Ali Aktar Email & Phone Number

Al Rooqiyah Dist, Riyadh, SA

A company that's been in the making for over 15 years. Bringing together some amazing people from the past and present to work on a technology stack that can accelerate Greenfield projects and startups alike. Foundational building blocks, ready made, ready built, helping to accelerate product development by 12-18 months.

Digital Technology Startup

Riyadh, SA

Digital Bank Startup

London, UK, GB

• Responsible for technology leadership and end-to-end programme delivery, including overseeing R&D and engineering functions, engaging collaboratively across the business
• Leading team of 40+ developers and engineering, with full remit for a £5m p.a. budget
• Introducing Agile & Scrum methods, and enhancing projects delivery across the organisation
• Delivering full hybrid cloud architecture utilising both Agile and DevOps methodologies
• Engaging with CEO/COO to drive change and align with technology & intellectual propertyKey deliverables and business outcomes included:
• Architected new cloud operating model, defined design patterns and engaged with vendors

Tokyo, JP

• Responsible for leading cloud and engineering teams to define Target Operating Model (TOM) for multi-cloud adoption initiative
• Part of business leadership team, total budget of £15m with 40k+ employees globally
• Operated under Agile and DevOps principles, grew team from 0 totalling to 15 people
• Built the Cloud Centre of Excellence, recruitment & job specifications, interview process
• Engaged with brands to understand & architect cloud landing zones to meet requirements
• Conducted application affinity assessment for all data centre applications, defining the criteria using the 6R’s (rehosting, repurchasing, replatforming, refactoring, retire, retain)

London, GB

• Part of the OneIT transformation project leading the strategic vision of the migration from multi-DC physical infrastructure to multi-vendor agnostic hybrid cloud infrastructure.
• Led team of 15 SMEs to analyse all aspects of cloud migration, devising training plans for staff
• Developed testing and automation strategy, and built the teams utilising DevOps principles
• Acted as SME, defining the organisational roadmap to adopt cloud computing and DevOps
• Engaged with stakeholders to demonstrate various software capability & automation benefits
• Designed & deployed a full stack of Terraform, Consul, Consul Template, Nomad & Vault

Arlington, VA, US

• Responsible for utilising cutting-edge technology in R&D project to ‘prove out’ Big Data compute power
• Developed hyperscale compute, using new technology to process large amounts of data
• Implemented the cloud platforms for auto-scaling and auto-healing workload distribution

Belfast, GB

• Responsible for bringing together a mix of technologies to supply digital services to major NHS Trusts
• Led WebOps team across 2 Scrum teams, architecting private, public & hybrid cloud solutions
• Delivered fully-scalable API layers with modular apps & blueprint for multi-cloud deployment
• Organised tenders from cloud providers & analysed guidelines, data security & location needs
• Designed solutions with emphasis on geolocation of data, N3 network connectivity & security
• Used daily stand-ups & Kanban boards, & set-up POCs to ascertain cloud provider suitability

• Responsible for designing a resilient portal using ServiceNow & multi-service cloud solutions
• Worked with BP cloud governance board on design principles sign-off around cloud adoption
• Designed cloud project VPC with cloud formations scripts & built out strategic environments
• Implemented software incl. Consul, Consul Template, Chef, ServiceNow, FileServer & GitLab
• Utilised AWS Multi-AZ to implement full-stack delivery of cloud portal system for purchasing
• Created tools to automate application, database, domain joins and stack configuration

• Responsible for evaluating implementation, advising DevOps on automation and deployment
• Oversaw Nagios monitoring tool implementation, ensuring alerts were not false positives
• Assisted DevOps to automate provision into AWS & Tomcat builds & deployments via Chef
• Created Chef cookbooks & recipes for Chef managed hosts, services, host & service groups
• Consulted on best practice for automated deployment, systems management & monitoring

• Chef configuration management
• Handled Apache and Tomcat installation and configuration activities
• Oversaw both Vmware and cloud (rackspace) environment management
• Successfully undertook both Linux and Unix set-up and installation activities

London, GB

• Responsible for designing and managing the Burberry World 2.0 project including AWS service solutions deployment and migration
• Oversaw deployment of SSO using MS AD LDAP authentication incl. cross-platform solutions
• Developed identity management with support for multiple devices & web browsers solution
• Designed automation processes for Linux, Unix & AWS, using Chef SaaS for configuration
• Created Chef recipes using Ruby scripting & deployed multiple systems, databases & VPNs

Appointed on a highly-secure project, further details available upon request Led a team of 10+ engineers, dealing with Redhat 5 and Solaris 10 System engineeringLinux Redhat HA clustering with Heartbeat for multiple HA services (httpd, mysqld etc)Championed highly-secure system build and deployment initiativesDrove integration between solaris 10 & Redhat.

GB

• Contracted to allow GroupNBT to attain PCI compliance using opensource tools like ossec for file integrity monitoring, active passive enforcement of security based on pre-defined rules along with Nessus for network.
• Set-up / configured MySQL cluster/multi master replication using VM's across multiple sites
• Radius server for network AAA authentication with Daloradius as the front end tool Application and tools experience: Apache, Radius, MySQL, Nessus, Ossec client and server, Daloradius, Nikto (WebServer security.

• Responsible for looking after Linux and Solaris infrastructure for the e-Gaming department at CGI client site
• Built secure web front end servers with tools and application packaged with kickstart
• Successfully integrating Unix and Windows using Vintela and Samba solutions
• Designed and architected the Kickstart Environment along with documentation
• Automated and created kickstart package in readiness for portability to international sites (Italy, Spain, China and Malaysia)
• Configuration and support of Solaris and Linux in high end server clustered environment

• Client: Gala CoralResponsible for overall analysis of architecture, communication and process with particular emphasis on improving Operations interaction with Engineering and Development
• Managed and mentored a team of 7 engineers specializing in Linux and Unix architecture
• Advised and built process driven approach to system administration and service delivery
• Liaised with architecture and development teams on muti-tiered projects in UK & Europe
• Provided regular updates and analysis of on-coming projects to senior stakeholders & PMs
• Migrated infrastructure (500 servers) from Temporary Hosting Centre to New Data Centre

Client: BT, working on the NHS project. SME in Opsware deployment/build software to automate Redhat RHEL3/4, HPUX, AIX, Solaris system and application builds. Developed end-to-end deployment solution.

New York, NY, US

• Part of the development and support team of web-based and proprietary products
• Worked within the Host & Database Operations team to ensure the timely issues resolution
• Liaised with US Operations teams to implement best practice across the business
• Project leader role in crisis situations, co-ordinating engineers, developers and support to fix problems and provide all relevant parties with suitable information in a timely manner
• System administration of Unix server, Sun Solaris versions 2.7 and 2.8 running
• SME in integrating web products running on Apache within an enterprise environment

NL

• Responsible for providing 2nd and 3rd line support on Solaris 7, 8 and 9 and HPUX server
• Efficiently provided support to Helpdesk supporting for over 3000 users
• System disaster planning and recovery, NIS and NFS server diagnostics and enhancements
• Jumpstart Server configuration and system deployment

• Responsible for supporting and deploying development systems secured and tested with Solaris 7&8 with Solstice ODS and Solstice Netbackup
• System administration of servers and operational maintenance of live public-facing services
• Contributed to the design and development of high availability, 24x7 services & systems
• Gathered client requirements and prepared technical specifications
• Defined and documented procedures, providing the training to staff
• Provided on-call support for business critical systems on a rota basis

London, GB

Athens, GR

2.1, Bsc Business Information Technology

Btec National Diploma In Computer Studies