About¶
I'm Surj Bains — the person behind Polarpoint.
I've spent the last decade or so embedded in engineering teams at places like Lloyds Banking Group, the Home Office, Barclays, and Fujitsu. Large organisations, serious operational requirements, the kind of environments where a bad deployment has consequences beyond a GitHub issue. I did the platform engineering, the GitOps implementations, the Kubernetes migrations, the security frameworks. Eventually I started doing it independently — and Polarpoint is what that became.
The work I care about is making infrastructure boring in the right way. Not boring because nothing's happening. Boring because deployments are routine, environments provision themselves, observability is actually useful, and engineers spend their time on things that matter. That gap — between how most organisations operate their infrastructure and how it could work — is where Polarpoint sits.
What I do¶
The foundation is cloud platform engineering — AWS environments, multi-cloud architectures, Infrastructure as Code that's actually reusable. On top of that: GitOps with ArgoCD, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines that don't break on Fridays. Security built into the platform layer rather than bolted on afterwards — External Secrets Operator, container scanning, Zero Trust network policy, compliance frameworks for regulated sectors.
The newer thread is AI and automation. Not AI as a demo, but as a practical layer that makes engineering teams faster: MCP server development, n8n workflow automation, AI-powered incident triage, Backstage Scaffolder integration. I think about this the same way I think about observability — the tools are only useful if they're wired in properly.
Track record¶
Platform engineering, GitOps, and Kubernetes at scale in a regulated financial environment.
Cloud infrastructure and DevOps for UK government systems — security-first, audit-ready.
Cloud architecture and delivery automation.
Multi-cloud architecture and infrastructure automation across enterprise environments.
DevOps implementation and platform modernisation.
I also contribute to open source — External Secrets Operator and Thanos are tools I've both built with and contributed back to.
How I work¶
Engagements vary — some are focused delivery projects, some are longer-term embedded work alongside an existing team, some are assessments that turn into implementation. What doesn't vary: I work directly, not through layers of account managers and junior consultants. You get the person with the experience, on the work.
If something's not the right fit I'll tell you early rather than waste either of our time.
Get in touch¶
surj@polarpoint.io github.com/polarpoint-io
The fastest way to figure out if there's something useful here is a conversation. No decks required.