Anaas Shwehdi

Anaas Shwehdi

Manchester, United Kingdom
+447568060959
anaas.shwehdi@gmail.com
AWS Certified Advanced Networking - Specialty AWS Certified Machine Learning - Specialty AWS Certified Security - Specialty AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer - Associate (Early Adopter) AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate AWS Certified SysOps – Associate AWS Certified Developer – Associate AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate AWS Certified AI Practitioner (Early Adopter) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (003) Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals Cisco Certified Network Associate (200-301 CCNA) Cisco Certified Entry Network Technician CCENT CompTIA A+ ce Certification ITIL ® 4 Foundation - IT Service Management Certification Microsoft Technology Associate: Networking Fundamentals (MTA) Microsoft Technology Associate: Security Fundamentals (MTA)

AWS Golden Jacket holder, AWS Ambassador, and Principal AWS Engineer at Softcat Plc (12x AWS Certified). Seasoned IT professional with over a decade of experience in networking, AWS, Windows/Linux server administration, and virtualization.

MSc and BSc in Information Systems, plus certifications from AWS, Cisco, Microsoft, HashiCorp, CompTIA, and ITIL.


Certifications

AWS Certified Advanced Networking - Specialty AWS Certified Machine Learning - Specialty AWS Certified Security - Specialty AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer - Associate (Early Adopter) AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate AWS Certified SysOps – Associate AWS Certified Developer – Associate AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate AWS Certified AI Practitioner (Early Adopter) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (003) Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals Cisco Certified Network Associate (200-301 CCNA) Cisco Certified Entry Network Technician CCENT CompTIA A+ ce Certification ITIL ® 4 Foundation - IT Service Management Certification Microsoft Technology Associate: Networking Fundamentals (MTA) Microsoft Technology Associate: Security Fundamentals (MTA)
  • AWS Certified Advanced Networking - Specialty
  • AWS Certified Machine Learning - Specialty
  • AWS Certified Security - Specialty
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional
  • AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional
  • AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer - Associate (Early Adopter)
  • AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate
  • AWS Certified SysOps – Associate
  • AWS Certified Developer – Associate
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
  • AWS Certified AI Practitioner (Early Adopter)
  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
  • HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (003)
  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals
  • Cisco Certified Network Associate (200-301 CCNA)
  • Cisco Certified Entry Network Technician CCENT
  • ComptiA+ Essentials (2009 Edition)
  • ComptiA+ Practical Application (2009 Edition)
  • ITIL ® 4 Foundation - IT Service Management Certification
  • Microsoft Technology Associate: Networking Fundamentals (MTA)
  • Microsoft Technology Associate: Security Fundamentals (MTA)
  • Service Desk Analyst Examination (2018)

Experience

Principal AWS Engineer

Softcat Plc

AWS Golden Jacket holder, AWS Ambassador & Principal AWS Engineer for Softcat Plc (12x AWS Certified) - Softcat are one of the UK’s leading IT infrastructure providers and a FTSE 250 listed company.

  • AWS Golden Jacket holder
  • AWS Ambassador for Softcat Plc.
  • 12x AWS Certified
  • Proving bespoke consulting and professional services for our clients.
  • Manage Infrastructure as Code (IAC) with Terraform and GitHub Enterprise to ensure scalable and efficient configurations.
  • AWS DevOps - CI/CD pipeline, Github, Python Boto3, CloudFormation, Terraform, Automation & Scripting.
  • Designing and implementing the delivery of Partner Lead AWS Support and fully Managed AWS Support service for clients.
  • Architect and deploy AWS environments globally, utilizing a multi-account structure to meet complex business requirements.
  • AWS SysOps/Cloud Network Engineer - Direct Connect, VPC, EC2, Cloudwatch, S3, SG's, NACL's, ALB's, API Gateway, Cognito, Lambda, S2S VPN, Remote VPN configuration, VPC Peering, Direct Connect, NAT Gateway, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect Gateway.
July 2023 - Present

Global Head of Infrastructure

ConnexAI

Global Head of the Infrastructure team that is responsible for keeping the network infrastructure highly available. Other responsibilities include:

  • 10x Direct Reports, a mixture of Infrastructure Engineers/DevOps Engineers and IT technicians
  • Built AWS estate on a global scale - multi account structure
  • Built and configured our HQ Office and global offices, all routing/switching and security
  • Overseeing the security for the company’s co-location data centre and AWS estate as well as the Head Office (UK), South Africa, Australia, USA and European offices and all the remote workers globally.
  • Management of a growing team to achieve the goals of the business.
  • Technical and Senior escalation point within the Infrastructure department.
  • AWS SysOps/Cloud Network Engineer - Direct Connect, VPC, EC2, Cloudwatch, S3, SG's, NACL's, ALB's, API Gateway, Cognito, Lambda, S2S VPN, Remote VPN configuration, VPC Peering, Direct Connect, NAT Gateway, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect Gateway.
  • AWS DevOps - CI/CD pipeline, Gitlab, Jenkins, Cloudformation, Terraform, IAAS, Automation & Scripting
  • AWS Migrations end to end from physical to cloud, plan, test and migrate.
  • Site surveys with clients, scoping out and onboarding new clients.
  • Network Administration - Configuring S2S VPN's, and Cisco WAP’s/Routers/Switches.
  • Network Administration - Etherchannel, VLANs, VTP, NTP, BGP, OSPF, STP, RSTP, QOS, HSRP, EIGRP.
  • Firewall Administration Cisco ASA, NAT Rules, VPN Filtering, ACL's, S2S VPN tunnel configuration
  • Linux Server Administration - Ubuntu, Docker Containers, Red Hat
  • Data centre visits and infrastructure administration
  • Physical and Virtual Linux server builds/migrations and upgrades and maintenance.
  • VOIP/Telephony - SIP, WEBRTC, QOS, VoiceVLAN
May 2022 - July 2023

Senior Infrastructure Engineer

ConnexAI
  • AWS SysOps/Cloud Network Engineer - Direct Connect, VPC, EC2, Cloudwatch, S3, SG's, NACL's, ALB's, API Gateway, Cognito, Lambda, S2S VPN, Remote VPN configuration, VPC Peering, Direct Connect, NAT Gateway, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect Gateway.
  • AWS DevOps - CI/CD pipeline, Gitlab, Jenkins, Cloudformation, Terraform, IAAS, Automation & Scripting
  • AWS Migrations end to end from physical to cloud, plan, test and migrate.
  • Site surveys with clients, scoping out and onboarding new clients.
  • Network Administration - Configuring S2S VPN's, and Cisco WAP’s/Routers/Switches.
  • Network Administration - Etherchannel, VLANs, VTP, NTP, BGP, OSPF, STP, RSTP, QOS, HSRP, EIGRP.
  • Firewall Administration Cisco ASA, NAT Rules, VPN Filtering, ACL's, S2S VPN tunnel configuration
  • Linux Server Administration - Ubuntu, Docker Containers, Red Hat
  • Data centre visits and infrastructure administration
  • Physical and Virtual Linux server builds/migrations and upgrades and maintenance.
  • VOIP/Telephony - SIP, WEBRTC, QOS, VoiceVLAN
May 2021 - May 2022

3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer

APS Group

I supported IT and network infrastructure for around 950 users across the UK, Europe, and the USA, with responsibilities including:

  • Network Administration including Cisco Meraki, SD-WAN, and Cisco WAP’s/Routers/Switches.
  • Firewall administration using Cisco ASA, NAT rules, and internal/external penetration testing.
  • Linux server administration (RedHat and Ubuntu).
  • Virtualization across VMware, HyperV, and Microsoft Azure.
  • Apple iOS and macOS integration into corporate environments (Jamf).
  • Cloud technologies, including AWS/Azure/Office365.
  • Windows server migrations and upgrades and maintenance.
  • Backup management with Veeam.
  • Office 365 migration and Hybrid Exchange delivery.
  • SCCM configuration and deployment.
  • Citrix environment rebuilds.
  • Patch management.
November 2019 - May 2021

3rd Line Technical Support Engineer

Careuk
  • Being an escalation point for 1st and 2nd line engineers for incidents and problems.
  • Configuring and deploying Cisco routers and Catalyst switches.
  • Troubleshooting and resolving Layer 2 and Layer 3 Cisco infrastructure issues.
  • Provide high-quality project work.
  • Virtualization across VMware, HyperV, and Microsoft Azure.
  • Regular UK-wide travel for on-site user support and break-fix activities.
  • Hands-on support for SAN and NAS storage platforms.
  • Troubleshooting data and VoIP PSTN/MPLS circuits.
  • High-level infrastructure management for HPE 3PAR and HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO).
  • Weekly Backup management including monthly backup tape replacements at datacenter.
November 2018 - November 2019


2nd Line Service Desk Analyst

Careuk
  • Delivered 2nd line operational support across Microsoft and Citrix environments.
  • Supported networking and connectivity services including TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, VPN, and VoIP.
  • Handled Windows Server, virtualization, endpoint deployment, and security tooling.
August 2017 - November 2018

1st Line Service Desk Analyst

Amicus
  • Provided 1st and 2nd line support for daily incidents and service requests.
  • Supported Microsoft environments including Windows Server, Microsoft 365, and collaboration tools.
  • Maintained end-user hardware, print services, and escalation workflows.
April 2016 - August 2017

Technical Sales Advisor

Novatech Ltd
  • Provided customer technical advice on solution and hardware compatibility.
  • Performed PC and laptop hardware/software diagnostics and repairs.
  • Designed and recommended custom PC, server, and SMB infrastructure solutions.
September 2012 - June 2015

Education

University of Portsmouth

Master of Science (MSc), Information Systems
  • Focused on information systems management and practical solution development.
  • Final project: The transition between IPv4 and IPv6.

Grade: 1st Class

2016 - 2017

University of Portsmouth

Bachelor of Science (BSc) Business Information Systems
  • Focused on systems analysis, IT project delivery, and business technology management.
  • Final project: Can social media help start-up businesses succeed?

Grade: 1st Class

2013 - 2016


City of Portsmouth College

ICT Apprentice Level 3
  • Level 3 ICT apprenticeship with hands-on industry experience at Novatech Ltd.
  • Covered core IT support, networking fundamentals, and Microsoft technologies.

Grade: 1st Class

2011 - 2012

Projects

AWS Cloud Resume Challenge (This online CV/Resume)


As a super AWS enthusiast, I've created my own professional CV and hosted it as a static website using Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 ☁️ 🚀

During this process, I set up a full CI/CD pipeline that pushes code directly to S3 when I merge the code to GitHub.

👨‍💻 This website is stored in AWS S3 and utilises a CloudFront distribution to serve the website globally.

The domain name for the website was acquired AWS Route53. The SSL certificate for it was obtained from Amazon Certificate Manager and the custom domain was configured in Route53

Terraform used to create and deploy the S3 bucket, CloudFront distribution and the policies that go along with it.

Programming Languages & Tools used in this project:
  • HTML, CSS, Javascript
  • CI/CD
  • Github & Github actions
  • Python (boto3)
  • AWS (S3, IAM, CloudFront, Route53, ACM Certificate Manager, Codepipeline, Lambda)
  • GitHub
  • Terraform

AWS Control Tower Implementation

Led design and deployment of an AWS Control Tower Landing Zone across 12+ AWS accounts and 15+ teams, integrated with an existing AWS Organization. Established standardized security baselines, guardrails, and account provisioning workflows for enterprise-scale governance.

Defined OU strategy, SCP patterns, and baseline controls to support secure growth while maintaining delegated ownership for platform and application teams.

Governance services & tools used in this project:
  • AWS Control Tower
  • AWS Organizations (OUs, SCPs)
  • AWS IAM Identity Center (SSO)
  • AWS CloudTrail & AWS Config
  • Terraform
  • GitHub Actions

Hybrid Connectivity Management

Built and managed Site-to-Site VPN and AWS Direct Connect connectivity to deliver reliable, high-performance links between on-premises data centers and AWS cloud infrastructure.

Designed and implemented AWS Transit Gateway architecture, connecting a shared networking account to enable secure transitive routing across multiple VPCs and accounts.

Standardized route propagation and segmentation to improve resilience, simplify troubleshooting, and reduce blast radius across environments.

Networking services & tools used in this project:
  • AWS Direct Connect
  • AWS Site-to-Site VPN
  • AWS Transit Gateway
  • VPC Route Tables
  • BGP Routing
  • CloudWatch

Brownfield Console-to-IaC Transformation

Led brownfield environment conversion from console-managed resources to Infrastructure as Code using Terraform in a production estate with approximately $500k monthly AWS spend.

Delivered phased import/refactor plans, state normalization, and reusable modules to reduce manual drift and improve auditability across critical workloads.

IaC migration tools used in this project:
  • Terraform
  • AWS CLI
  • GitHub
  • GitHub Actions
  • Python (boto3)
  • AWS IAM

AWS EKS Platform Engineering

Designed and deployed AWS EKS environments with secure multi-namespace architecture, managed node groups, and ingress patterns for internal and public workloads.

Implemented CI/CD-driven deployment pipelines and operational guardrails including logging, metrics, autoscaling, and least-privilege IAM role mapping for Kubernetes teams.

Container platform & deployment tools used in this project:
  • AWS EKS
  • Kubernetes
  • Helm
  • Docker
  • Terraform
  • GitHub Actions
  • CloudWatch Container Insights

Publications

My Journey to the AWS Golden Jacket

Softcat Plc · April, 2025

Anaas Shwehdi, Principal AWS Engineer at Softcat has earned his AWS Golden Jacket, a prestigious accolade held by less than 100 people worldwide, and only 10 in Europe.


Expanding your Domain Controller infrastructure with AWS EC2

Softcat Plc · March, 2025

Expanding your domain controller infrastructure can seem daunting, but with AWS EC2, it's an opportunity to optimise scalability, security, and performance.


Moving Enterprise Apps to AWS - VDI

Softcat Plc · September, 2024

How can your organisation leverage AWS to its full potential while maintaining the benefits of your Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environment?


Can Social Media help start-up businesses succeed? A Critical Study of Start-up Businesses in Portsmouth.

LUISS University Press · Oct 1, 2017

Presented at the ITAIS 2016: XIII Conference in Verona (Italy) on the Saturday 8th October 2016 as part of my Bsc end of year project. This was then later published by LUISS University Press.


Contact

Feel free to reach out for collaborations, consulting, or speaking opportunities.