In financial technology (fintech), staying ahead of the curve is not just an advantage but a necessity. A global leader in digital payments, PayPal has embraced this challenge head-on by streamlining its developer pipeline.
Leading this transformation is Amit Chandpurkar, a lead DevOps engineer whose expertise has contributed significantly to PayPal's development and operations landscape. Alongside other team members, Chandpurkar enhanced the security and stability of PayPal's internal systems.
What is DevOps?
DevOps, a combination of "development" and "operations," is a set of practices that bridges the gap between software development and IT operations. The goal is to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery while maintaining product quality. Efficient DevOps requires collaboration, automation, and the correct tools and systems integration.
"DevOps is about getting the development and operations teams to work seamlessly. We had to break down silos and align everyone toward a common goal," says Chandpurkar.
The core principles of DevOps include continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery (CD), infrastructure as code (IaC), and monitoring and logging. These practices help organizations streamline their software development processes, resulting in faster, higher quality, and more stable software products.
PayPal's DevOps Journey
PayPal's internal restructuring toward DevOps began as a response to the growing complexity of its software development processes. Before adopting DevOps, PayPal's developers were bogged down by a cumbersome ticketing system and lengthy deployment cycles. It could take days to create a new update, weeks to deploy it on a test server, and months to get it into production.
"Developers were drowning in tickets," recalls Chandpurkar. "Their primary responsibility was not to write code but to write and follow up on tickets. It was clear that we needed a radical change."
The answer was a new, self-service software development lifecycle (SDLC) system. This new system allowed developers to get code from creation to production in less than two weeks. Driven by a shift toward a DevOps culture, the system further embraced collaboration between the development and operations teams, allowing them to work together to automate and streamline processes.
"At this point, I think I can say that the rate of change is not bound by the platform's limits but by how quickly developers can write and deploy their code. Just how it should be," says Chandpurkar.
Amit Chandpurkar's Role
Chandpurkar, currently the principal DevOps engineer at Fortinet, played a central role in PayPal's DevOps transformation during his five-year tenure. With over a decade of experience in IT, Chandpurkar brought a wealth of knowledge in Linux administration, cloud computing, and infrastructure automation.
At PayPal, his responsibilities included implementing a Kubernetes pipeline for application image management, rearchitecting the PayPal Edge physical infrastructure to AWS-based cloud infrastructure, and architecting their Edge environment to ingress traffic derived from China. His expertise in tools like Jenkins, GitLab, Terraform, and Ansible was crucial in automating build, test, deployment, and release processes.
"One of the key aspects of my role was to ensure the GKE, EKS, and CDN systems were up to par in their sandbox environment. That way, PayPal's developers were freer to test and re-engineer their work as needed," explains Chandpurkar.
Becoming a DevOps Engineer
Becoming a DevOps engineer requires combining technical skills, practical experience, and a collaborative mindset.
Chandpurkar offers advice, "Master programming and scripting. Proficiency in programming languages like Python, Java, or Ruby is essential. Learn scripting languages like Bash or PowerShell to help automate tasks and processes."
Another point of advice Chandpurkar stresses is achieving hands-on experience, "Practical experience is vital. Work on real-world projects, contribute to open-source initiatives, or secure internships to build a strong portfolio."
Most DevOps engineers will benefit from mastering traditional DevOps tools and practices. It is essential to familiarize oneself with CI/CD tools such as Jenkins and GitLab and configuration management tools like Ansible and Puppet. Studying containerization technologies, particularly Docker and Kubernetes, can also enhance a DevOps engineer's skills.
Through the integration of DevOps principles led by Amit Chandpurkar, PayPal has been able to streamline its development processes, reduce time to market, and deliver high-quality software at scale.
