The authentik project is a security startup building an open-source Identity Provider that unifies identity needs into a single platform. As the first infrastructure engineer, they chose tools and build processes to ensure ease of maintenance, stability, and scalability. They use GitHub Actions for CI/CD, Argo CD for GitOps, and Transifex for translation. The team also considers product-specific requirements, such as reputation data stored in Redis, and optimizes for cost-effectiveness, using Loki for logging instead of Elasticsearch. Finally, they prioritize stability and support with tools like Grafana, Prometheus, and Thanos for monitoring and metrics management. The stack is built around tried-and-tested options that play nicely with the team's existing components, rather than cutting-edge technology.