Norman Lim
VP @ DBS Bank | Agentic AI, Platform Engineering & DevOps Leader
Technical expert with over 10 years of experience leading data platform teams and building containerized big data platforms. Specialist in AI, Platform Engineering, and DevOps, equally at home with on-premise infrastructure as with public cloud providers.
Connect on LinkedIn View GitHubCore Specializations & Skills
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), Application Developer (CKAD), and Security Specialist (CKS), plus AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional.
AI & Machine Learning
Agentic AI, Generative AI, MLOps, LLMOps, MCP Servers, Dify Productionization, RAG Apps (LangChain/LangGraph), Model Deployment (llama-cpp, vLLM).
Platform & Containerization
Platform Engineering, Kubernetes Cluster Administration, OpenShift Upgrades, Air-Gapped Environments, ArgoCD (GitOps), Helm, Kustomize, Ray Serve, Quay Registry.
Infrastructure & DevOps
DevOps Leadership, CI/CD (Jenkins), Cloud Migration (AWS, Azure, GCP GKE), Cost Optimisation, Disaster Recovery (Kanister, Kasten), Terraform.
Data Engineering
Spark (Scala, Python), Trino/Presto, Hive, Hadoop, Data Lake Cataloging (Alation), Query Scheduling.
Work Experience
DBS Bank | Vice President, Platform Engineer Nov 2022 – Present
- Building scalable AI and Machine Learning platforms on Kubernetes using GitOps.
- Productionized Dify, a low-code AI dev platform, for over 900 users.
- Automated LLM deployment using Jenkins, Argo Workflows, and JFrog Artifactory.
- Developed a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) app for Confluence search.
- Optimized GPU costs and utilization using llama-cpp and vLLM.
- Led OpenShift cluster upgrades in air-gapped environments.
- Built an observability and chargeback solution using Thanos and Prometheus.
Versent | Senior Engineer May 2022 – Nov 2022
- Data, Cloud, and Containerization Specialist.
- Projects with DBS (Data Platform), Bank of Singapore (NLP), and Kyowa Kirin (OCR).
Accenture | Data Engineering Consultant Apr 2021 – May 2022
- Expert in Spark, Trino, Hive, and Hadoop.
- Deployed Airflow using Kubernetes and Helm on EKS for Standard Chartered.
- Designed app data models and pipelines for Julius Baer.
- Created Airflow POC and drove DevOps adoption at Singapore Airlines.
Grab | Data Engineering Lead Jun 2017 – Apr 2021
- Managed the 4-person Query Platform team. Technical lead for in-house Presto SQL scheduler, supporting 200 daily active users.
- Provisioned Grab's cloud infrastructure, including Spark and Presto on EMR, on AWS using Terraform.
- Migrated Presto jobs to Athena and Qubole, saving the company $100,000/mo and $450,000/mo respectively.
- Wrote and maintained billion-record Spark pipelines in Scala.
- Administered Grab's Tableau infrastructure, maintaining >99.9% uptime for 2000 users.
Writing & Thought Leadership
How I Built an MCP Server for $10 and Solved Enterprise Observability
Building a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Kubernetes schedulers to bridge enterprise visibility gaps and provide natural language cluster interfaces for under $10.
Why AI Agents Need Brakes, Not Just Faster Engines
In high-stakes industries like finance, healthcare, and defense, speed is useless if you fly off a cliff. In the enterprise world, trust is the ultimate good.
The Day the AI Stopped: Why "Rented Intelligence" Is A Corporate Risk
Tech leaders around the world learned a harsh lesson: in the era of Artificial Intelligence, if you do not own the infrastructure, you do not own your business.
From Paragraphs to Graphs: Architecting the Memory Layer for Autonomous Agents
End of the Chatbot Era. When you force complex document trees, relational network topologies, or quantitative financial tables into a uniform text-chunking engine, you flatten and destroy their inherent semantics.
Achievements & Education
Awards
- Dean’s List, AY2014-15, Semester 1
- Dean's List, AY2012-13, Semester 1
Education
- Master of Technology, Computer Software Engineering | NUS (2021-2023)
- Bachelor's degree, Quantitative Economics | NUS (2012-2016)
- Certificate in Social Sciences and the Humanities, Economics | Sciences Po (2015)