// engineering blog

Field notes from
the engineers
doing the work.

Platform design, data engineering, AI in production, cloud architecture, and the everyday craft that holds it all together. Written by the people on the keyboard, not the marketing team.

// 01
12
Posts published
// 02
Monthly
New writing cadence
// 03
05
Practices · data, AI, cloud, software, FinOps
// 04
2017
Writing since
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Latest writing

// 11 of 12 — see full blog
// Cloud architecture
// EKS · Multicloud

Building a Resilient Multicloud EKS Infrastructure: AWS + Azure Hybrid Nodes

Combine Amazon EKS with the regional reach and compliance of Azure — running Kubernetes worker nodes across both clouds under one control plane, no second cluster required.

Darren Lavery5 MIN
// Developer tooling
// mise · Environments

Are You Using mise-en-place Yet?

If you're developing with Python, Terraform, AWS, Azure, or really anything — managing your tools and environments can quickly become a mess.

Bjorn Olsen2 MIN
// Data engineering
// Pipelines · Cost

Run Crawler, Run!

Data pipelines often aren't built with the latest and greatest tech, and the brief is usually to stay within limitations while still saving costs as much as possible.

Joshua Botha2 MIN
// AI & ML
// Document AI · Pipelines

AI-Powered Data Pipelines: Breaking Document Processing Bottlenecks

Where document processing pipelines slow to a crawl — and how an AI-powered approach breaks the bottleneck and keeps data moving.

Jean-Pierre Pienaar3 MIN
// Cloud architecture
// Landing zones · Scale

Building Some of the Largest Cloud Landing Zones in South Africa

Inside the design and delivery of some of the largest cloud landing zones in South Africa — the account structure, guardrails, and FinOps that scale to an enterprise estate.

cloudandthings.ioREAD
// Cloud · Compliance
// PCI DSS · AWS

Building & Maintaining PCI DSS-Compliant Cloud Infrastructure in AWS

What it takes to build and maintain PCI DSS-compliant cloud infrastructure in AWS — the controls, the evidence, and the automation that keeps you audit-ready.

cloudandthings.ioREAD
// Software
// Fintech · Delivery

Two-Pot Retirement System: Software Development

Engineering for South Africa's two-pot retirement system — the software development challenges of delivering a regulated financial change on a hard deadline.

cloudandthings.ioREAD
// Cloud · Software
// Beanstalk · NGINX

Adding SSL to a Single-Instance Elastic Beanstalk NGINX Application

A straightforward guide to adding SSL to a single-instance Elastic Beanstalk NGINX application — simplifying secure web hosting without over-engineering it.

cloudandthings.ioREAD
// Software
// Delivery · Craft

Achieving Success in Challenging Software Development Projects

Hard-won lessons on achieving success in challenging software development projects — how we keep delivery on track when the brief, scope, or constraints fight back.

cloudandthings.ioREAD
// Cloud · IaC
// CloudTrail · Slack

aws | ClickOops

A simple Lambda that watches CloudTrail for manual console actions (ClickOps) and alerts the team on Slack — so your infrastructure-as-code stays the source of truth.

Paul Zietsman2 MIN
// IaC
// Terraform · Plans

pretty print | better terraform plans

Turning hairy Terraform plans into something you can actually review — rendering tf plans as readable, filterable HTML so the important changes don't get lost in the noise.

Paul Zietsman3 MIN
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