Yousof El-Sayed, Developer in London, United Kingdom
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Yousof El-Sayed

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Developer

Location
London, United Kingdom
Toptal Member Since
November 12, 2021

Yousof is an ambitious software engineer and self-taught programmer with six years of professional experience. He is proficient in various languages and frameworks, including Python, Groovy, Go, and Bash, and experienced in writing Infrastructure as Code (IaC), setting up CI/CD, and creating tooling. Yousof enjoys using his skills to contribute to the exciting technological advances that happen every day.

LinuxPythonKubernetesAnsibleDjangoBashDevOpsDockerJenkinsAmazon Web Services (AWS)Python 3SQLAlchemyGrafanaFlaskTerraformOpenShiftRed Hat

Portfolio

Non Profit Toptal Client
Python, Django, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), PostgreSQL, Docker...
Attest
Terraform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python, Go
Government of the United Kingdom (HMRC)
Python, Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Istio, Go, Distributed Systems...

Experience

Bash - 6 yearsLinux - 6 yearsPython - 5 yearsKubernetes - 4 yearsAnsible - 4 yearsOpenShift - 3 yearsFlask - 2 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Linux, Python, Go, Kubernetes, Distributed Systems

The most amazing...

...thing I can do is create new ways to integrate and glue various systems together.

Work Experience

Full-stack Python Developer

2022 - 2022
Non Profit Toptal Client
  • Migrated the application along with the database onto Google Cloud Platform (GCP) from another company as the sole developer.
  • Migrated dependency/build processes/pipelines as the sole developer.
  • Updated and added various features to the application, managing and tracking work on the platform and reporting back to management as the sole developer.
Technologies: Python, Django, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), PostgreSQL, Docker, Containerization

Platform Engineer

2022 - 2022
Attest
  • Maintained and updated Terraform for various platform activities and requirements.
  • Updated dependency Python packages/forked packages to make internal requirements.
  • Used Github actions to automate build and release pipelines.
Technologies: Terraform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python, Go

Site Reliability Engineer

2021 - 2022
Government of the United Kingdom (HMRC)
  • Implemented and rolled out a Blue-Green deployment strategy for critical applications from test environments to production, involving Terraform/Kubernetes/Helm/Istio/Bash/Python).
  • Wrote operators in Go to coordinate with the deployment strategy (unit and functional tests inclusive).
  • Extended various internal Python libraries and published new packages to internal pip repositories.
  • Wrote new deployment pipelines (a mixture of Python/Bash/Groovy) to simplify and speed up deployments.
  • Implemented various ideas for optimizing, scaling, and stress testing message queue applications.
  • Updated various logging and monitoring pipeline (Beats/ElasticSearch/Kibana/Prometheus).
Technologies: Python, Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Istio, Go, Distributed Systems, Python 3, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Monitoring, Incident Management, Grafana, JavaScript

DevOps / Site Reliability Engineer

2020 - 2021
BP
  • Wrote Flask APIs (Python) for automated provisioning of AWS objects with built-in unit tests.
  • Extended Ansible with custom modules (Python) to configure applications that didn’t have modules.
  • Created a Python monitoring system deployed with the platform to alert statefully using SQLite.
  • Created a zero-downtime upgrade solution for a business-critical trading platform (Openshift/Kubernetes on AWS).
  • Created Jenkins CI pipelines for Packer to create internal AWS AMIs (images).
  • Deployed monitoring (Prometheus / Grafana) to identify resource bottlenecks.
  • Supported, troubleshooted and resolved operational issues around Gluster (storage).
  • Identified unknown bottlenecks in the processing of logs, deployed Fluentbit to resolve.
Technologies: Python, OpenShift, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Ansible, Packer, REST, SQLAlchemy, Python 3, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Monitoring, Incident Management, Grafana

Software Engineer

2019 - 2019
HSBC
  • Maintained and extended a Clojure codebase responsible for calling various APIs.
  • Used etcd to extend distributed Clojure application taking out locks from etcd, allowing the application to scale horizontally.
  • Developed internal multithreaded Python Flask applications using Bootstrap,. SQLAlchemy, and SQLite.
  • Developed a change management web app allowing change approval, comments and likes, and the easy ability to compare Git branches and commit SHAs being released.
  • Used Ansible and Jenkins to improve deployments (CI/CD).
  • Maintained internal tooling and off-the-shelf tooling using Jira, Bitbucket, Confluence, and Nexus Artifact storage.
Technologies: Clojure, Python, Flask, SQL, Distributed Systems, REST, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, Python 3, Monitoring, Grafana, JavaScript, CSS, HTML

DevOps / Site Reliability Engineer

2017 - 2019
BP
  • Created automation for the horizontal scaling of the platform.
  • Created privilege elevation model for regulated (SOx) deployments of applications.
  • Wrote various new Jenkins pipeline libraries (Scripting in Groovy / Python).
Technologies: Python, Ansible, OpenShift, RHEL, SQLAlchemy, Python 3, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Monitoring, Grafana

Software Engineer Lead

2016 - 2017
Capgemini
  • Moved microservices from Maven to Gradle using Java dependency frameworks.
  • Added various features to APIs, written as microservices, as required.
  • Wrote Selenium tests in a behavior-driven development (BDD) pattern against the codebase and application.
  • Integrated various UI tests into the CI pipeline, using containerized Selenium Grid and Fabric 8.
  • Debugged and troubleshot various parts of a large micro-service application running across various Docker containers within a Kubernetes cluster.
  • Wrote Dockerfiles and Kubernetes deployment YAMLs as well as extensive use of the Fabric 8 plugin to generate images for various microservices.
Technologies: Bash, Kubernetes, Python, Java, Selenium, REST, PostgreSQL, Python 3, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, MySQL

Sales and Support Engineer

2015 - 2016
ElasticHosts
  • Provided support for the customers of a Django web application providing a front end for a KVM-based hosting provider.
  • Involved in fixing infrastructure issues including recompiling kernels with different flags.
  • Acted as third-level support for issues such as being able to retrieve data from volumes deleted from LVM by finding the extents on the disk where the data existed.
Technologies: Linux, KVM/Qemu, Django, Python, PostgreSQL, MySQL

Technology Blog

https://fosuoy.com/blog/
A technology blog I keep with details of various new technologies and how to use them, and other things I've done.

A simple blog written using Jekyll, mainly focusing on DevOps and back-end and core programming-type topics.

Prometheus Monitoring Systems

I have set up and configured Prometheus monitoring and associated Grafana instances with monitoring Kubernetes clusters and tuning Alertmanager to avoid needless alarms.

This has been used to troubleshoot and debug various bottlenecks on different clusters.

Kubernetes Go Operators

Wrote various operators and controllers for Kubernetes in Go. See blog for examples of how to write controllers using Kubebuilder / Operator Framework.

Also understood how to properly write unit / functional tests for controllers.
2011 - 2014

Bachelor's Degree in Petroleum Engineering

University of Manchester - Manchester, UK

MARCH 2019 - MARCH 2022

Red Hat Certified Engineer

Red Hat

Libraries/APIs

SQLAlchemy, Python Asyncio

Tools

Ansible, Helm, Jenkins, Terraform, Grafana, KVM/Qemu, Packer, Istio

Frameworks

Django, Flask, Selenium

Platforms

Linux, Kubernetes, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, OpenShift, Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Languages

Python, Bash, Python 3, CSS, HTML, Java, Clojure, SQL, Go, JavaScript

Storage

PostgreSQL, MySQL

Paradigms

DevOps, REST

Other

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), RHEL, APIs, Monitoring, Incident Management, Distributed Systems, Containerization

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