Mohamed ElSayed
Verified Expert in Engineering
DevOps Engineer and Developer
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Toptal member since October 11, 2022
Mohamed is a DevOps engineer with 10+ years of IT systems experience, from administration and engineering to cloud infrastructure. He loves solving complex problems through reverse engineering and building solutions. Mohamed focuses on AWS cloud infrastructure and automation; building CI/CD pipelines; and securing scalable, highly available workloads in the cloud. He excels at solving engineering problems using his strong analytical, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
Portfolio
Experience
- Linux - 7 years
- Cloud Infrastructure - 5 years
- AWS CloudFormation - 5 years
- Docker - 5 years
- CI/CD Pipelines - 5 years
- Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) - 4 years
- Python - 3 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Python, Cloud Infrastructure, Linux, Buildkite, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Jira, Containerization, Scripting, Terraform, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Python 3, AWS IAM, Continuous Deployment
The most amazing...
...thing I've built is a secure, scalable, highly available AWS solution for a Python Django API using AWS CDK and migrating from Elastic Beanstalk to ECS Fargate.
Work Experience
Senior DevOps Engineer
Uptick
- Reduced S3 cost by more than 50% using lifecycle management policies, EC2 compute cost by more than 40% using UsageAi, and reduced total AWS bill by 25%.
- Streamlined the IaC deployment process, allowing direct deployment to AWS from code by implementing a Git-based workflow with GitHub Actions, Terragrunt, and Spacelift.
- Successfully implemented and automated a new AWS multi-account structure using AWS Control Tower Account Factory for the Terraform module, allowing automated AWS account provisioning and customization through code.
- Implemented robust AWS cost-monitoring system using AWS cost anomaly monitor, AWS budgets, SNS, AWS chatbot, and Slack.
- Successfully implemented in-house image-transformation solution to replace third-party tools (Cloudinary) and further reduce S3 cost by eliminating cross-region data transfer costs.
- Negotiated and obtained AWS credits covering the implementation of AWS data sync service without extensive cost analysis, which would have cost 33,000 USD, resulting in significant cost savings and enhanced service capabilities.
Senior DevOps Engineer
Everest Engineering
- Led a team of two as a technical lead to migrate SEEK Asia's apps to AWS.
- Secured the apps and workloads by migrating them from on-premise networks to AWS.
- Wrote IaC for applications infrastructure in Terraform and built pipelines using Buildkite.
- Mentored and coached developer teams on AWS and CI/CD pipelines.
Senior DevOps Engineer
Qsic
- Led Qsic's DevOps engineering and implemented best practices in AWS infrastructure, containerization, CI/CD pipelines, source control, security, and deployment workflows.
- Mentored and upskilled developers in AWS CloudFormation and Cloud Development Kit (CDK), Amazon ECS, CI/CD pipelines using Buildkite, and deployment workflows.
- Architected and rebuilt a scalable, highly available AWS solution for one of three Django APIs using CDK and migrated from Elastic Beanstalk to Amazon ECS on AWS Fargate.
- Deployed advanced networking solutions to connect environments in multiple AWS accounts using AWS Transit Gateway.
- Wrote IaC for all infrastructure using Terraform and AWS CDK with Python.
- Managed all cloud infrastructure on AWS, including CDK, Make, Bash, and Python.
- Built CI/CD pipelines using Terraform, Make, Bash, Buildkite, AWS, and CDK.
- Configured AWS Control Tower and a landing zone for all AWS accounts in the organization.
Cloud Engineer
ANZ Group
- Managed and supported Google Cloud Platform environments using Terraform.
- Deployed apps and configuration to Kubernetes clusters.
- Built Codefresh CI/CD pipelines as Terraform code and automated pipeline creations.
Senior Cloud Engineer
Latitude Financial Services
- Added zero-downtime ECS deployments during ECS cluster changes.
- Handled and supported AWS environments, including a portfolio for all teams' workloads using AWS Service Catalog.
- Provided round-the-clock support for Latitude's origination platform.
- Managed and maintained GitHub Enterprise and Buildkite.
- Built reusable patterns and standardized and promoted best practices.
DevOps Engineer
Versent
- Designed cloud and DevOps patterns for reuse and reimplementation.
- Architected and built CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and Groovy.
- Integrated monitoring solutions, such as Datadog and Sumo Logic.
DevOps Engineer
base2Services
- Designed scalable and highly available solutions for production.
- Architected and built CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins.
- Integrated monitoring solutions, such as Icinga and New Relic.
- Provided round-the-clock support for AWS production environments of base2services' customers.
Systems Administrator
Connexity
- Managed and maintained the software and hardware integrity of all production systems.
- Provisioned new bare metal and virtual Linux servers.
- Provided 24/7 support for all production systems and workloads.
- Configured and integrated monitoring systems, such as Nagios and Grafana.
Experience
Django Python API on ECS Fargate
I architected and rebuilt the solution to migrate the API to ECS Fargate using AWS CDK in Python. The redesigned solution is secure, scalable, and highly available. It responds a lot more quickly to changes in load with seconds of startup time compared to minutes or hours spent in manual deployments. And it could start up with fully automated deployments with code features tested, built, and shipped to production in a matter of minutes compared to hours of manual, complex deployments, all done in code.
This solution was the first step to enable the company to achieve its target of expanding to the US market. By having the solution as code with fully automatic deployments, the entire API solution could be deployed to a different region in a matter of minutes, enabling automated, multi-region deployments.
CI/CD Pipelines as Code
A Truely Zero-downtime ECS Cluster
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Telecommunications and Electronics
Ain Shams University - Cairo, Egypt
Certifications
Associate Cloud Engineer
Google Cloud
AWS Certified Developer Associate
AWS
AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate
AWS
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Terragrunt
Tools
AWS CloudFormation, Terraform, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Makefile, Git, Ansible, Packer, AWS Fargate, GitHub, Jira, HashiCorp, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), AWS CLI, AWS ELB, AWS IAM, Amazon CloudFront CDN, AWS Deployment, Provisioning Tools, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Jenkins, Google Cloud Console, AWS CodeBuild, Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), Sumo Logic, Chef, Puppet, Apache Airflow, Apache, Amazon EKS
Languages
Bash, Python, Python 3
Paradigms
DevOps, Continuous Integration (CI), DevSecOps, Continuous Deployment, Role-based Access Control (RBAC), Continuous Delivery (CD), Serverless Architecture, Automation, Continuous Development (CD)
Platforms
Linux, Docker, Buildkite, Amazon EC2, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, Codefresh, Ubuntu, Linux CentOS 7, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Kubernetes, Icinga, New Relic
Storage
Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Google Cloud, Datadog, AWS Elastic File System, PostgreSQL
Frameworks
Django, Hadoop
Other
Operating Systems, Computer Repair, Cloud Infrastructure, CI/CD Pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Amazon RDS, Containerization, Cloud Security, Cloud Computing, Architecture, Scripting, Identity & Access Management (IAM), Relational Database Services (RDS), Linux Server Administration, Linux Server Configuration, Access Control, Serverless, Shell Scripting, DevOps Engineer, Lambda Functions, Amazon Route 53, Load Balancers, Platform as a Service (PaaS), Cloud, Networking, SysOps, Server Administration, ECS, AWS Transit Gateway, AWS DevOps, Amazon API Gateway, Security, Cloud Migration, Cost Analysis, Cost Control, AWS Cloud Architecture, SSL Certificates, SSL Configurations, Cloud Architecture, NAT, Electronics, Telecom Equipment & Solutions, Computer Automation Design (CAD), Computer Architecture, Digital Electronics, Home Electronics, Communications Electronics, Data Communication, Solution Design, Groovy Scripting, AWS Control Tower, Foreman, Unix/Linux Virtualization, Cost Cutting (Cost-out)
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