Principal Consultant · Speaker · Cloud Native Practitioner

Rob
Kenefeck

CNCF Ambassador & Kubestronaut. Principal Consultant at ControlPlane. 15+ years designing and deploying cloud native platforms — helping teams understand when Kubernetes is the answer, and when it isn’t.

CNCF Ambassador Kubestronaut CKA · CKAD · CKS · KCNA · KCSA GCP Certified Toastmasters Area Director Cloud Native Melbourne & Sydney Organiser CloudCon SYD Organiser KCD Melbourne 2026 Organiser
“Security isn’t a layer you add to DevOps — it’s the foundation you build on.”
— Rob Kenefeck

15+ years of
cloud native
in the wild

Current Role
Principal Consultant, ControlPlane
Certifications
Kubestronaut (CKA, CKAD, CKS, KCNA, KCSA) · GCP Cloud Architect & DevOps Engineer
Community
CNCF Ambassador (Oct 2025–present)
Events Organiser
Cloud Native Melbourne · Cloud Native Sydney · CloudCon SYD · KCD Melbourne 2026
Toastmasters
Area Director, District 73 · President, GOTO Toastmasters · Club Mentor
Education
BSc (Hons) Computer Science · University of Portsmouth

Rob is a Principal Consultant with 15+ years of experience designing, building, and deploying cloud native platforms. His work is defined by a relentless commitment to helping clients embrace cloud native principles — enhancing their agility, scalability, and resilience. He brings deep expertise in cloud architecture, DevOps, containerisation, Kubernetes, and service mesh technologies, crafting bespoke cloud strategies that align tightly with business objectives.

His current passion projects sit at the intersection of Service Mesh design and Security. Rob advocates for expanding security left rather than merely shifting it — making security a permanent, inseparable part of DevOps rather than a bolt-on. He regularly educates peers on cloud native advancements and fundamentals, which he considers a great excuse to keep learning.

Beyond consulting, Rob is an active community builder. As a CNCF Ambassador he organises events, mentors practitioners, and speaks at industry conferences globally. He is President of GOTO Toastmasters, Area Director for Toastmasters District 73, and an organiser of both Cloud Native Melbourne and Cloud Native Sydney — the two communities that together run the CloudCon SYD conference. He is also co-organising KCD Melbourne, officially announced by CNCF for early August 2026. Away from tech, he’s a committed McLaren F1 fan.

On Stage

2026
Fixing a Misconfigured Kubernetes Cluster
Everything Open · Canberra, AU
2026
D73 Education & Training — Level Up Your Speeches With AI
Toastmasters District 73 · Online · January 2026
2025
An Introduction to Capture the Flag
Everything Open · Adelaide, AU
2025
Navigating the AI Frontier: Secure Adoption of LLMs in FinTech
Everything Open · Adelaide, AU
2025
Navigating the AI Frontier: Secure Adoption of LLMs in FinTech
Cloud Native Summit · Auckland, NZ
2025
E8s on K8s: Applying Essential 8 Recommendations to a Kubernetes Environment
CyberCon (AISA) · Melbourne, AU
2025
Securing Your Kubernetes Environment: Identifying and Addressing Common Misconfigurations
CyberCon (AISA) · Canberra, AU
2025
Capture the Flag
BSides Canberra · Canberra, AU
2025
From Prompt to Production: Automating GitOps with AI-Powered Agents
AgentCon · Perth, AU
2025
The Tech’o’Space Podcast Ep 55 — From Grit to DevOps: Service Mesh, Strategy & Toastmasters Impact
Tech’o’Space Podcast · Online
2024
FluxCD: What, Why, How
K8SUG Melbourne · Melbourne, AU
2024
FluxCD: What, Why, How
Auckland K8s Meetup · Auckland, NZ
2024
Capture the Flag
BSides Canberra · Canberra, AU
2023
Golden Images
Infracoders · Melbourne, AU
2017
Dockerising GUI Apps
Container Camp · Sydney, AU · Day 2 Lightning Talk

Talks without a link were not recorded or recordings are not publicly available. Interested in having Rob speak at your event? Get in touch.

Writing

Thoughts &
Opinions

Kubernetes · Medium · Dec 2019
A Prediction for 2020 Based on the K8s Forum Sydney
Takeaways from Kubernetes Forum Sydney — multi-cloud, product thinking, service mesh, and what the 80/20 beginner/advanced split in the room says about where the ecosystem is heading.
Security · ControlPlane · Jun 2024
Mastering the Cloud Native Wave: Security Resilience in Modern Systems
From Infosecurity Europe 2024 — how to close the gap between technical teams and decision-makers through threat modelling, Zero Trust, and secure-by-design cloud native adoption.
GitOps · ControlPlane · Dec 2024
What is GitOps?
The first in a series on Flux CD — tracing the evolution from manual configuration to GitOps, and unpacking the four core principles: declarative, versioned, pulled, and continuously reconciled.
GitOps · ControlPlane · Jan 2025
What is Flux CD?
Part two of the Flux CD series — how Flux uses Kubernetes-native controllers to keep clusters in sync with Git, covering sources, Kustomize reconciliation, image automation, and when to use Flux over plain kubectl.
More writing
Posts, Talks & Updates on LinkedIn
Rob regularly shares insights on Kubernetes, cloud native security, SRE, and community events on LinkedIn. Follow along for the latest.
View Medium Profile →