Tell us a bit about Marko?
I’ve spent over two decades in tech, starting out as a Linux and Windows Sysadmin and working my way through Systems Engineering, Cloud Architecture, and DevOps. Open source is an ecosystem I deeply care about. As a HashiCorp Ambassador, OpenUK Ambassador, and AWS Community Builder you’ll often find me speaking at DevOps, Cloud Native, Kubernetes, and HashiCorp events. I’ve always liked taking things apart to understand how they worked, which got me into trouble more than once :) But when I got my first computer at eight, I was hooked.
What made you decide to come and work for Kosli?
The problem space – anyone who’s worked in or around regulated industries knows how painful change can be with every release wrapped in manual paperwork, approvals, and delays. Kosli’s philosophy that all of that should just be engineered and automated landed with me straight away. I’ve spent years helping teams modernise and automate everything and compliance was always the missing bit, which seemed to be the anchor holding everyone back. Getting to help change how mission-critical software is delivered, especially somewhere the stakes are as high as financial services, was too good to pass up. I also love that the role sits right between the product and real customer problems.
What were you doing before Kosli?
Before Kosli I was at The Scale Factory, an AWS consultancy where I wore different hats – Senior Consultant, Head of Consultancy and Principal Consultant. I led teams helping customers build and scale their SaaS platforms in the Cloud, and helped to steer the company’s technical direction. Before that I was a Senior IT Infrastructure Engineer at Unite Students, looking after high-availability on-prem and Cloud systems, and earlier I spent years as an Engineer and Systems architect – even before Cloud was a thing. The constant thread has always been automation, security, and using open source to solve real problems.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
I love to travel, exploring new places, trying different things and meeting people from different cultures. I also enjoy hiking and cycling. The tech side never fully switches off either: I’ m very active in the Open Source community, where I actively contribute and maintain a few projects. I also still enjoy tinkering with new technologies and solving puzzles. They all scratch the same itch – figuring things out, and sharing what I learn along the way.
