Ioannis Nikolaou

Software engineer.
Builder.
Drawn to the parts
that have to work.

Based in Athens. Currently building security tooling at Cyberflip; previously shipped 5G infrastructure at Juniper Networks and ran mission-critical infrastructure for the Hellenic Army. Valedictorian, Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Patras.

Ioannis Nikolaou
Athens, Greece EET · UTC+2

Now —

AWS cloud security for regulated European fintechs. Quietly building a social discovery app on the side.

Selected work

  1. 5G stack on ARM for MWC 2024 Juniper's first ARM-based demo of the platform, shipped on the show floor. 2024

    Problem. The 5G software stack had to demo on ARM hardware at Mobile World Congress against a non-negotiable date.

    • Cross-compiled the full stack from x86 to ARM.
    • Built ARM-compatible Docker images for every component in the chain.
    • Validated the system end-to-end ahead of the show floor.

    Outcome. Shipped on time — Juniper's first ARM-based demo of the platform at MWC 2024.

    Juniper Networks · Go · Docker · ARM cross-compilation · Kubernetes

  2. Kubernetes Operators for 5G workloads From intern proof-of-concept to production automation. Led a 2-engineer team. 2023 — 24

    Problem. 5G workloads on Kubernetes needed lifecycle automation that vanilla primitives couldn't express.

    • Wrote the original PoC Operator in Go during the internship; presented it to developers and stakeholders.
    • Carried it from PoC to production-grade — health, lifecycle, upgrades, monitoring.
    • Led a 2-engineer team to extend the pattern across other 5G workloads.

    Outcome. A production automation layer for 5G workloads, owned end-to-end from a single intern's PoC.

    Juniper Networks · Go · Kubernetes Operators · Prometheus · Grafana

  3. Hellenic Army Unclassified Network Docker Swarm + Traefik + Jenkins/GitLab — release cycles from manual to one-click. 2024 — 25

    Problem. Mission-critical defense infrastructure needed virtualization, perimeter security, and a real deploy pipeline under operational constraints.

    • Administered VMware vSphere for the core service tier.
    • Configured Check Point IPS — firewall rules, security policies, threat prevention.
    • Containerized all services with Docker Swarm and Traefik; automated deployments via Bash, Jenkins, and GitLab.

    Outcome. Release cycles went from manual events to one-click deployments.

    Hellenic Army · KEPYES · VMware vSphere · Check Point · Docker Swarm · Jenkins

Experience

Cyberflip

Dec 2025 — present

DevSecOps Engineer Cloud security for regulated European fintechs on AWS.

Hellenic Army

Nov 2024 — Sep 2025

DevSecOps Engineer Containerized the service tier and rebuilt the deploy pipeline of the Unclassified Network.

Juniper Networks

Jul 2023 — Aug 2024

Software Engineer Owned automation and ARM initiatives for 5G. Led a 2-engineer team.

Education & certification

Beyond work

Fitness

The discipline of showing up daily.

Travelling

Slowly, and usually south.

Philosophy

Everything. From the ancients to the present.

Playing music

Piano and guitar. Two instruments, one ongoing conversation.