Omar Helal

An artisan knows the value to which his peers would ascribe to something

Professional Summary

Use Budibase (a low-code tool similar to Retool) to build and maintain various apps and workflows.
- These include travel form requests that trigger API calls to Telegram and send automated emails.
- Store requests into databases for querying later.
- Send API calls to groups.io to invite people to mailing lists.
- Make the applications mobile-friendly for ease of use.
- Self hosted using docker.
Maintain a Nextcloud instance that people can pay subscription and use its many features.

I held many roles during this project as it was a start-up and there were many gaps that needed filling.

I was asked to take over as project manager as the previous manager fell ill and couldn't continue.
I brought structure the project by gathering requirements efficiently and documenting processes and decisions.
I provided visibility and transparency to the project using tools like Jira and Confluence.
The project grew and stabilized under my leadership due to constant clear communication, iteration and improvement. We deployed to over 80 stores across Australia and New Zealand.

Used Python, Django, Angular, CSS and HTML to develop the application using SOLID principles and automated testing.
Encouraged the use of Git for version control where there was previously no version control by providing training and support to the team.
Standardised development environments using Vagrant so development was reproducible on either Windows or Linux.
Documented team workflows, updating the documentation whenever processes changed.
Implemented the code review process to increase shared knowledge and quality of code.

Set up the AWS infrastructure, monitored it and maintained it by using the console and writing CLI scripts.
Maintained Ubuntu servers and was the Linux server administrator by keeping server images, scripts and processes documented.
Set up Apache2 to work with Django
Documented all project dependencies by writing set up bash scripts, keeping standard requirements files updated.
- At any point we could re-create our environments locally and on the cloud.
I created a fully functional, complex architecture, using this HCL's Terraform and Packer and made infrastructure deployment easy.
The infrastructure consisted in:
- EC2 application servers,
- ALBs (Application Load Balancer),
- ElastiCache Redis servers,
- RDS MySQL Databases (with a replica),
- RabbitMQ brokers
- and many more.

Project management
Jira	Confluence

Drinking coffee with family and good friends.
Weightlifting.
All things tinkering.
- Car maintenance.
- Audio mixing and sound engineering.
- Audio cabling and soldering.
- Raspberry Pi running motors and reading potentiometers.