Carlo Columna

Experience

Senior Engineer

2024-07 - Present

Xero · Wellington, New Zealand

  • Leading the engineering of Xero's Kubernetes infrastructure running on AWS, setting technical direction and standards for the platform team.
  • Mentoring engineers across the team, fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and continuous improvement.
  • Driving cloud-native adoption and GitOps practices across engineering teams to improve delivery reliability.
  • Collaborating across teams to design scalable and secure self-service developer platform capabilities.

Engineer

2020-03 - 2024-07

Xero · Wellington & Wairarapa, New Zealand

  • Managed Xero's Kubernetes infrastructure running in AWS alongside supporting legacy compute platforms.
  • Automated developer workflows to make it faster and easier for product teams to ship their work.
  • Worked daily with Kubernetes, AWS, Docker, Helm, Terraform, TeamCity, Jenkins, Python, Go, and Kotlin.
  • Implemented and maintained observability pipelines using Sumologic, New Relic, Grafana, StatsD, FluentD, and Prometheus.
  • Contributed to front-end tooling with React and TypeScript.

Graduate Engineer

2019-02 - 2020-03

Xero · Wellington, New Zealand

  • Started career at Xero as a Graduate Engineer, onboarding into cloud infrastructure and platform operations.
  • Gained hands-on experience managing production Kubernetes workloads and AWS services.
  • Contributed to internal tooling improvements and developer experience initiatives.

Software Developer

2018-07 - 2018-12

Intergen · Wellington, New Zealand

  • Delivered High Availability and Disaster Recovery architecture for Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) on Azure.
  • Deployed and configured Azure services including geo-replication, availability zones, failover groups, load balancers, and traffic managers for VMs, SQL, and web services.
  • Authored PowerShell scripts and ARM templates to automate infrastructure provisioning.
  • Contributed to an internal Progressive Web App project using React, Workbox, and IndexDB for offline functionality and browser caching.

Teaching Assistant

2018-04 - 2018-07

Computer Power Plus · Wellington, New Zealand

  • Taught and assisted IT students across qualifications in Technical Support, Web, Software, Systems Administration, and Networking.

Coding Instructor

2016-10 - 2018-03

Codecamp · Wellington, New Zealand

  • Taught basic programming to young kids using Tynker, CodeAcademy, and Scratch.
  • Delivered mobile application development workshops using MIT App Inventor.
  • Taught software development fundamentals including version control with Git and Agile/Scrum workflows.
  • Technologies covered: JavaScript, HTML, CSS.

Brewing Associate Team Leader

2016-01 - 2016-06

San Miguel Corporation · Philippines

  • Led and supervised a team of Brewing Supervisors to implement new operational directions, targets, and KPIs.
  • Implemented a new double dough-in system for adjuncts that saved the company millions.
  • Investigated and resolved low material extract recovery issues affecting production output.
  • Redesigned operator work schedules to improve shift efficiency and coverage.

Brewing Associate

2013-01 - 2015-12

San Miguel Corporation · Philippines

  • Managed day-to-day brewery operations as part of a team of Brewing Supervisors ensuring product quality standards.
  • Optimised sparging parameters, increasing extract volume and concentration without extending residence time.
  • Implemented SOPs to reduce dissolved oxygen intrusion by up to 30%.
  • Designed and implemented guidelines to reduce materials consumption across multiple production areas.
  • Contributed to the monitoring and troubleshooting of the brewhouse energy recovery system, reducing energy consumption.
  • Updated and improved Clean-In-Place (CIP) systems across different production areas.

Brewing Supervisor - Cadet Brewer

2012-01 - 2012-12

San Miguel Corporation · Philippines

  • Trained in brewing process theory, brewery day-to-day operations, and machinery operation.
  • Developed guidelines for effective control and monitoring of fermentation processes.
  • Resolved warm water usage and production accounting to eliminate shortage and overflow issues.
  • Actively involved in troubleshooting the extract refrigeration system.