Available for engagements · Oshawa, ON

Harpreet Parmar

Cloud Alchemist & Sentinel

Cloud Network & Security Architect

I've spent 16 years building networks, first in bank branches and telecom, now across AWS, GCP and Azure. These days most of my work is hybrid connectivity, Zero Trust, and lately, keeping AI apps and agents from doing things they shouldn't.

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Portrait of Harpreet Parmar
Years in IT
16
Public clouds
3
Certifications
15
Global sites secured
100+

About

I like networks that nobody has to think about.

I started in 2011 as the IT officer for a bank branch in Karnal, writing Bash scripts to alert me when a branch link went down. From there I moved into telecom with Ericsson and Comviva, then to Canada, where I led the GCP network migration at Questrade and later worked on Zero Trust architecture at Thomson Reuters.

Since 2023 I've worked as an independent contractor. Most days that means Terraform, Ansible and pull request reviews, with some AWS and Azure troubleshooting mixed in. More recently I've been working with Prisma AIRS, putting AI gateways in front of LLM apps and red teaming them to see what breaks.

Expertise

What I do

Multi-Cloud Networking

Connecting data centers and clouds with ExpressRoute, Direct Connect, Cloud Interconnect and Transit Gateway. Hub and spoke designs with firewalls in the middle.

Zero Trust & SASE

I've rolled out Prisma Access at two companies. ZTNA, SSL decryption, IDS/IPS, and IAM that gives people the access they need and nothing more.

AI Security

Prisma AIRS for runtime protection of LLM apps and agents, AI gateways to control what goes in and out of the models, and red teaming to find the weak spots before someone else does.

Infrastructure as Code

If it's been done by hand twice, it should be code. Terraform and Ansible, run through GitLab CI, Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions.

Kubernetes & Containers

CKA and CKS certified. I run workloads on GKE, EKS and ECS, and this site runs on my own Kubernetes cluster.

Observability & Resilience

Monitoring built around the SLA rather than the default dashboards. Zabbix, Prometheus, Grafana and Datadog, plus DR plans that actually get tested.

Impact

Selected highlights

60%

Faster network provisioning at Questrade after I moved the whole GCP network into Terraform.

100+

Sites around the world connected to Azure over ExpressRoute, with Palo Alto firewalls in a hub and spoke design.

100%

Uptime through Questrade's data center migrations, thanks to redundant links from more than one vendor.

Org-wide

Prisma Access rolled out to every business unit at Questrade, with SSL decryption and IDS/IPS turned on.

Experience

Where I've worked

  1. Oct 2023 – Present Remote, ON

    Cloud & Network Infrastructure Contractor

    Aerospace & Defence Client

    • Architect and automate multi-cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure) with Terraform and Azure DevOps CI/CD; review and approve pull requests to uphold code quality and deployment standards.
    • Lead an Azure migration delivering ExpressRoute connectivity and a Palo Alto hub-and-spoke firewall architecture for 100+ global sites.
    • Troubleshoot AWS networking issues (Direct Connect, NAT Gateways, Transit Gateway attachments, Route 53) for mission critical workloads.
    • Deployed and manage Prisma Access following Zero Trust best practices.
    • Built an Ansible framework to manage Panorama config as code, so every firewall change is tracked and versioned and policy stays consistent across sites.
    • Designed SLA-aligned Zabbix monitoring with proactive alerting and automated remediation to reduce MTTR; coordinate enterprise DR planning and testing.
  2. Jul 2023 – Oct 2023 Toronto, ON

    Network Security Associate Architect

    Thomson Reuters

    • Designed Zero Trust network architecture (ZTNA) aligned to industry best practice and organizational risk appetite for all global business units.
    • Performed threat risk assessments and cybersecurity maturity evaluations to remediate risks above the organization's threshold.
    • Lead network security domain expert across security, technology and business teams.
  3. Oct 2019 – Jul 2023 Toronto, ON

    Principal, Cloud & Network Infrastructure

    Questrade Technology Group

    • Led the GCP network migration on my own. HA VPNs, VPC peering, shared VPCs and Cloud Interconnects, all in Terraform, which cut provisioning time by 60%.
    • Led data-center migrations with redundant multi-vendor connectivity, achieving a 100% uptime target.
    • Rolled out Palo Alto Prisma Access organization-wide with L7 controls (SSL decryption, IDS/IPS, GlobalProtect).
    • Built GitLab CI pipelines for public IP ingestion, VPC ACL updates and configuration backups.
    • Maintained connectivity between AWS and GCP, including macOS EC2 hosts and cross cloud routing for the dev teams.
    • Designed a custom CloudSQL routing solution using HA Linux router instances to solve non-transitive subnet access.
    • Mentored engineers on IAM, Terraform, GitLab CI and VPC Service Controls.
  4. Jul 2018 – Apr 2019 Gurgaon, India

    Lead Engineer

    Mahindra Comviva Technologies

    • Designed and built AWS infrastructure for customers, covering core, distribution and access layers plus perimeter security.
    • Built and managed Dockerized client applications with GitLab CI, securely exposed to the internet.
    • Created custom HAProxy load-balancer scripts for HA deployments; owned RCA reporting and incident standards.
  5. Jan 2016 – Jul 2018 Gurgaon, India

    Senior Engineer

    Ericsson Global Services

    • L3 subject-matter expert for IT and infrastructure; produced high-level designs and project plans.
    • Developed a custom IPAM solution for large IP-block inventory with automated alerting on unused addresses.
    • Worked with F5 (LTM, WAF, GTM) and Juniper SRX to ensure application continuity and security.
  6. 2015 – 2016 India

    Technical Support Engineer

    British Telecom

  7. Dec 2011 – Feb 2015 Karnal, India

    Specialist Officer, IT

    Canara Bank

    • Independently managed IT support, Linux server administration and network monitoring (SolarWinds, WhatsUp Gold).
    • Automated branch reachability alerting with Bash, reducing response time for connectivity incidents.

Skills

Technical toolkit

Cloud Platforms

  • AWS
  • Google Cloud
  • Azure

AI Security

  • Palo Alto Prisma AIRS
  • AI Runtime Security
  • AI Gateway
  • AI Red Teaming
  • Prompt Injection Defense
  • LLM Data Leakage Prevention
  • AI Agent & MCP Security
  • AI Model Scanning
  • OWASP Top 10 for LLMs

Networking

  • BGP
  • OSPF
  • MPLS
  • VPNs
  • ExpressRoute
  • Direct Connect
  • Cloud Interconnect
  • Transit Gateway
  • VPC
  • WAF
  • CDN
  • Load Balancers

Security

  • Prisma Access
  • SASE
  • ZTNA
  • Zero Trust
  • SSL Decryption
  • IDS/IPS
  • IAM
  • 802.1X

Firewalls & NGFW

  • Palo Alto / Panorama
  • Fortigate
  • Juniper SRX
  • Cisco ASA
  • F5 LTM / WAF / GTM

IaC & Automation

  • Terraform
  • Ansible
  • ARM Templates
  • CloudFormation
  • HashiCorp Vault

CI/CD

  • GitLab CI
  • Azure DevOps
  • GitHub Actions
  • Jenkins

Containers & Virtualization

  • Kubernetes
  • GKE
  • EKS
  • ECS
  • Docker
  • VMware ESXi
  • Proxmox
  • Hyper-V

Observability

  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • Zabbix
  • Datadog
  • Nagios
  • SolarWinds

Scripting

  • Python
  • Bash / Shell
  • YAML

Credentials

Certifications

  • HashiCorpTerraform Authoring and Operations Professional2026
  • CNCFCertified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)2025
  • Google CloudProfessional Cloud Architect2024
  • Google CloudProfessional Cloud Network Engineer2024
  • CNCFCertified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)2023
  • HashiCorpCertified Vault Associate2023
  • Google CloudProfessional Cloud Security Engineer2023
  • HashiCorpCertified Terraform Associate2021
  • Palo Alto NetworksCertified Network Security Administrator (PCNSA)2021
  • AWSCertified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01)2019
  • F5Certified BIG-IP Administrator2019
  • CiscoCCNP & CCNA Routing and Switching2016
  • AxelosITIL Foundation2016
  • EricssonEricsson Certified Technology, MPLS & IP2016

Contact

Get in touch

I'm open to contract work in cloud networking, security and automation. Email is the quickest way to reach me.

Email[email protected] LinkedInin/harpreetsinghparmar