CV

Ilkka Anttonen

Technology Leader & AI Architect

Helsinki, Finland · ilkka.anttonen@gmail.com · LinkedIn · GitHub

Profile

I’ve spent 27+ years building software and leading the people who build it, starting with assembler on a Commodore 64, through enterprise Java, pioneering Docker microcontainers before most people had heard of containers, and now designing multi-agent AI systems on AWS. The thread through all of it: find the actual problem, solve it with the simplest effective approach, and bring the team along.

I’ve been CTO of a SaaS company, led architecture teams across 40M€+ programs at Accenture, and I still write code because I believe leaders who lose touch with the technology make worse decisions. Agentic AI is transforming how organizations work, and it needs people who understand both the tech and the humans using it. That’s where I operate best.

Professional Experience

Amazon Web Services – Sr. ProServe Cloud Architect

Helsinki, Finland · 2024–Present

Joined as the first AWS Professional Services consultant in Finland. I help some of the largest companies in Europe figure out their cloud platform strategy and make it real.

• Define and steer platform architectures for major European enterprises, balancing security, scalability, cost efficiency, and developer experience
• Explore and apply Generative AI and agentic AI patterns for business processes and development workflows
• Act as the bridge between Sales and Delivery, bringing hands-on technical depth to customer engagements
• Build multi-agent orchestration systems on AWS Bedrock using Strands (Python, infrastructure-as-code, hands on the keyboard)

Vastuu Group Oy – Chief Technology Officer

Helsinki, Finland · 2021–2024

Took on the challenge of resetting a mid-sized SaaS company’s (18M€ revenue) technology direction. Software development had been outsourced and the engineering culture had gone with it; my job was to bring both back, working with a small team and startup-level urgency to set the company up for an AI-enabled future.

• Created and implemented the IT strategy and technology roadmap from scratch
• Rebuilt the in-house engineering culture after years of outsourced development
• Completed the migration from a local datacenter to AWS
• Established a data strategy as the foundation for AI/ML tooling adoption
• Balanced new feature development with systematic reduction of technical debt
• Aligned contractor and in-house teams around shared ways of working

Accenture – Technology Architecture, Senior Manager

Helsinki, Finland · 2008–2021

Grew from delivery-focused lead architect to Nordic Emerging Technologies Lead over 13 years. Managed a team of seven architects and directed architecture across programs worth 40M€+ annually. Also served as technology lead of Helsinki Liquid Studio.

Highlights:

• Architected the pension handling platform used across the Finnish pension sector: 6 companies, 25B€+ in annual pension payments flowing through systems I helped shape
• Personally built a custom stateless process engine handling 6M+ transactions per year for pension applications
• Lead architect on some of the largest IT projects in Finland and the Nordics (retail, banking, pension, financial, and defense sectors)
• Named Docker Captain (2016) for pioneering container adoption at Accenture and in the broader community
• Published on DZone, presented at OpenSlava 2014, Helsinki TechArch Day 2017, and TAW2016

CGI (Logica, WM-data, Novo Group) – Developer → Architect → Development Manager

Helsinki, Finland · 1998–2008

Started as a developer and moved quickly into architecture and team lead roles, working on large-scale government systems throughout.

• Lead architect of the Finnish Vehicle Registration systems renewal (50M€+, AKE/Trafi), five separate systems, full end-to-end architecture responsibility
• Led architecture teams of 5–10 across government and public sector projects
• Evaluated and introduced JEE 5 technologies and application server platforms
• Built the bus timetable printing system for Helsinki public transport (1998–1999), still in use at bus stops nearly 30 years later

Education

Master of Science in Technology – Software Engineering Tampere University of Technology, 1997–2002

Certifications

Technical Skills

Cloud & AI: AWS (Bedrock, Lambda, Step Functions, CDK, CloudFormation), Generative AI, Agentic AI, Multi-Agent Orchestration, RAG, Strands, AI-augmented development (Kiro, Q Developer)

Languages: Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Go, Java, Rust, Scala

Architecture: Microservices, Serverless, Event-driven, API Management, Enterprise Architecture (TOGAF)

Platforms: Docker (Captain), Kubernetes, Linux, Serverless

Databases: PostgreSQL, SQL (DB/2, Oracle, SQL Server), NoSQL (Cassandra, Riak, MongoDB)

Frontend: React, Svelte/SvelteKit

Methods: Agile, SAFe, DevOps, CI/CD

Languages

Finnish (native) · English (fluent) · Swedish (basic) · German (rudimentary)

Selected Publications & Talks

• “Microservices on Microcontainers with Docker” – DZone, 2014
• “Java and Node in Microcontainers with Docker” – DZone, 2014
• “Opinionated PaaS on Docker” – OpenSlava 2014, Bratislava (video)
• Technical blog at sirile.github.io – 32 articles on Docker, microservices, AWS, serverless, and AI (2014–2024)