Gaurav Ashtikar
Co-Founder & Director, Platforms at Applied AI Consulting.
Pune, Maharashtra, India
I build AI operations products and cloud platforms. My work combines hands-on engineering, product architecture, infrastructure automation, and helping teams operate their systems.
I built OpsRabbit from an early Slack-based investigation concept into a self-hosted enterprise platform. Alongside the product, I’ve led DevOps and SRE consulting across cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, reliability, and automation, and managed and mentored a team of 30+ engineers.
Selected work
OpsRabbit
From a Slack investigation concept to a self-hosted AI operations product.
Making infrastructure repeatable.
Linux, cloud platforms, and the automation that connects them.
Engineering, with the team.
Hands-on DevOps and SRE consulting, architecture, and team enablement.
Experience
Applied AI Consulting
Co-Founder & Director, Platforms
Built OpsRabbit from the ground up into a self-hosted AI operations platform. Led cloud, Kubernetes, and reliability consulting, while managing and mentoring 30+ DevOps and SRE engineers.
Flux7
DevOps Engineer
Worked on DevOps and cloud engineering initiatives across automation, cloud infrastructure, and delivery engineering.
REAN Cloud
Cloud Architect
Led team-level cloud automation work and internal product initiatives. Designed AWS infrastructure and serverless applications using Lambda, and participated in architecture, design, and code reviews.
REAN Cloud
Senior Cloud Automation Engineer
Built AWS infrastructure, provisioning and configuration automation with Terraform, Ansible, and Chef, CI/CD pipelines, and Docker-based infrastructure. Built Debian/RPM packages and delivered Chef and Ansible workshops.
Opex Software Corp.
Cloud Automation Engineer & Python Developer
Automated operations with Chef and Ansible, built infrastructure automation with Terraform and Packer, set up Jenkins CI environments, and provisioned AWS infrastructure.
rtCamp
Linux System Administrator
Administered Ubuntu and Debian systems, including monitoring, backup, and recovery. Developed and maintained EasyEngine automation for WordPress infrastructure and built Nginx and PHP packages.
Tata Consultancy Services
Assistant System Engineer / System Administrator
Performed server administration, monitoring, backup, and recovery. Automated operational work with Shell scripting and deployed PHP-based applications.
Open source & earlier projects
EasyEngine
Developed and maintained command-line automation for Nginx-based WordPress infrastructure on Debian and Ubuntu, and built Nginx and PHP packages at rtCamp.
DoudouLinux
Contributed to a Linux distribution designed to make computer use easy and pleasant for children aged 2–12.
Pragat Cluster Automation Toolkit
Python and PHP automation tooling for mass deployment of CentOS-based OpenMPI clusters.
Education & background
Bachelor of Technology in Information Technology, Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli, 2009–2013.
Previously AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate. Employee of the Year 2017 at REAN Cloud.
Also in the lab
Eva, Charlie, and Ruby share the room: Eva is a cream female Persian with blue eyes; Charlie is a plump grey male Persian with golden eyes; Ruby is the smaller grey female Persian, also with golden eyes.
In the interactive lab, their resting spots are the drawers, chair, and desk.
Notes from the bookshelf
A few principles I bring to building and operating systems.
Sams Teach Yourself Shell Programming in 24 Hours
Sriranga Veeraraghavan
My take: Understand it before you automate it.
A good shell script starts with knowing what the machine is doing. Logs, processes, permissions and recovery still matter when the infrastructure lives in a cloud.
Designing Data-Intensive Applications
Martin Kleppmann
My take: Design for the day something fails.
Retries, queues and dashboards are only useful if they help someone recover. Make failure visible, keep ownership clear, and practice the path back to a healthy system.
The Design of Everyday Things
Don Norman
My take: Make the next decision easier.
An operations interface should turn scattered evidence into a clear next step. Show the context, explain the tradeoff, and leave consequential decisions with the person responsible.
Site Reliability Engineering
Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff & Niall Richard Murphy (editors)
My take: A platform earns its complexity.
Start with what the team can operate. Add a service when it removes a real constraint, and make its cost, failure modes and deployment path understandable to the next engineer.
The Pragmatic Programmer
David Thomas & Andrew Hunt
My take: Own the whole loop.
The useful part starts after the first release. Build, observe how it behaves, and improve it. Product decisions and production work belong in the same conversation.