I'm Agu Richard, a Computer Science graduate from Nigeria, now based in Birmingham, UK, completing an MSc in Computer Science and Technology with Business Development at Ulster University. I started out working with networks and systems, then moved into software and QA. These days I'm focused on cloud and DevOps, and I build real projects to learn. Everything I ship goes up on GitHub.
I studied Computer Science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. A lot of my coursework and research was in computer networks, network security, and distributed cloud systems, so infrastructure has always been the part I found most interesting.
My first real job was at Tizeti, configuring routers, switches, VPNs and VLANs, and helping deploy a solar-powered base station that brought Wi-Fi to a rural community. After that I built full-stack applications at OurPass Digital Bank, and most recently I handled IT support, QA, and project delivery at Ideation Platform.
Cloud and DevOps felt like the obvious next step for me. It's the same thing I've always cared about, keeping systems running and shipping reliably, just done properly: automate the manual parts, make deployments repeatable, and keep the infrastructure in version control. I'm learning it by building things and putting them online, which you can see below, while studying for my MSc in Birmingham.
These are things I actually built and deployed while working through cloud and DevOps topics, not follow-along labs. The live ones link to the repo.
This site. It runs on a private S3 bucket behind CloudFront over HTTPS, and every time I push to GitHub it deploys itself automatically using keyless OIDC, so there are no AWS keys stored anywhere.
A managed MySQL database on Amazon RDS, locked down with an IP-restricted security group and encrypted at rest. I connected from my own machine, built the schema, and documented the security and cost tradeoffs I made along the way.
A URL shortener I built from scratch to tie everything together. A Flask app on an EC2 server takes a long URL, generates a short code, stores it in my RDS database, and redirects on visit. My own project, designed and built end to end.
Metrics, dashboards, and alarms on my running infrastructure, so I know when something breaks before a user does.
An AWS VPC built entirely in Terraform, using modules and remote state.
The target project: GitHub Actions building images, Helm charts, and ArgoCD deploying to Kubernetes from Git.
Moved from Lagos to Birmingham to study for this MSc, with a strong focus on advanced, scalable systems. The programme also has a strong business-development focus, which has sharpened how I think about delivery as more than just shipping working software, it's about building what the business actually needs.
I worked as an assistant project lead for the Calgary Black Chambers website, which is a platform that fosters Black leadership and mentorship, and Lab2Doctors, a site providing specialized medical laboratory training and resources. I coordinated the team to keep our project milestones on track and meet deadlines. My role included rigorous QA testing across admin, member, and guest accounts to catch bugs before release and ensure everything was working exactly as intended across different devices. For these projects, I verified permissions to ensure each user type, whether an admin managing the backend, a member accessing restricted content, or a guest navigating the public interface, only interacted with their intended features. I also managed day-to-day IT support, making sure both sites were stable and staying up and running at all times, maintaining about 99% operational uptime.
Built user interfaces and responsive web pages, and worked on the backend too: servers, databases, and APIs, plus the business logic behind them.
I was the lead tech support officer for community outreach. I set up workstations, handled network connectivity, and ran a tech awareness program teaching basic digital skills in local secondary schools.
Configured routers, switches, firewalls, VPNs and VLANs for hundreds of users, and kept things running at 99% uptime during peak hours. I monitored the network with Wireshark and Nagios and fixed connectivity issues as they came up.
Helped customers with mobile banking and digital services, sorted out complaints, and walked people through ATMs and digital tools.
If you're hiring, or just want to talk cloud and DevOps, I'd love to hear from you.