Tharindu Kalhara

Not everyone finds their calling early! I found mine at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, open-source community, and the joy of teaching others. I'm Tharindu, a Cloud & DevOps Platform Engineer currently interning while completing my Bachelor of Information & Communication Technology (Honours) in Software Technology at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. What drives me isn't just building systems, it's making the complex feel approachable. Over the years, I've had the privilege of training more than 5,000 students and professionals, from school-aged learners to corporate teams, both in classrooms and enterprise settings. I currently serve as a lecturer at the Institute of Digital Engineering Technology (IDET), delivering AWS and Cloud Operations programs.

As an AWS Community Builder (Containers category), I'm deeply invested in growing the cloud-native ecosystem in Sri Lanka, organizing community meetups, speaking at universities, and serving as a judge at national-level competitions including Beauty of Cloud (Sri Lanka's first cloud hackathon) and IDEALIZE by the University of Moratuwa. My professional journey has taken me through ML production work at OREL IT and a DevRel engineering role at CertDirectory.io, a globally recognized certification platform with CNCF partnership.

As the founding chairperson of CryptX (Sri Lanka's first island-wide triple-tech event combining a Hackathon, CTF, and Designathon), I believe innovation thrives when communities are built with purpose. That belief also led me to host a podcast series with prominent IT industry personalities, and to run an active YouTube channel where I break down DevOps, cloud computing, and career strategies for a global audience.

I run mentorship programs for fellow students and am a consistent voice in Sri Lanka's tech community, recognized as the LinkedIn Rising Star (Sri Lanka, October 2025) and ranked in the Top 10 Tech Voices twice by Favikon. My mission is simple: make Cloud and DevOps practical, scalable, and human. Whether through a webinar, a Kubernetes walkthrough, or a conversation over coffee, if it moves the community forward, I'm in.