About

Hi, I'm Brenden Cruikshank. I’m an AWS Cloud and DevSecOps Engineer.

With over two decades in the tech industry, starting by founding and exiting a web services company in the early 2000s. I specialise in building secure, highly scalable multi-cloud and serverless architectures.

Currently, I serve as the DevSecOps Lead at Australian Payments Plus, where I architect the cloud foundations for Australia's essential payment rails: Beem, BPAY, and Eftpos. My work sits at the intersection of cloud architecture, security compliance (PCI DSS), and AI innovation, ensuring that systems millions of Australians rely on are resilient and secure by design.

My technical approach is rooted in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, OpenTofu, and AWS CDK) and a "security-first" automation mindset. I'm particularly passionate about modernising the development lifecycle by integrating tools like Wiz.io and Snyk directly into the heartbeat of deployment workflows, and I've led initiatives that delivered over $300,000 in annual AWS cost savings through architectural optimisation.

Beyond the technical architecture, I am dedicated to mentoring teams and helping them navigate the shifting landscape of cloud-native systems, SRE principles, and modern observability.