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Problem solver, curious learner, elite hacker and happy soul. People have called me a number of things over the years. In essence, I am a QA & Continuous Integration Engineer at ECS-Digital. I have previously worked as a Software Consultant at Softwire. I am also a graduate of Makers Academy, Europe's leading developer bootcamp.

In a previous life, I went to Manchester university, travelled to exotic new lands and sold life insurance (not so exotic). After making the decision to become a programmer, I expected the move from customer facing sales to junior developer to be difficult. However, by combining my technical skills with my other transferable abilities, I have managed to turn myself into a fantastic knowledge worker.

I'm looking to work for a company which will allow me to write some good clean tested code, work in an agile team and solve problems using innovative and creative methods.

3 years of experience in insurance sales has propelled my ability to communicate. I mastered the ability to deal with customers by converting long confusing insurance policy documents into easy to understand spiels. I spoke to over 15 different clients a day and developed a certain way of articulating my thoughts that makes it easier for people to digest what I am saying and allows them to respond honestly.

After 6 months in a developer position, I now value the communication skills that I possess. My ability to explain things concisely and clearly to clients, project managers and fellow developers has been invaluable.

I taught English in Egypt and the children I was teaching inspired me to learn how to code. Their enthusiasm to discover English helped me realise that I could learn anything if I put my mind to it. While grappling with HTML and CSS part time, I found myself positively impassioned. This led me to invest in my learning and apply to Makers Academy.

At Makers Academy, I embraced the new intense learning environment with tenacity and realised my lust for learning. For my final project, I worked alongside my team to learn Java and build a fully functioning Amazon Alexa Skill. Java was chosen because I wanted to learn something completely different from the course syllabus which mainly focuses on Ruby and Javascript.

Even after getting my role at Softwire, I have continued to read and watched videos in order to widen my programming vocabulary and knowledge base.

Determined, I like to continue working until a goal is achieved and when faced with a problem, I hack away at it until I figure out a solution. I also motivate my colleagues to do the same. This led to multiple "Salesperson of the Month" awards during my time at Union Income Benefit.

In terms of programming, this means I research thoroughly when stuck on a problem. I google repeatedly before asking on a forum or chatroom to ask for help. If this doesn't work, I ask my colleagues or mentors and then ensure that I note down the answer before moving on. This was most evident when I had to create a carousel for the HushKeys project and I was faced with cross browser issues. However, after persisting and dedicating myself to getting it finished, I succeeded and managed to get the feature finished.

I believe this ties in all of my other skills together and allows me to help others as well as myself in understanding concepts and ideas. Pair programming for 12 weeks at Makers Academy has led me to the stage where I now feel comfortable helping others who are at the beginning of their software development journey. Teaching English in Cairo, supervising other waiters at Manchester United and motivating my team to hit sales targets at Union Income Benefit have all contributed to me mastering this very important skill.

ECS-Digital (October 2017 to Present)

QA, DevOps & Continuous Delivery Consultant

• Currently working for BP as a Senior Developer in Test for a small agile project.
• Worked on The Times website and mobile applications on the "Tools" Team. This team was designed to help facilitate the developers by providing testing and devops tooling for their development pipeline.
• Helped develop a number of different testing tools including AyeSpy - A Visual Regression Testing Tool and Release CLI tool for releaseing via Github Releases.
• Used a number of different testing tools including KarmaJS, Jasmine, Jest, MochaJS, XUnit, Protractor, WebdriverIO, Selenium Grid, Taurus (load testing) and Espresso.
• Used a number of different DevOps tools including AWS, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Teamcity, Bitrise, Buddybuild, Azure DevOps, New Relic and DataDog.
• Used a number of different programming languages and frameworks, including Javascript, Typescript, Kotlin, C#, AngularJS, NodeJS .NET Core, ReactJS, Bash AND Groovy.

Softwire (January 2017 to September 2017)

Software Developer

• Worked on a number of different projects, including clients such as BBC, Channel 5, HushKeys and Google Deepmind.
• Wrote well written, clean code with attention to detail on every single line submitted, whilst sticking to strict deadlines.
• Cooperated with other team members using agile methodologies to ensure the needs of each client were realised and surpassed.
• Submitted work using a strict workflow and project management tools such as Crucible and JIRA, as well as version control repository services such as GitHub and GitLab.
• Used a number of different programming languages and frameworks including Typescript, ReactJS, Python and C#.

Union Income Benefit (June 2015 to April 2016) & (September 2013 to January 2015)

Family Protection Consultant

Nile Academy (January 2015 to April 2015)

English Teacher

Manchester United F.C (September 2009 to July 2013)

Waiter

See my personal portfolio here

• 10% acceptance rate
• 12 week program
• Working in teams to complete large projects in short periods of time.
• Focused on OOP, TDD, SOLID, MVC, DDD and Software Craftsmanship
• Used languages such as Ruby, Javascript, Java, Rails, Node.js, React.js and test frameworks including Rspec, Jasmine, Mocha, Jest, JUnit.

• Business & Management with Arabic
  2nd Class Honours
  Year Abroad studying at The Arab Academy in Cairo, Egypt

• Computer Science
  Learnt C++ and basic computer science theory
  Changed Degree

• A Levels
  History (B), Politics (B), Economics (B), Maths AS-Level(C)
• GCSE's
  5 A's, 3 B's, 3 C's

• TEFL Award - The TEFL Academy (2015)

Apart from being a massive football fan and movie fanatic, I also hosted an award winning radio show which can be found here.