Samer Bitar, Senior Devops Engineer

Samer Bitar

Senior Devops Engineer

Blu Solutions Sal

Location
Lebanon
Education
Bachelor's degree, Computer Information Systems
Experience
18 years, 8 Months

Share My Profile

Block User


Work Experience

Total years of experience :18 years, 8 Months

Senior Devops Engineer at Blu Solutions Sal
  • Lebanon - Beirut
  • My current job since December 2017

In charge of all AWS infrastructure configuration and maintenance including but not limited to (VPC, EC2, ELB, WAF, Cloudwatch, Codedeploy, Elastic Cache, RDS, S3, ..)

Managing technical support and on-site implementation projects

Implementation Manager at Youtap Ltd
  • Lebanon - Beirut
  • January 2016 to October 2017

Auckland - New
Zealand (Beirut-Lebanon office)

● Ensuring the successful end-to-end technical solution is delivered across all projects through to the Commercial Launch of the product
● Managing implementation projects through to support teams and to ensure all functions are properly documented
● Managing staff in both local and remote locations
● Handling multiple projects at the same time
● Understanding the project scope and customer requirements both from business and technical perspective
● Conducting and ensuring that UATs across all implementation projects are completed successfully and the results are signed off by the customer
● Ensuring that any issues are properly reported on internally to the development team and externally to the relevant customer departments and staff by all implementation team members
● Managing customer staff expectations and commitment, including C level, throughout the implementation phase to ensure smooth and timely delivery
● In charge of customer staff training and hand over
● Achieving over 15 successful implementations for customers in more than 10 countries in a 2 year period under a mixture of on-site and remote work
● Managing incoming customer requirements and overseeing the proper documentation and internal CR process up to delivery of the new product or service

Sr. Business Analyst at Youtap Ltd
  • Lebanon - Beirut
  • April 2012 to December 2015

Auckland - New
Zealand (Beirut-Lebanon office)

● Responsible of business analysis and requirements gathering (BRS/URS document owner) for mobile financial projects involving new and existing customers
● In charge of creating Change Request forms “CRF” for existing customers to detail any modifications required to deployed systems.
● Acted as the Account Manager of multiple customer sites and continuously in touch with the key employees / directors to ensure satisfaction with current system features and discussing potential new products or services
● Participated actively in internal technical discussions / workshops / product roadmaps which lead to the design and delivery of new features and products
● Assisted the Technical Support team when needed to resolve major issues or complete on-site software implementation
● Participated in numerous events, exhibitions, and sales presentations as a technical backup to the Sales team

Business Development Manager at CITG
  • Lebanon - Beirut
  • August 2011 to April 2012

● Responsible for multiple sales sectors including Data Center solutions, Physical Security products, Advanced Routing & Switching products, and large scale Wireless Network deployments.
● Engaged in multiple project phases from opportunity discovery, proper qualification, requirements gathering, proposal submittal, up to project management and handover.
● Qualified and closed multiple deals in Lebanon and different African countries in fields of Data Center, CCTV, and network hardware sales.

Head of IT & Billing at Smart Mobile
  • Burundi
  • August 2009 to May 2011

● Managed a team of eight employees in the IT and Billing departments.
● Assigned daily and weekly work schedules and conducted monthly evaluation meetings per employee.
● Completed a full analysis of the whole existing IT infrastructure and IN/Billing system (CBOSS) in the first 2 months including complete testing, troubleshooting, and setting up procedures and work processes.
● Executed a complete plan to fix the weaknesses both in IT infrastructure and in the IN/Billing system and insured full readiness and uptime in time for the commercial launch in February 2010.
● Prepared the yearly department budget as per the limits laid down by the board of directors and supervised expenditures to ensure adhering to the pre-set budget plan.
● The operator grew from 2k total subscribers on time of enrollment to 200k active subscribers upon departure and continuing steady growth despite being the fifth operator to launch services in a rather poor country.

Senior Technical Support Engineer at Mobilis Networks Limited
  • Lebanon - Beirut
  • April 2008 to August 2009

at Mobilis Networks Limited, Auckland - New
Zealand (Beirut-Lebanon office).
● Provided complete remote and onsite support for a converged GSM/WIMAX
billing system for customers in different parts of Africa ( Guinea, Liberia,
Tanzania) and parts of the Far East.
● Monitored and Debugged different application logs (Camel Logs, SMSC logs,
call agent logs, as well as switch logs).
● Helped the mobile operator staff in daily operations such as TAP file processing
& shipping & reconciliation, CDR revenue assurance reports, product creation
and configuration, invoicing runs, prepaid voucher creation, as well as Customer
Care assistance.
● Monitored the different servers to ensure maximum uptime
● Created different linux/database scripts to solve some instant problems or
requirements requested by the customer.
● Designed a complete low level (Database) alarming system which sends emails
and SMS on special triggering events (low disk space, high cpu usage, low
outgoing call rate, low outgoing sms rate, absence of CDR data over a certain
period etc..).
● Involved in different database maintenance tasks such as table partitioning and
analyzing, indexing, storage allocation, configuring backups, applying Oracle
patches provided by Oracle Support, as well as general monitoring of the overall
database state.
● Handled the link between the development team and the customer in cases of
necessary upgrades or maintenance (CMF) and also in packaging any customer
requirements (CRF) in an understandable format.

Software Implementation and Support at DC Soft
  • Lebanon - Beirut
  • June 2005 to March 2008

● Designed a complete User & Installation Manual for an ISP Management System (ISP Pro)
● Designed a full customer training program for the ISPPRO application
● Became responsible of handling complete customer projects including:
 Application presentation and demonstration
 Gathering and analyzing of extra requirements and requested customizations of the system
 Installation and implementation of the software for different Internet Service Providers in Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia and parts of Africa
 Installation, configuration, and modification of a powerful Radius (AAA) server for all types of internet services requiring authentication and accounting.
 Database migrations from previous systems
 Specialized in training targeting different departments and their areas of interest in the application
● Designed different financial and statistical reports for the application using iReports and OpenReports as well as analysis reports using data-warehousing on MSSQL Analysis Server

Education

Bachelor's degree, Computer Information Systems
  • at Notre Dame University
  • January 2005
High school or equivalent, Lebanese Baccalaureate
  • at BESGB Rabieh
  • April 2001

Lebanese Baccalaureate

Specialties & Skills

Team Player
Problem Solving
Analytical Approach
Customer Support
Customer Facing
BILLING
BILLING SYSTEMS
BUDGETING
BUSINESS ANALYSIS
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
DELIVERY
MICROSOFT OFFICE
Account Management

Languages

Arabic
Expert
English
Expert
French
Intermediate

Training and Certifications

MSCE 2003 (Training)
Training Institute:
Formatech
Date Attended:
March 2007
PMP (Training)
Training Institute:
Formatech / PMI
Date Attended:
May 2011
Certified Data Center Professional (Certificate)
Date Attended:
September 2011
Certified Data Center Specialist (Certificate)
Date Attended:
October 2011

Hobbies

  • Video gaming
  • Basketball
  • Soccer