AWS Kubernetes CI/CD & Monitoring

I need a seasoned DevOps engineer to take a green-field microservices application all the way from code to production on AWS. The core of the assignment is threefold: stand up a resilient Kubernetes environment, wire it into GitLab CI for automated build-test-deploy flows, and layer in robust monitoring from day one.

Here’s how I picture the engagement progressing:

• Kubernetes on AWS – whether you lean on EKS or a fully-managed kops setup, the cluster must be production-ready with auto-scaling, self-healing nodes, and sensible IAM roles.
• GitLab CI pipelines – every commit should trigger unit tests, container image builds, vulnerability scans, and a staged rollout to dev, staging, and prod namespaces with clear promotion gates.
• Monitoring & alerting – dashboards for pod health, request latency, and resource consumption are non-negotiable. I’m open to Prometheus + Grafana, CloudWatch Metrics, or any proven mix you recommend, as long as actionable alerts flow to Slack/email.

Success means I can push to the main branch and watch GitLab handle everything until the updated services are live, observable, and passing health checks. All infrastructure and pipeline definitions should live in version-controlled IaC (Terraform, Helm charts, or similar) so I can recreate the stack on demand.

If this sounds like your bread and butter, tell me about a recent AWS microservices rollout you automated with GitLab CI and how you kept it visible and healthy in production.