# Alexandru Budurovici

> Senior Technical Lead, Architecture and Platform Engineering. 15+ years building startups and products across Europe. Open to a permanent senior role in technical leadership, cloud architecture, or platform engineering.

## Identity

- Name: Alexandru Budurovici (also Alex Budurovici, w0rldart)
- Site: https://budurovici.com
- Role: Senior Technical Lead, Architecture and Platform Engineering
- GitHub: https://github.com/w0rldart
- Languages: English, German, Spanish, Romanian, French
- Available in: English, German, Spanish (https://budurovici.com, /de, /es)
- Primary base: Zurich, Switzerland.
- History: Constanța, Romania
- No public CV on this site.

## Experience

- Since the end of 2024: building and operating own products.
- 2017-2024: Cloudreach (Atos/Eviden). Architect and delivery lead on multi-cloud programmes for UBS, BP, Unilever, Schneider Electric.
- 2019-2023: Touring Monkeys, Zurich adventure-travel GmbH. Co-Founder and CTO alongside Cloudreach.
- 2017: Co-founded a UK startup delivering public-sector cloud work.
- 2011: Videouri, video search product, Madrid. Archived.

## Key pages

- Home: https://budurovici.com/
- About: https://budurovici.com/about
- Work: https://budurovici.com/work
- Notes (English): https://budurovici.com/notes
- Contact: https://budurovici.com/contact
- Tools: https://budurovici.com/tools
- Decision Wizard: https://budurovici.com/tools/multi-cloud-wizard
- Comparison Matrix: https://budurovici.com/tools/multi-cloud-matrix
- Maturity Scorecard: https://budurovici.com/tools/multi-cloud-scorecard
- WordPress Performance Checklist: https://budurovici.com/tools/wordpress-performance-checklist

## Products

- Heftli: https://heftli.com - invoicing SaaS for freelancers and SMEs, built in Switzerland, available internationally
- Expats in Switzerland: https://expatsinswitzerland.com - Relocation platform

## Certifications

- AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional
- AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional
- Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect
- Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104)

## Focus

- Platform engineering with Linux, Kubernetes, and infrastructure as code, across AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-premise estates
- Multi-cloud architecture, IaC, security hardening, cost control
- Golden-image, RBAC, and cost-control patterns in production
- Resilient infrastructure, automated pipelines, predictable spend
- Full-stack product development

## Contact

- Form: https://budurovici.com/contact
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandru-budurovici/
- GitHub: https://github.com/w0rldart

## Notes

English production notes. URLs are unprefixed.

- Playwright smoke tests as a deploy gate in GitHub Actions: https://budurovici.com/notes/playwright-smoke-tests-deploy-gate-github-actions. A five-journey Playwright smoke in GitHub Actions that blocks promote, a nightly ladder that does not, and the checks that keep red meaning stop.
- Zero-downtime database migrations with GitHub Actions: https://budurovici.com/notes/zero-downtime-database-migrations-github-actions. Zero-downtime, rollback-safe database migrations with GitHub Actions. Expand, drain, contract: the schema, queue, and config changes a digest rollback cannot undo.
- CI/CD standardisation across application teams: https://budurovici.com/notes/cicd-standardisation-across-application-teams. Reusable GitHub Actions workflows, Environment-scoped OIDC, and digest promotion so several teams ship without each inventing a private release path.
- Terraform module patterns for multi-environment cloud estates: https://budurovici.com/notes/terraform-module-patterns-multi-environment. Reusable Terraform module boundaries, environment composition, state management, and hand-off patterns for repeatable cloud platforms.
- Why Is My WordPress Admin Slow? A Technical Diagnosis Guide: https://budurovici.com/notes/how-to-fix-slow-wordpress-admin. A systematic approach to diagnosing slow WordPress admin. Covers all common causes: plugin outbound HTTP calls, WP_HTTP_BLOCK_EXTERNAL, Heartbeat API, autoloaded options, WP-Cron, PHP version, OPcache, object cache, and slow database queries.
- Multi-Cloud Network Topology Decisions: https://budurovici.com/notes/network-topology-multi-cloud-decision. Why VPC and VNet models diverge more than any other control across AWS, Azure, GCP, and Alibaba Cloud, and how to decide what to standardise versus what to leave provider-native.
- RBAC patterns for production cloud environments: https://budurovici.com/notes/rbac-patterns-production-cloud-environments. Role design, automation identities, access review, and break-glass controls for auditable production access across shared cloud estates.
- Golden Image Architecture for Linux Baselines: https://budurovici.com/notes/golden-images-image-hardening-server-baselines. An operating model for Packer golden images: bake vs configure boundaries, promotion pipelines, launch-template enforcement, and automatable hardening checks across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
- Practical multi-cloud cost optimisation: https://budurovici.com/notes/practical-cloud-cost-optimisation. An operating model for right-sizing, reserved capacity, and cost ownership across AWS, Azure, and GCP without compromising production reliability.
- Cloud Migration Without Operational Risk: https://budurovici.com/notes/plan-cloud-migration-without-operational-risk. A migration operating model for landing zones, ownership boundaries, IaC baselines, cutover planning, and cost control before workloads move to the target cloud.
- Block outgoing URL calls with iptables on Linux: https://budurovici.com/notes/block-outgoing-url-calls-with-iptables. Use iptables string matching to block specific outbound HTTP paths, understand HTTPS limits, and choose safer egress controls when needed.
- How Outbound Plugin Calls Added 16 Seconds to WordPress Admin: https://budurovici.com/notes/wordpress-plugin-slow-admin-outbound-calls. A forensic diagnosis with Query Monitor: how Modern Events Calendar (MEC) was caught firing 28 uncached outbound HTTP calls per page load, and how host-level egress blocking stopped the 16-second delay.
- Serve Let's Encrypt ACME challenges on Nginx: https://budurovici.com/notes/nginx-letsencrypt-and-acme-challenge. Fix Nginx 404 errors on .well-known/acme-challenge during Let's Encrypt HTTP-01 validation with webroot config and renewal checks.
- Hardening WordPress on LAMP (Apache): https://budurovici.com/notes/hardening-wordpress-on-lamp. A layered WordPress hardening checklist for Apache on LAMP: SSH, .htaccess, wp-config, uploads, and plugin controls, with Nginx equivalents where useful.
- Hardened WordPress on Ubuntu 18.04 LEMP: https://budurovici.com/notes/secured-wordpress-on-ubuntu-18.04-with-nginx. Deploy a production-ready WordPress LEMP stack on Ubuntu 18.04 with Nginx, MariaDB, PHP, TLS via Let's Encrypt, and baseline hardening controls.
- Fixing Chef cluster issues: https://budurovici.com/notes/fixing-chef-cluster-issues. Recover a high-availability Chef cluster when Elasticsearch shard allocation or service health issues block normal Chef Server operation.
- Configuring UTF-8 collation for MySQL or MariaDB on Docker: https://budurovici.com/notes/mariadb-docker-utf8. Configure MySQL or MariaDB character sets and collations in Docker, verify Unicode storage, and understand durability tradeoffs.
- Installing MongoDB on Ubuntu 15.04: https://budurovici.com/notes/installing-mongodb-on-ubuntu-15.04. Resolve MongoDB service startup failures on Ubuntu 15.04 during the Upstart-to-systemd transition, with unit files and verification steps.
- CSV UTF-8 encoding issues in Excel: https://budurovici.com/notes/excel-utf8-encoding-issue. Fix CSV UTF-8 encoding corruption in Microsoft Excel with correct import settings, UTF-8 BOM handling, and verification steps.
- Marketing vanity URLs: https://budurovici.com/notes/marketing-vanity-urls. Create trackable vanity URLs for print, QR, and email campaigns with Apache redirects, UTM parameters, and maintainable campaign rules.
- Avoid duplicate-content SEO issues on Cloudflare origin subdomains: https://budurovici.com/notes/avoiding-seo-penalties-for-duplicate-content-on-cloudflare-live-non-cached-subdomains. Prevent Cloudflare origin and preview subdomains from creating duplicate-content SEO issues with host-aware robots, canonical URLs, and redirects.
- Git tips and tricks: https://budurovici.com/notes/git-tips-and-tricks. Practical Git commands for rewriting authors, recovering work, inspecting history, bisecting bugs, and keeping repositories maintainable.
- Lazy loading images with JavaScript: https://budurovici.com/notes/lazy-loading-images. Use native browser lazy loading first, understand LCP and CLS tradeoffs, and keep JavaScript lazy-loading libraries for legacy cases.