Iasonas Kakandris

Building infrastructure where AI research meets compute — HPC clusters, MLOps pipelines, and self-hosted systems.

HPC

Slurm · Open OnDemand
MLOps

Kubernetes · Kafka
Homelab

25+ self-hosted services
Based in

Athens, Greece

About

Infrastructure engineer with a builder's mindset

A bit about me

I'm a Software Engineer at IIT, NCSR "Demokritos", working on Pharos — the Greek AI Factory, an EU-funded initiative bringing national AI computing infrastructure to researchers across Greece.

My work spans HPC cluster administration (Slurm, Open OnDemand, Ansible), MLOps platform engineering, and a self-hosted homelab running 20+ services behind Traefik. I hold an M.Eng from AUTh with a thesis on a declarative DSL for streaming ML pipelines.

Mensa member. Fluent in Greek, English, Italian, and German.

By the numbers

25+

Self-hosted services

Years engineering

Currently

Software Engineer at IIT, NCSR "Demokritos"

Pharos — the Greek AI Factory

Stack

Python
C++
Java
TypeScript
Dart
C
Bash
Kafka
Quix Streams
River
PostgreSQL
MinIO
Firebase
Docker
Kubernetes
k3s
Istio
ArgoCD
Kyverno
Helm
OpenTofu
Ansible
Falco
Trivy
cosign
Slurm
Apptainer
Traefik
Tailscale
Authentik
Keycloak
OpenLDAP
SSSD
ColdFront
Prometheus
Grafana
Loki
Kiali
Zammad

Infrastructure

Kubernetes cluster

Every request passes through Authentik, ztunnel mTLS, and Kyverno policy before it reaches a pod

request-path

k3s
Istio ambient
ArgoCD
cert-manager
Kyverno
Authentik
Sealed Secrets
Trivy

Experience

The journey so far

IIT, NCSR "Demokritos"

Feb 2026 – Present
IIT, NCSR "Demokritos"

Feb 2026 – Present

Software Engineer

Software Engineer

Integrated OpenBao into Themelio for dynamic, short-lived credentials and per-role access. Built zone-based network isolation on the Kubernetes cluster with Calico GlobalNetworkPolicy. Deployed Open OnDemand with Keycloak OIDC on Rocky Linux 9, exposing Jupyter, VSCode, and RStudio as Apptainer apps. Stood up Outline, Keycloak, Zammad, and Plane as the team's docs, auth, support, and project-tracking stack, and migrated provisioning and deployment to Ansible, Terraform, and ArgoCD.
- OpenBao
- Calico
- Open OnDemand
- Keycloak
- Ansible
- Terraform
- ArgoCD
ICS, FORTH

Jul 2025 – Feb 2026
ICS, FORTH

Jul 2025 – Feb 2026

MLOps Engineer

MLOps Engineer

Trained a semantic segmentation model for river region detection (Dice 0.91). Deployed a containerized data pipeline on Kubernetes integrating Kafka, MinIO, PostgreSQL, and Grafana dashboards for live metrics.
- MLOps
- Kubernetes
- Kafka
- Grafana
Technology Without Borders

Jul 2024 – Sept 2024
Technology Without Borders

Jul 2024 – Sept 2024

Software Engineer Intern

Software Engineer Intern

Created B2B apps with Microsoft PowerApps, reducing processing time by 98%. Designed an event management app with Flutter & Dart, and built a Chrome extension using Plasmo and Firebase.
- Flutter
- Dart
- PowerApps
- Firebase
SpaceDot (student space team)

Nov 2021 – Nov 2024
SpaceDot (student space team)

Nov 2021 – Nov 2024

Software Engineer

Software Engineer

Built the Angular operator UI to monitor and control the team's satellite data transmission system. Containerized the application with Docker, cutting deployment time by 40%.
- Angular
- TypeScript
- Docker

Projects

Things I've built & run

Live
Beaver

A declarative DSL for building ML pipelines on live data streams. Write .bvr files — Beaver generates Python that wires Kafka, Quix Streams, River, and Plotly/Dash together. Includes static validation, model analysis, a unified CLI, and detailed error reporting. Developed as my M.Eng thesis.
- TextX
- Jinja
- Kafka
- Quix Streams
- River
- Python
- Docker
Live
ESP32 Greenhouse Monitor

Standalone greenhouse monitor — no PC required after setup. DHT22 reads temperature and humidity; two potentiometers set alert thresholds; readings display on a 16×2 LCD. The ESP32 hosts its own web dashboard and fires Telegram alerts when thresholds are crossed.
- ESP32
- C++
- DHT22
- Telegram API
- Embedded
Live
SixPath

Self-hosted professional network graph tool. Maps people, projects, and relationships through an interactive graph interface.
- TypeScript
- Graph
- Self-hosted
Building
Pharos AI Factory

EU-funded Greek national AI infrastructure. Building the platform layer connecting researchers to compute — HPC, Open OnDemand, identity management, and cloud-native services.
- EU
- AI
- HPC
- Infrastructure

Homelab

Self-hosted stack

25+ Dockerized services across 2 machines — Traefik reverse proxy, Cloudflare DNS

Media

Jellyfin
Sonarr
Radarr
Prowlarr
Jellyseerr
qBittorrent
Recommendarr

Photos & Docs

Immich
Paperless
BookLore
Syncthing
File Browser
Karakeep

Infrastructure

Traefik
Pi-hole
Portainer
Beszel
Uptime Kuma
n8n

Finance

Actual Budget
Ghostfolio

AI & Storage

Open WebUI
OpenMediaVault

Curriculum Vitae