Aly is available for hire

Aly Ragab

Verified Expert in Engineering

DevOps Engineer and Developer

Location

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Toptal Member Since

January 3, 2022

Aly has been a DevOps and DevSecOps Engineer for the past six years, specializing in planning, designing, configuring, and implementing a deep level of security. Aly has worked in the GRC and Pen Testing culture and implementation. Before this, he was a Linux and Unix administrator for three years. Aly's areas of expertise include AWS, Kubernetes, MySQL, MongoDB, ELK, Go, HashiCorp Vault, Terraform, and more.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)DevOps Engineer Red Hat Linux Docker Kubernetes Microservices DevOps Amazon Web Services (AWS)Terraform DevSecOps PostgreSQL CircleCI Amazon EKS Helm Cloudflare

Portfolio

fintech-galaxy

Agile Software Development, Amazon EKS, Burp Suite, HashiCorp Vault, Terraform...

Talabat

Kubernetes, Amazon EKS, Serverless Framework, Terraform, Helm, Argo CD...

Hala Company

Kubernetes, Self-managed Kubernetes, MongoDB, Terraform, Oracle Cloud...

Experience

CI/CD Pipelines - 5 years DevOps - 5 years Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) - 3 years Helm - 3 years PCI DSS - 3 years Go - 2 years Serverless Framework - 1 year

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

MacOS, Linux, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), DevOps, Burp Suite

The most amazing...

...experience is helping companies develop and secure their digital platforms, making them reliable and available at all times.

Work Experience

Lead DevSecOps Engineer

2022 - PRESENT

fintech-galaxy

Completed the migration to AWS EKS with a very secure and reliable cloud-native architecture based on GRC (Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance).
Integrated HashiCorp Vault with Kubernetes Microservices.
Set the main strategy to build an open banking platform in a reliable way using IaC and config management with Centralized Helm charts for Kubernetes.
Started the ISO/IEC 27001:2022 information security lead implementation.
Set the strategy for planning the business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning.
Coached my team in applying and learning the best practices regarding security, reliability, and observability patterns.

Technologies: Agile Software Development, Amazon EKS, Burp Suite, HashiCorp Vault, Terraform, Lambda Functions, DevSecOps, DevOps Engineer, Automation, Penetration Testing, Kubernetes, Microservices, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Containerization, HashiCorp, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD Pipelines, PostgreSQL

Senior DevOps Archetict

2020 - PRESENT

Talabat

Built and managed environments to fulfill PCI DSS compliance requirements and wrote internal tools in Go.
Implemented and managed policy as code using Open Policy Agent (OPA), Conftest, and Gatekeeper.
Implemented AWS serverless applications using a serverless framework and implemented and managed Amazon EKS clusters.
Migrated and implemented centrally templated Helm Charts to assist in deploying 100+ microservices in different AWS EKS clusters.
Assisted the company in implementing a scaled system design and implemented AWS Secrets Manager and Vault to secure secret data.
Implemented progressive deployment using Argo CD and Argo Rollouts for blue-green and canary deployments.
Used a GitHub Actions self-hosted runner to enable secured and private E2E testing.

Technologies: Kubernetes, Amazon EKS, Serverless Framework, Terraform, Helm, Argo CD, Argo Rollouts, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Cloudflare, PCI DSS, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Organization, AWS Secrets Manager, Vault, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), HashiCorp Vault, CI/CD Pipelines, Docker, Go, Python 3, Python, DevOps, Microservices, Lambda Functions, DevSecOps, DevOps Engineer, Automation, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Containerization, HashiCorp, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), PostgreSQL

Lead DevOps Engineer

2019 - 2020

Hala Company

Assisted in migrating from a monolithic architecture to a microservices architecture.
Implemented and managed PCI DSS compliant infrastructures.
Defined the DevOps-related strategies and tools. Implemented managed the cloud environment based on Oracle Cloud.
Implemented and introduced IaC using Terraform, managed Kubernetes clusters using Kubespray, and deployed microservices using Helm.
Implemented CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins for all microservices; shared knowledge with all engineering teams; and defined the culture for introducing infrastructure features, such as RFC documents and POCs.
Managed four members of the DevOps team and coached them to grow, learn, and apply best practices.

Technologies: Kubernetes, Self-managed Kubernetes, MongoDB, Terraform, Oracle Cloud, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), PCI DSS, Organization, AWS Secrets Manager, Vault, Helm, HashiCorp Vault, CI/CD Pipelines, Docker, MariaDB, Go, DevOps, Microservices, Microservices Architecture, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Jenkins, Lambda Functions, DevSecOps, DevOps Engineer, Automation, Containerization, HashiCorp, Amazon Web Services (AWS), PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, Amazon EKS

Senior DevOps Engineer

2018 - 2019

Fly365

Managed and implemented PCI DSS compliant infrastructures.
Managed AWS infrastructure based on AWS S3, CloudFront, Lambda Functions, CloudWatch, GuardDuty, Elasticache, and RDS.
Implemented logging and monitoring for all microservices based on ELK and Prometheus stacks.
Set up and helped the teams use CI/CD pipelines for 50+ microservices.
Managed a small DevOps team to stay on the same page with applying best practices at all times.

Technologies: Kubernetes, Kubernetes Operations (kOps), MongoDB, ELK (Elastic Stack), CircleCI, Organization, Helm, PCI DSS, Terraform, CI/CD Pipelines, Docker, Go, Microservices, DevOps, Lambda Functions, DevSecOps, DevOps Engineer, Automation, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Containerization, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch

DevOps Engineer

2016 - 2018

Transporter Courier Service

Helped the company design stateless-based microservice architecture and implemented CI/CD for all microservices.
Assisted in migrating to AWS and implemented a Kubernetes environment based on the kops tool.
Collaborated with the ITOps team to implement internal LDAP using FreeIPA in order to have an internal, Linux-based LDAP server.
Worked with ITOps to implement a reliable VoIP server based on Asterisk.

Technologies: MariaDB, Docker, Kubernetes, Kubernetes Operations (kOps), CI/CD Pipelines, VoIP, FreeIPA, DevOps, Microservices Architecture, Microservices, DevOps Engineer, Containerization, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Linux and Unix System Administrator

2015 - 2016

ECC Solutions

Managed and monitored IBM Unix AIX Power Servers.
Managed a TSM backup system, IBM V7000 back-end storage, and IBM AIX LPARS and LAPAR Mobility.
Provided second-line support for Linux-based applications, helping customers fix and troubleshoot issues on Linux Red Hat, CentOS, Ubuntu, and Debian-based distributions.

Technologies: Red Hat Linux, AIX, Unix, IBM Storage, VoIP

Linux System Administrator

2014 - 2015

World'Vest Base (WVB)

Managed and implemented Spacewalk servers for network and system provisioning.
Managed a FortiGate firewall to secure internal networks and implemented segregated internet connectivity and site-to-site VPN.
Implemented and managed a deep level of security hardening.
Managed a Linux VoIP solution based on Asterisk to facilitate cross-team communication across three countries.

Technologies: KVM, FortiGate, Zabbix, VoIP, Network Security, VPN

Business Solution Specialist

2010 - 2014

Vodafone Egypt Telecommunications SAE

Handled all escalated hosting domain issues over the phone with Vodafone enterprise customers.
Managed and fixed Microsoft SharePoint server problems and handled email services with enterprise clients.
Conducted technical training for the first-line support.

Technologies: Microsoft Active Directory (AD), SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange Server

Experience

AWS IAM Slackbot

https://github.com/AlyRagab/aws-iam-slack-bot

A solution to manage AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) via a Slackbot. Users can call the bot in Slack to add or remove IAM users in IAM groups. The bot can also add and revoke all or some permissions for specific users. I wrote the solution in Go, it has a MySQL database as a dependency, and it can be deployed with minimal IAM access.

AWS RDS Alerts to Slack

https://github.com/AlyRagab/LambdaFunc-rds-alert

An AWS Lambda function triggered by SNS and CloudWatch to send alerts to Slack that are related to the RDS-based CloudWatch threshold. I assisted in enhancing the observability of the database instances running as RDS.

User API Microservice

https://github.com/AlyRagab/golang-user-registration

A Microservice written with Go that allows users to sign up and sign in with the following features:
• Based in PostgreSQL as DataStore and GORM library
• Hashing Passwords using pepper and salt into Database, Never saving passwords
• Cookies security with HMAC

Skills

Frameworks

Serverless Framework

Tools

CircleCI, Terraform, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Amazon EKS, Helm, Vault, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), HashiCorp, Zabbix, ELK (Elastic Stack), Jenkins, VPN, AWS IAM

Paradigms

DevOps, Microservices, DevSecOps, Agile Software Development, Automation, Microservices Architecture, Penetration Testing

Platforms

Red Hat Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Elastic Beanstalk, KVM, AIX, Unix, Burp Suite

Storage

PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Oracle Cloud, MySQL

Other

Kubernetes Operations (kOps), CI/CD Pipelines, PCI DSS, GitHub Actions, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), DevOps Engineer, Containerization, Self-managed Kubernetes, HashiCorp Vault, Argo CD, Cloudflare, AWS Secrets Manager, Organization, Lambda Functions, FortiGate, IBM Storage, FreeIPA, Argo Rollouts, VoIP, Slackbot

Languages

Go, Python 3, Python

Industry Expertise

Network Security

Education

2013 - 2015

High Diploma in Software Engineering (College Level)

Cairo University - Egypt, Cairo

2005 - 2009

Bachelor's Degree in Art History

Helwan University - Egypt, Cairo

Certifications

AUGUST 2020 - AUGUST 2022

HashiCorp Certified: Vault Associate

HashiCorp

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