Hello 👋, welcome to the Portfolio of

Zulqadar Ali

A Software/DevOps/Cloud/AI Engineer with over 10 years of experience, a demonstrated history and proven record of complex system design and implementation.
Always thriving to be a part of new Tech.
You can always reach out via LinkedIn below:

Software Projects

University ERP System

Built a ground up ERP solution for a local University. The system included almost every operation of the University. Features/Modules of the system included:

  • Student Management
  • Student Portal
  • Student Attendance
  • Lecturer Management
  • Exam Module
  • Lecturer Attendance
  • Classroom Management
  • Payroll Module
  • Graduation Management
  • Hostel Management
  • Employee Leave Module
  • Employee Overtime Module
  • Employee Payslip Module
  • Courses Management
  • Finance/Accounting Module
  • Cafe Management: Including Stocks, Reports, POS
  • PHP
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • Bootstrap
  • MySQl

Security Incident Management System

The system was made for a well known Tier 1 Bank, it was used to track, record, action and report on security incidents e.g. Thefts in the banks branches. The system also had an AI microservice to redact Personally identifiable information (PII) using Python and NLTK

  • Python
  • PHP
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • Bootstrap
  • MySQl

Corprate Store Management System

The system was made for various organizations, it was an assets management system used to track department accessories e.g. Mice, Cables, etc. The system could generate a report on the stock in the warehouse, alert when stock is low and track which user has items they haven' returned.

  • PHP
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • Bootstrap
  • MySQl

Banking End of Day System

The system was made for a local bank for them to do their end of day checks. The checks happened after all branches were closed and the EOD team do checks for the operations to continue the next day, the system had verification checks implemented which eliminated human errors and saved the EOD about 4 hours in time.

  • PHP
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • Bootstrap
  • MySQl

Hospital Management System

The system was made for a hospital to bill and manage patients. It consisted of 3 main modules to replicate the normal flow of a patients journey in a hospital

  • Reception Module: Where the patient is checked in by the receptionist and assigned a Dr. The patient is sent an email when the Dr is ready to check
  • Doctors Module: After treatment the Dr bills the patient and is forwarded to the Billing department
  • Billing Module: Bills the patient and checks out.
  • PHP
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • Bootstrap
  • MySQl

Car Showroom E-Commerce Platform

The platform was an end to end system used to sell cars. It consisted of:

  • Clients Module: Clients can login purchase cars and view current and previous orders status
  • Stock Module: Stock control of cars in the show room. It also notified admins if the threshold of cars goes below the indicated amount
  • Admin Module: A dashboard where Admins can control stock, orders, and see accounting details.
  • PHP
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • Bootstrap
  • MySQl

Extenuating Circumstances System

This system was used by a local college for students who were unable to submit their assignments prior to the submission date. The system would be incorporated of the Student Portal, where the students would be able to provide reasons as to why they were unable to submit their assignments and/or upload any evidence. An email would then be sent to the lecturer to review and either approve/reject the request

  • PHP
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • Bootstrap
  • MySQl

Cpanel User Management Mobile App

The app managed users e.g. who can access email on the companies website. Since I used Flutter and Firebase the app was accessible on both iOS and Android

  • Flutter
  • Android
  • iOS
  • Firebase

Prometheus/Slack Monitoring bot with a Real Time metrics Dashboard

NodeJS Bot to read and analyzed system alerts (e.g. Downtime, Degradation) from Prometheus pushed to Slack via hooks. This helped the relevant teams (SOC) to take quick action. There was also a custom dashboard in ReactJS to view request metrics in realtime using WebSockets (socket.io) being projected on charts

  • Prometheus
  • Slack
  • NodeJS
  • ReactJS
  • Socket.io

Meta/Telegram Bots for FAQs and E-Commerce Shopping

The bots were used by companies to enhance user experience by displaying FAQs, and other Chatbot features helpful to users. The bot also had an e-commerce integration where users could shop directly from Meta's Messenger app, the platform was integrated with M-Pesa (a local payment vendor) for flexible checkout and payment.

  • Meta
  • NodeJS

Uptime Monitoring and SSL Checker

A service to check the companies Websites uptime and SSL. If either fail then an email alert was sent to the Admins

  • Python

Experience

DevOps Engineer

Safaricom PLC

Being a DevOps Engineer for the team my primary goals were to ensure our servers had minimal downtime and could handle the over 800 enterprise applications running within our domain. To achieve this up time in an Agile and collaborative manner my team and I implemented various tools such as Ansible to check for server memory and the ELK stack to keep track of logging and server metrics. Aside from my main duties I also took other initiatives to help my department.

DevOps Initiatives:

  • Implement infrastructure as code (IaC) using Ansible/Terraform to manage cloud and on-premises environments.
  • Create, manage, and improve CI/CD pipelines to enable fast, reliable, and secure deployments
  • Collaborate with development, operations, and security teams to streamline the software delivery process.
  • Deployed apps via containerization tools (Podman) and orchestration systems (Kubernetes/Openshift).
  • Ensure version control systems like Git are used for managing codebases
  • Troubleshooting and problem-solving in production environments. These include Linux servers, Openshift, F5 Load Balancer and Tibco Applications

AI Initiatives:

  • Developed and Implemented a GenAI app that helps users close tickets assigned to them. This was done by leveraging Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) as the knowledge base to assist the support teams to close tickets faster. Cutting ticket closing time by 60% as there was less need for users to reach out to several teams in order to get assistance in closing their tickets. The LLM used was OpenSource, meaning there was no costs and since the App was hosted on local company servers, company information was more secure as it was only accessible from within the companies VPN
  • Developed and Implemented GenAI Agents and Tools. The Agents helped solve server issues and close tickets. For example a user would be able to query why a server is slow and the Chatbot would reply theres a Disk over utilized, the user can then ask for which files are consuming Disk space and ask the LLM to delete, after human approval. This project is still in Beta on UAT environments

Software Development Initiatives:

  • NextJS Dashboard to consolidate and view all Tibco and Openshift services and configs.
  • Built the Skiza Tune Lipa na Mpesa app for Safaricom Customers. The customers are now able to use the Lipa na Mpesa service to pay for their Skiza Tunes.

Automation Initiatives:

  • Python Selenium Automation with Multithreading to migrate Nginx servers to F5 Load Balancer, saved the company over $100K and 300+ hours (automation was done in 4 hours)
  • Ansible Automation: Clearing logs in different linux based systems
  • F5 Automation: Script to update iRule configs for over 1000 servers to have ELK monitoring enabled. The automation was completed in less than a 1 hour, a manual effort would take a few days.
  • F5 Automation: Script to generate a report with all F5 virtual servers and their associated target servers/pool members.
  • Microservice based Server Data scrapping, python scripting and data publication via FastAPI. This was to get info for log paths and config data for various Tibco servers
  • Encourage and motivate team members to have an Automation Mindset to implement Automation solutions.

June 2023 - Present

Senior Software and DevOps Engineer

Finsense Africa

I started as a junior Software Engineer, then transitioned into a Senior Software and DevOps Engineer. My main duties were to design and develop solutions primarily Fintech solutions. I also managed the DevOps activities within the various organizations while leading a team of developers.

  • Solutions Architect and System Design
  • Developed and maintained multiple microservices REST API based microservices using Python, Node JS , MySQL, React, Svelte
  • Led the migration of legacy applications to a cloud-based infrastructure using Kubernetes and Docker
  • Developing web based systems that meet user requirements fully
  • Collaborated with cross-functional teams to ensure project delivery and customer satisfaction
  • Implementing web based solutions across 100+ users of a tier 1 bank.
  • Recommending optimal technology solutions to leadership to improve system functionality
  • Utilized DevOps principles to automate the deployment and management of applications. Primarily Kubernetes, Helm, Jenkins, Ansible
  • Assisted in the onboarding and training of new team members.
  • Developed and deployed systems that were implemented on the latest technologies in the current industry.
  • Lead the back-end team of engineers (Python/Node)
  • Work with the Chief Architect to design scalable systems via use of DevOps tools such as Kubernetes and Ansible
  • Promoted best practices across all engineering teams such as Agile Scrum
  • Acted as technical lead on a financial institutions premier internal business application
  • Mentor and manage interns.

March 2019 - June 2023

Full Stack Engineer

Gretsa University

Designed and Developed a Full Stack system to manage a universities activities. The system consisted of various modules such as staff management, admin module, human resources module, finance module, student management module, fees module, students portal, reporting and many other modules that worked together to manage the universities activities. Implementation of back-end features included database management, security, responsiveness, etc. Development of the universities cafeteria system. The system consisted of a Point of Sale module, food management module, staff module, admin module and reporting.

July 2010 - December 2011

Senior Web Developer

Oshwal College

Responsible for the design and development of a system that manages student assignments and extenuating circumstances. The system consisted of a student module, lecturers module, management module, admin module and reporting. Implementation of back-end features included database management, security, responsiveness, etc.

September 2008 - June 2010

Education

University of Greenwich

Bachelor of Science
Computing

First Class Honours

Oshwal College

BTec Level 5
Computing

Distinction

Skills

Programming Languages & Tools
DevOps & Tools
Workflow
  • Automation
  • Monitoring
  • Cross Functional Teams
  • Agile Development

Interests

Apart from being a tech enthusiast, I also enjoy IoT by tinkering with hardware such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi, making my own mini smart home

I am also a believer in taking care of your mind and body. Making a point to be going to the gym at least 4 time a week and going out socializing on weekends

Awards & Certifications

  • Certified Kubernetes Application Developer
  • AWS Certified AI Practitioner
  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
  • Microsoft Azure Certified Azure Fundamentals