I Set Up GitOps on EKS with ArgoCD, Here's What Kubernetes Actually Looks Like in Production

I had a Kubernetes problem. I could talk about it, reference it on my resume, and deploy to existing clusters. But I'd never provisioned one from scratch, written a Helm chart, or set up GitOps. That gap showed, and I knew interviewers could smell it. So I built the whole thing: EKS cluster with Terraform, custom Helm chart, ArgoCD for GitOps, and a real application that talks to PostgreSQL and Redis. Push to main , ArgoCD syncs, pods roll out. No kubectl apply in sight. This is what I learned. What I Built A GitOps pipeline where Git is the only way deployments happen: git push → GitHub → ArgoCD (polls every 3m) → Helm sync → EKS cluster The application is a Notes API running on Bun/Express with PostgreSQL for persistence and Redis for caching, both running as pods inside the cluster. Two API replicas sit behind an ALB provisioned automatically by the AWS Load Balancer Controller from a Kubernetes Ingress resource. Every response includes a pod field showing which replica served the r