analysis.
  • Collaborated with the Security team to conduct penetration testing on legacy systems, identifying vulnerabilities and developing mitigation strategies.
  • Initiated and led a knowledge sharing project to facilitate internal ‘tech talks’ about our current technology and working methods.

Notable Side Projects

Application Developer & DevOps Architect
ProvstiSkyen | Ongoing
  • Currently spearheading a full-stack re-architecture of the 35,000+ line application, migrating to a modern stack with the goals of eliminating critical stability issues and reducing application startup latency from 18 seconds to near-zero.
  • Led the migration of the application from a single-server environment to a scalable Kubernetes platform, engineering an automated cost-management system with Cloud Functions to dynamically scale down non-production environments.
  • Architected and implemented a robust CI/CD pipeline in GitLab for automated testing, containerization, and deployment.
  • Established a secure secrets management strategy to dynamically inject credentials into Kubernetes workloads.
  • Drastically improved user experience by reducing application startup times and enhancing computational performance by ~90% through deep profiling, container pre-warming, and low-level Rust optimizations with ILP, SIMD, and cache sizing.
  • Implemented robust monitoring using Prometheus and Grafana to create real-time dashboards, providing key stakeholders with at-a-glance visibility into application performance and user activity.

Education

Electronics Engineer
Aarhus University

Project work focused almost exclusively on software development, and I often led our project groups and delegated work. Elective subjects included machine learning and image recognition.

Final Project: Autonomous (model) boat

Designed to survey the seafloor and look for objects by sweeping the target area line by line. The control system was implemented on a Raspberry Pi, and included a frontend for operator control and path visualization, as well as a backend in C++, with pathfinding algorithms calculating optimal surveying paths for an area using geodesics. It was rigorously tested using the Boost library to ensure robustness and reliability.

Internship

Engineering Intern
Skejby Hospital | AUGUST 2016 - JANUARY 2017
  • Developed an embedded system using C and Python with associated electronics for a PhD project which investigated tissue regeneration.
  • Created an analysis system for fMRI data in MATLAB with a GUI for doctors to interpret data, facilitating more accurate diagnoses.
  • Designed and built a bike calorimeter for educational purposes. This involved a laser-based tachometer for speed measurement and applying principles of static force analysis to calculate power output.

Skills & Competencies

Professional Skills

Critical ThinkingSystems ArchitectureEfficiency & OptimizationProcess ImprovementStakeholder CollaborationMentoring & TrainingProject ManagementIncident ResponseSecurity Hardening

Performance & Optimization

SIMDMultithreadingInstruction-Level ParallelismCache-Friendly Data StructuresCode Profiling & AnalysisMemory Management

Languages

PythonTypeScriptC++RustJavaPHPBashNode.js

DevOps & Cloud

LinuxDockerKubernetesHelmPrometheusGrafanaLokiGitLab CINexusJenkinsArtifactory

Databases & APIs

OracleDBPostgreSQLMariaDBMongoDBRESTGraphQL

Hobbies

ProgrammingChess (authored and published two books)BadmintonRunningPianoJapaneseClassical literature