About
Who I am
I'm Mounir El Bakkali, an engineer who builds and operates production systems on Google Cloud. I focus on observability, authentication, and cost-aware infrastructure — the parts of a system that decide whether it survives contact with real traffic.
What I build
Cloud Run and Kubernetes services, the CI/CD and Terraform that ship them, and the observability and identity systems that keep them accountable in production. I write the code, operate the infrastructure, and carry the pager.
What I write about
GCPBuilder is where I publish what I learn doing that work: troubleshooting investigations that quote the exact error and the wrong turns it took to find the cause, architecture decisions with the trade-offs made explicit, and the occasional project write-up. See Articles, Architecture, and Projects.
How I approach engineering
Evidence over assertion — every command I publish has been run, and every architecture is labeled by whether it's actually deployed or a reference design. Mechanism over recipe — I'd rather explain why something works than hand over a snippet to paste. And judgment is the product: every architecture piece states what I'd choose, and what I'd choose differently under different constraints.
Why GCPBuilder exists
Most Google Cloud content is either official documentation that describes what a service does but not when to choose it, or SEO filler that restates the documentation. I wanted a place to write the part that's usually missing: the investigation, the mechanism, and the trade-offs — the judgment that only shows up after you've actually run the thing in production.
How to reach me
Email me is best. I take on a small number of Google Cloud engagements — get in touch.