IT Director
Canadian University Dubai
مجموع سنوات الخبرة :19 years, 9 أشهر
• Lead the University on its digital transformation journey: Build solid and compliant infrastructure, security, digital learning, business continuity
plan and Cloud adoption roadmap.
• Work as a technical leader alongside the business, security, and infrastructure teams.
• Migrate monolithic on-premise applications to Microservices architecture or SAAS
such as: Office 365, SharePoint Online, Dynamics 365, SalesForce CRM, LMS and SIS.
• Lead technical and design discussions with IT executives to help speed the adoption of new technologies and practices.
• Think strategically about business, product, and technical challenges, and create a roadmap.
• Help with the configuration management using CloudFormation, Chef & Puppet, ARM template, terraform.
• Collaborate with other Cloud Solution Architects (security, App team, ...) in developing complex end-to-end Enterprise solutions on the Microsoft
Azure or AWS platform
• Architect and build highly scalable, cloud-native applications on the Azure, AWS platform using core developer services like APIGateway, Lambda,
SQS, DynamoDB and ECS for AWS and API Management, functions, queue storage, service bus, Cosmos DB, Container instances in Azure.
• Leverage new technology paradigms (e.g., Serverless, containers, Microservices).
• Implement Azure, AWS best practices.
• Influence infrastructure architecture by sharing my infrastructure and app development expertise.
• Balance competing for financial, technical, and business requirements to produce optimal strategies, portfolios, and underlying Solution and
Enterprise Architecture.
• Build and maintain a solid on-premise Data Center through several major projects: Network upgrade, Hyper-Converged Nutanix, Unified
Communication, Citrix VDI, Ivanti Patch Management, SCCM, SolarWinds Network and Server monitoring, SIEM (McAfee, LogRythm, Azure Sentinel),
WAF, IAM/PAM, ForcePoint Email Security and DLP.
• Explore and execute cost optimization on technology and processes.
• Network with IT industry leaders in the region and maintain strong relationships that lead to several MoU signings - IBM, Huawei, Microsoft.
• Build 5-year technology roadmaps and yearly business plans with proper mission, vision, objectives and report back on KPIs and delivery.
- Lead a team of Senior Application Analysts to improve incident, change and problem management processes within ITIL framework.
- Improved significantly the team's Incident resolution to a proper SLA based on impact and severity which resulted to the best customer satisfaction and stats amongst the IT organization.
- Improved the Change management process and helped enforcing it throughout the IT organization. Managed the change request intake (Projects, Releases, Incidents...) and defined roles and responsibilities.
- Designed Change and Incident management process flow and communication templates.
- Helped building a solid technical knowledge base. Played a main contributor role on SharePoint (Wiki's, Issue-Cause-resolutions, Master lists)
- Lead several support releases and projects driven by the IT application Team.
- Tracked project plan progress and initiated corrective action as and when required.
- Conducted verification on project deliverables as well as release controls.
- Analyzed business requirements and recommended appropriate technology solutions.
- Executed Release plans; oversaw changes and reported on outcomes.
- Developed standards and implemented best practices for Release Management.
- Coordinated and managed the scope and timing of multiple concurrent projects to achieve committed goals and benefits.
Leadership duties:
- Lead support teams that provide 1 st and 2 nd level support for Symcor business applications.
- Managed end user (mainly banks) impacting incidents including business impact assessment, technical resolution, engagement and communications.
- Lead major incidents including business impact assessment, client and executive communications, chairing technical and client conference calls, managing expectations and resolution at minimum financial impact.
- Served as a 24/7 point of escalation for critical incidents.
- Represented the Technical team during CAB, major incidents and executive meetings.
- Performed regular reporting and team KPI analysis.
- Developed and enforced IT application related procedures and policies after approval of executive management.
- Provided mentorship and coaching to the team.
Technical duties:
- Monitor and Support Web and application servers (Apache, Geronimo, SGE, Servicemix).
- Monitor and Support file transfer platforms used by Major North American banks (SDX, SFPT, Connect Direct, Mainframe).
- Support Document Management Workflow (Application and infrastructure)
- Investigate cheque processing related bank inquires and issues.
- Take leadership on incidents or changes escalated from the support teams. Resolve Automated Alerts related to Web applications and servers.
- Support in-house cheque and batch processing and online banking applications.
- Work within a team that provides 24/7 coverage, involving after hours on calls and carrying a pager.
- Act as a Subject Matter Expert for business applications by providing guidance and documentations to different support teams including teammates.
- Build SQL queries to help banks generate specific reports and investigate front end operator errors.
- Work closely with Unix Deployment team to implement tested scripts, cron jobs and web instances into production environment.
- Bilingual (English/French) IBM Application Subject Matter Expert to a Major Canadian Bank (TD Canada Trust)
- Troubleshoot and deploy IBM Corporate and Production applications.
- Lead efforts in complex troubleshooting, recovery and root cause investigation.
- Coordinate and prioritize all escalated activities, including testing, project management and implementation of system upgrades, enhancements, and bug fixes.
- Batch and file transfer monitoring.
- Manage all French client communications and escalations.
• Managed day-to-day activities of the incident and change management process.
• Lead and played a key role in building a first-class Service Desk.
• Provided support and coaching to support analysts to enable them to perform their job more efficiently and with higher levels of customer satisfaction.
• Acting as a point of escalation for support analysts and clients.
• Responded to escalations and provided documented plan of suggestions on improvement to management.
• Audited the quality of Incident and Change Records, client recorded calls and provided constructive feedback to the support analysts.
• Provided incident and call quality reports to management.
• Lead and troubleshooted complex incidents. (Sev1 and Major Incident)
• Lead the change CAB meetings and change implementation follow-ups
• Ensure that existing knowledge documentation is used appropriately during incident resolution
• Responsible for the on-going communication regarding the incident, at all levels.
Lead a team of application developers. The first point of contact with vendors and clients. Established different KPIs for the team. Ensured deadlines are met and worked to improve the efficiency of the team.
Implemented a “Workflow Generator” platform to allow automation of business rules and real time notifications.
1996-2001 Computer Sciences Engineer, University of Science and Technology HOUARI BOUMEDIENE (USTHB), Algiers, Algeria.