Senior Platform Engineer
BAE Systems
Total years of experience :18 years, 9 months
In this period, Feroz was placed as a Senior Platform Engineer on the Infrastructure team to support a Date Centre predominantly running a Windows Server 2012 R2/2016/2019 environment for BAE Systems in Saudi Arabia. This also included supporting Windows 7/8.1/10 client deployments across the BAE estate and taking product ownership for Active Directory, Group Policies, SSO, SAML, DNS, DHCP, RSA SecurID AM MFA, Blackberry UEM/BEMS, Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop, SFTP solutions deployed locally. He has also has had to provide operational support for the many customised 3rd party applications utilised across the company.
He has previously been designated as interim Team Lead on more than one occasion on the Infrastructure team, having to liaise with Service Delivery/Change/Incident/Problem Managers in a company that aligns itself with ITIL Service Management. This has also included attending Daily/Weekly/Monthly meetings to report on service updates/issues, as well as Infrastructure related consultation on future approved changes managed through the Change Advisory Board. He has also worked on Infrastructure/Application solution projects with the local Projects Team to implement/deliver agreed technical solutions to the end customer.
During this time, Feroz was designated as an Application Configuration Specialist and System Administrator in a role split between City and Guilds in the UK and a government client in Saudi Arabia. His remit was to install, configure, troubleshoot tailored application deployments and support/administer these on various test and production environments running Win 2008R2/2012R2/Oracle Linux. He was also required to liaise with the Saudi managed service provider responsible for the infrastructure deployment concerning requirements and recommendations. In addition to this, he was also involved in scripting the automation of the application deployments, as well as reviewing & authoring release management and configuration management documents as part of the knowledge transfer process.
Also part of application monitoring activities included support and administration of Active Directory, IIS 8, DNS, ColdFusion 10 and SQL Server 2008R2.
Feroz was designated primarily as Project Manager and Infrastructure Analyst on web solution projects, to develop static websites and web applications for global clients. He was responsible for Bid Management and Client Account Management activities, as well as supporting the hosting and configuration of the local dedicated Win server 2008 r2 infrastructure and components for the projects. He was required to deploy, configure and support the web application servers (including all COTS), as well as maintain the Win server 2003 SP2 file server and HP printers on site. In addition to this, he would also provide third line support on client support queries and assist with the web application deployments, as and when required.
In this period, Feroz was placed as a Junior Infrastructure Manager for leading the commissioning of test/production Suse Linux 9.3/10.1 and Win 2003/2008r2 system servers on HP Proliant G3/G5 hardware. This also involved managing deployment of COTS and custom software once servers were operational, including support/administration after server transition into support. It also involved responsibility for building complete production rack systems from the bottom up, including configuring/deploying network infrastructure and rack components (Suse Linux/Win 2003/2008r2 servers, Cabling, Cisco/Alcatel Lucent switches, Phion firewalls, Meinberg NTP servers, UPS, Time Code Receivers etc). Also maintenance of the reference test/development rack systems, providing support to the test team and on-site teams as and when needed.
He was responsible for assessing and processing change requests and managing/maintaining supplier relationships concerning procurement/licensing and support of hardware/third party software. In addition to this he was accountable for producing documentation, including configuration management, technical notes as well as training and check-list materials.
Feroz was placed on the Build and Installation team as part of release management to install, configure and troubleshoot application deployments and support/administer systems on various test and live environments running Win 2000/2003/2008r2 transitioned into support, hosted locally and remotely in Data Centres. Project work was also allocated, involving development/test environment tech refresh, including migration to win 2003 using Altiris and Symantec Ghost image deployment. It also included heading the hardware upgrade to Dell Power Edge, IBM X-Series and Blade servers, as well as rack building activities. Also commissioning of system/application servers, supporting SharePoint and Adobe LiveCycle applications, XP/Win7 desktop machines and printers as well as documenting installation and deployment processes.
Also part of BAU/monitoring activities to support and administer F5 Load Balancer, Active Directory, GPO, IIS, TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, McAfee AV, Win 8/7/XP, SQL Server 2008 and Backup Exec 2010.
Dealing with 3rd party suppliers was also required, as well as providing dedicated 3rd line support of the web based .NET applications and system backups on the live/test/dev/training systems on a periodic basis. The work has also involved assisting with developing automation monitoring scripts and raising, managing and resourcing change requests (under change control) on behalf of the client.
Feroz was designated as a change analyst within the change management department. This included the validation, arranging authorisation, scheduling and following up on the implementation of technical change requests. In this instance, the ITIL service delivery framework was utilised to meet the client’s requirements and required us to follow clearly defined processes that were drawn up. The role also required an understanding of Wintel PCs and infrastructure design.
In this period, Feroz was placed on a software testing role for Network-Rail to work on an Oracle 9i Portal system that monitored rail defects. The nature of the work involved creating scripts which were used to test the bespoke software and Oracle Reports with the intent to identify bugs for the developers to resolve. He has worked alongside senior members of the company including Business Standards consultants that he has liaised with for referrals. He also participated in the organisation of user acceptance testing for the project board.
Client: JCB, Strategic Rail Authority, Anglican Water
During this time, Feroz was simultaneously responsible for the creation of detailed floor plan schemas for a new JCB plant based in India and providing technical support to SRA Railway Company. The schemas describing the IT networking and wiring of the plant were developed alongside a senior consultant that were drawn up in Microsoft Visio and sent to India for construction. The role for SRA dealt with the maintenance of their servers and custom-built applications that ran on Oracle Express v6.3 (i.e. troubleshooting, change requests). He was also asked to undertake a system audit for Anglican water, which spanned across multiple client sites.
Undertook modules in: Distributed Systems, Human Computer Interaction, Database Systems, JAVA, C++, Discrete Mathematics, Principles of Programming Languages, Object Oriented Analysis and Design Completed: Group Project - To design and partially implement a post-graduate recruitment system using the UML standard approach to follow the project life-cycle
Degree Classification : 2nd class 1st Division with Honours Undertook modules in: Networks and Communication, Introduction to Database Systems, Computer Systems, Real-Time Systems, Dynamics and Control, Digital Design, Media Communication Completed: Individual Project - To design and implement an online Student Portal to keep information on students exam marks, coursework marks, course timetable
