David Young is a solution architect with 25+ years of experience designing and operating cloud-native infrastructure. As the founder of Funky Penguin, he has helped clients around the world implement Docker and Kubernetes platforms — from media-streaming systems to private container registries — and is a long-standing contributor to the open-source self-hosting community.
About David Young
David Young is a solution architect with 25+ years of experience designing and operating cloud-native infrastructure. As the founder of Funky Penguin, he has helped clients around the world implement Docker and Kubernetes platforms — from media-streaming systems to private container registries — and is a long-standing contributor to the open-source self-hosting community.
Expertise
David specializes in cloud-native architecture, container orchestration, and platform automation. His work spans Kubernetes, Docker, OpenStack, Ceph, Istio, and Linux infrastructure, with deep experience in CI/CD pipelines (Concourse, Flux, GitHub Actions, Ansible) and large-scale, multi-tenant SaaS operations. He focuses on making complex distributed systems approachable for engineers, and pairs hands-on operations with extensive technical documentation through the Geek-Cookbook and ElfHosted projects.
Credentials & Certifications
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
- CNCF Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
- CNCF Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
- CNCF Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)
- Published author, Packt Publishing (PHPList 2 E-mail Campaign Manager)
Notable Achievements
- Founded Funky Penguin Limited (2004–present), delivering Docker and Kubernetes solutions for international clients across media streaming, container registries, and platform infrastructure.
- Scaled a media-streaming platform to 1PB of Ceph storage under Docker Swarm, supporting high-throughput, fault-tolerant content delivery.
- Built ElfHosted, a managed SaaS platform offering open-source self-hosted applications backed by Kubernetes-native operations.
- Created and maintains the Geek-Cookbook, a comprehensive open-source guide and community for self-hosting microservices on Docker Swarm and Kubernetes.
- Authored the definitive Helm chart for docker-mailserver, enabling production email servers on Kubernetes.
- As Senior Infrastructure Architect at Prophecy Networks (2007–2019), designed a scalable secure VPN, a highly-available out-of-band management network for a NZ national utility, and an integrated OSS platform for 24x7 national customer platforms.
- Refreshed the Kubernetes platform for a major NZ Primary Healthcare Organization and led the migration of bespoke-VM workloads to Kubernetes for a national co-operative while at Emerging Technology Partners.
Career Highlights
Owner — Funky Penguin Limited (Jan 2004 – present) Independent consulting and product work across Docker, Kubernetes, and self-hosted infrastructure for clients worldwide.
Senior Solution Architect — Emerging Technology Partners (Jun 2019 – Jan 2020) Refreshed Kubernetes environments and led VM-to-Kubernetes migrations for healthcare and co-operative organizations.
Senior Infrastructure Architect — Prophecy Networks Limited (Jan 2007 – Mar 2019) Designed and operated secure, highly available infrastructure for managed-services clients, including national utility and OSS platforms.