I make things that do other things. Full-time computer geek, Linux enthusiast, terminal native, privacy-first builder, open-source maintainer. I like simple systems, sane defaults, and infrastructure that does not need a priest. Offline DLC: snowboarding, skateboarding, weight lifting, and refusing games that do not run on Linux.
Name: Carlos Colaço. Profession: DevOps Engineer. Location: Sweden. Languages: Portuguese, English. Email: [email protected]. Homepage: https://coolapso.sh.
2026 - Present. Sweden.
Still early boot sequence. No war stories yet, unless you count paperwork. If you are here before the changelog gets interesting, reach out. There is probably something I can help simplify, automate, or politely set on fire.
February 2024 - Present. Sweden.
Joined the light side of billing: keeping clouds in the sky and removing yak-shaving from developer workflows. Shipped practical infrastructure cleanup: improved OpenSearch logging performance while cutting cost, enabled further cost saving initiatives with Karpenter, and replaced fragile VPN plumbing with automated Tailscale-based access. Refactored Terraform/Terragrunt modules, added tests, semantic versioning and pull request based automation with Atlantis. Migrated Terraform workloads to OpenTofu, and built Python and Go tooling for boring-but-important manual tasks. Some brave warriors tried to cross the microservice swamp before me. Few returned unchanged. Stack: Linux, AWS, Terraform, OpenTofu, Terragrunt, OpenSearch, Tailscale, Kubernetes, Helm, Python, Go, GitHub Actions.
August 2019 - February 2024. Sweden.
Sometimes Jedi Master, sometimes janitor. Mostly paid to find complexity demons and hit them with automation. Upgraded Terraform from ancient scrolls to something humans could safely change. Introduced Terragrunt, Atlantis, testing and release flows, migrated systems and pipelines between platforms without lighting production on fire, and moved search workloads to AWS Managed OpenSearch. Simplified observability with OpenTelemetry in mind and built internal tooling using Go. Helped move the platform from "let's not touch it or it breaks" to "we can actually improve this thing now". Not microservices worship, not monolith religion. Just enough systems to scale without losing the plot. Then the Sith Lords arrived, as they often do. Stack: Linux, AWS, Terraform, Terragrunt, Atlantis, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, OpenSearch, Elasticsearch, OpenTelemetry, Bash, Python, Go.
July 2017 - July 2019. Sweden.
One of my proudest achievements. Also one of the muddiest. When I joined there were fields, trees, rocks, and a suspicious amount of mud. When I left, there were three operational data centers serving customers in what became one of AWS's fastest region builds at the time. Automated network deployment tasks, became regional SME for Sophos Wi-Fi, bridged data center technicians and operations engineering, built wiki/documentation flows, configured ticketing and alarms, and trained new technicians without sacrificing them to the blinking-light gods. Stack: Linux, Bash, Expect, networking, Sophos Wi-Fi, Juniper, Cisco, ticketing/alarming systems, and a lot of "how does this even work?"
July 2008 - 2017. Portugal.
I was the guy people called when computers stopped computing and nobody wanted to pay a kidney to fix them. Started with friends, then friends of friends, then somehow became a side hustle with hardware repairs, custom builds, SOHO networks, Linux boxes, WordPress sites, and the first sparks of "wait, I can automate this". Stack: Linux, Windows, SOHO networking, hardware, WordPress, Bash, too many mystery cables.
June 2010 - June 2016. Portugal.
Help desk, systems, printers with evil spirits, and military exercises where "it works on my machine" was not an acceptable architecture. Maintained workstations and networks, built a dedicated imaging network that reduced restore time from days to hours, kept older systems useful longer than they had any right to be. Stack: Windows, Linux, imaging, networking, hardware, secure environments, ticketing, printers that deserved prison.
July 2008 - July 2009. Portugal.
The guy people yelled at when the internet was not interneting. Learned troubleshooting under pressure, customer support, escalation hygiene, and how much patience a human can compile before swapping to kernel panic. Stack: Huge dose of patience, kindness and love for getting problems solved.
since 2024. My company, lab, publishing base, and place for pragmatic consulting around lean software, DevOps, infrastructure, and AI without bloat. Link: https://coolapso.sh.
since 2025. Privacy-friendly and token-efficient search for bots and agents. Built because AI tooling should waste fewer tokens and leak less context. Link: https://github.com/coolapso/searchbase.
since 2025. A Go tool to help import existing infrastructure into Terraform state. Small, practical, and born from real infrastructure pain. Link: https://github.com/coolapso/tfimport.
since 2025. Slightly opinionated conventional commit linting. Tiny guardrail, less ceremony, fewer weird release surprises. Link: https://github.com/coolapso/convcommitlint.
since 2025. Simple development web server with live reload, written in Go. Built because small tools should stay small. Link: https://github.com/coolapso/go-live-server.
since 2025. Keyboard-driven image sorting utility. Not enterprise software, just useful software. Those still count. Link: https://github.com/coolapso/picsort.
2017 - 2024. Former lead maintainer of a widely used self-hosted VPN installer. Good lessons in support, defaults, docs, and open-source reality. Link: https://pivpn.io.
2022 - 2025. https://www.credly.com/badges/8e2175ed-b6ed-441b-be4e-a16f321d1fc0
2023 - 2025. https://www.credly.com/badges/8dde9c82-a569-4879-b59b-0d2081ea1f1e