Technical Support Manager

E - MA I L : MAZEN . ALR I FA I@GMA I L . COM

**** ****** **., **** *********, BC, V3B 3R3, Canada

Mobile: +1-604-***-****, Skype: mazen.al-rifai MAZEN AL - REFAE I

PROFILE

A seasoned QA professional with a multinational background (Education: French/English & Experiences: International) in Software Development, Network Administration, Software Testing and QA and IT Management. Fluent in 3 languages

(English/French/Arabic). Portuguese: Intermediate. Canadian national. EDUCATION

Sept. 1994 University of Dundee Dundee, UK M.Sc. in Mechatronics Sept. 1990 Ecole National Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers Paris, France Diplôme d’Ingénieur PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

2014–date Freelancer ...

University of Toronto – Presiding Examiner

Executed distance learning exams for students following distance Business and Professional learning courses.

Appen - Social Media Evaluator

Using a specialized Annotation Tool, review and rate web contents into different Social Media applications, in order to support the measurement of search data relevance, on both Desktop and Mobile interfaces.

Instituto de Línguas Européias - Professor English & French

Using different educational materials used for language teaching for adults, conducted a series of Language teaching sessions.

Depending on the student’s level and the language he/she wants to work on, executed a series of session to work on their linguistic skills. For English, New English File (Intermediate/Upper Intermediate/Advanced) and English for Life (Beginner) where used. As for French, Tout Va Bien was used, in addition to extra materials for Conversation purposes, like Songs and Conversation articles.

• Licença Capacitação / VIP classes / Class room.

Exchange Idiomas (Private Classes) - Professor English & French Using different educational materials used for language teaching for adults, conducted a series of private language teaching sessions for executives: President & CEO of BB Securities at Banco do Brasil / Deputy Manager, Banco do Brasil, Private Banking / President & CEO of ABR Telecom, Juridical Diretor at Banco do Brasil

IT technical support:

Provided technical support for different embassies resident in Brasilia: LAN configuration, PC’s maintenance, Surveillance Systems (acquisition, installation, configuration and final tests). 2010–2014 Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Expatriates ... Senior Network Administrator & Team Leader

Administration of the Ministry’s LANs

• Created, Updated & Maintained Networks’ Servers, OS’s: Windows (2000/2003/2008/2012), & Linux (Ubuntu’s)

• Configured and Maintained networks VPNs

• Daily routine maintenance of Servers, Switches, Applications and backup operations

Legacy Systems Virtualization

• Using VMware 4.1-U3, Created a Data Center using Dell PE T620 & MD3600f, P2V Conversion of Windows 2003 / Oracle 8 applications, P2V Conversion of Windows 2008 Enterprise Servers

(Primary DC, Secondary, Exchange, KAV 10)

Team Leader of the Maintenance Department

Administration of the Ministry Telephony Switch, Nortel CS 1000

Provided the Ministry with a Fiber Optic bridge to service all its applications

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2008–2010 SIVECO Romania SA / Latona Bulgaria EAD. ... QA Manager

Established a Quality Management System (QMS) at the Bulgarian subsidiary (Latona)

• Created the QMS in compliance with ISO 9001 & Acquired the ISO 9001 certification for Latona

• Enforced the QMS through internal audits for every department and activity

• Evaluated Latona’s potential for ISO 27001 certification acquisition

Implemented Open Source Software that assisted into overall organization management (OPT, Project Open)

Consolidated the organization’s LAN through backups execution of old company servers, running over multiple flavors of OS’s (Windows & Linux); using either MyBook external HDD or Blu-ray disks.

Participated actively into organization’s effort to shift from standard approach of LAN management into Virtualized approach using VMware infrastructure, using Linux Ubuntu (8.04, 8.10) workstation & server, 32 & 64 bit versions. Depending on the application between hands, either VM was created and implemented.

Being fluent in Arabic, assigned to UAE to train its Ministry of Education teachers over the eLearning product manufactured by SIVECO, the so called AeL.

2006–2008 Weston Digital Technologies Ltd. ... QA Team Leader

Established the QA department at the Bulgarian branch

• Recruitment & Training of Jr. QA engineers on software QA tools and processes

Created test plans, VCRM's, testing cases, test reports, and test environments for different projects related to Weston different fields of application (Aspire, ESP, different CTI connectors "Cisco, Avaya", Axis Camera, etc

Initiated Implementation & Usage of test automation tools, in particular the HP-Mercury test suite (Winrunner, Loadrunner & Quality Centre). In addition to investigating other providers like IBM-Rational, Compuware, AutomatedQA, Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and other Open Source solutions for Function, Performance and Security Testing

Installation & Configuration of Avaya’s servers: AES (Application Enablement Services), SES (SIP Enablement Services) & ACM (Communication Manager)

Installation & Configuration of Cisco Call Manager

Using C# for .NET, developed a Software Test Automation Tool for GUI Testing

Using Eclipse as an IDE, developed automation test scripts with Perl

Participated into different efforts in relation to the establishment of the new branch in Sofia, including offices’ set up, creation of marketing materials, installation and configuration of different LAN components for the new branch, etc...

Participated into the 6th IDG Bulgarian National Conference about i-SECURITY & STORAGE, and assisted into the creation of the presentation materials for Weston, which was participating as a sponsor 2001–2006 Ministry of Foreign Affairs ...

Senior Programmer-Analyst

Developed the Ministry Consular Services Automation System, including: Civil matters, Passports issue, Residencies & Military Service matters, Visas issue, Normal and Commercial Certifications, Students Affairs and Consular Duties. Other Modules are the Mission Accounting System and Mission Archiving System, in addition to Monitoring and Backup utilities. These systems were build using JAVA & Crystal Reports as a development platform, ORACLE as a RDBMS

Implemented these systems at multiple Ministries' Embassies, including: building the embassy LAN, installation and Configuration of ORACLE on the Domain Controller, installation and Configuration of different workstations. Trained missions' members on the utilization of each module.

Installed, Configured, Tested and Trained the new Passports Issue System at a number of the Ministry’s Embassies., in addition to training the embassy staff for its usage. This system was built using VB and SQL-SERVER

As the Project Manager for the Ministry Foreign Media Department Automation Project, supervised technical activity related to the project, including:

• Establishment of the Department LAN, using win2K as server and winXP for every workstation. Hardware used was IBM’s.

• Installation & Configuration of the Department database on Oracle 9i

• Installation & Configuration of the new Media System, named MediaWorx (a Data Management System manufactured by SEDCO), for news that are gathered from local and international news agencies, in both Arabic and English Languages, and from the Internet.

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• Executed QA tasks of the new system: build and ran field test cases to insure optimal performance of the system

Installed and Configured the Security Communication System between the ministry and a number of its embassies, in addition to training the embassy's staff on its usage. 2003 – 2005 Ministry of Expatriates ...

Information Technology Department Director

Formed the IT Department at the Ministry.

• Recruited 5 junior engineers to provide technical support for the ministry IT platform

• Established basic IT services for the Ministry (including establishing the Ministry LAN, Internet Service using a 2 MB HDSL service, local email using Microsoft Exchange, trained the Ministry staff on basic IT concepts: internet, email and Microsoft Office).

Initiated the Ministry e-gov project: (that would include 3 basic systems: Content Management System (CMS), Document Management System (DMS), and Business Process Management (BPM), in addition to a web portal)

• Writing the project Product Requirements Document (PRD),

• Initial market research for potential providers, identification of most suitable candidates for the task,

• Evaluation of candidates' offers after life presentations, and identification of the most suitable provider

1999–2001 Soft & CAD Inc. ...

Senior Programer

Using Java tools, executed a feasibility study to convert a locally built VB & Developer 2000 library into Java, for web applications, which would allow the company to expand its customers applications into the web

Developed, using VB and Crystal Reports, the reporting Module of a Hotel Management System, for CHAM Hotels group.

1999 BCI Nexxia Inc. ...

Programmer - Analyst

Install & Configure Solaris 2.5.1 on a SPARC 20 workstation, within the LAN of the test environment

Install different releases of CiscoSecure package (2.2.3, 2.2.4 and 2.3.2), for Y2K testing purposes. Populate the SQLAnywhere RDBMS of CiscoSecure with critical user profile

Execute Y2K test for CiscoSecure, evaluate output results, recommend solutions, and provide final test report

Execute Y2K tests for Netscape Fast Track, evaluate output results, recommend solutions (in particular, the impact of the Million Question Vulnerability of Netscape Servers on Y2K compliance of the FastTrack Server); and provide final test report

Install, configure and populate Sybase 11.5.1 adaptive server

Install & Configure Legato Networker 5.2.1 ( Server, Clients and Jukebox)

Install & Configure SQL-BackTrack 4.0.10

Install & Configure the OBSI module release 2.0.2.0 for SQL-BackTrack

Execute Y2K tests for SQL-BackTrack, evaluate output results, recommend solutions, and provide final test report

Execute Y2K test for PIX Firewall, evaluate output results, recommend solutions and provide final test reports 1996–1999 CGI-BCIS ...

Programmer-Analyst at the Consulting Services District Programs: Y2K Renovation-Phase I (Mission Critical); Y2K Renovation-Phase II (Priority); Broadband (ATM)

Create Strategies and Plans for Acceptance and Normalization Activities for several Network Management Systems within the Service Assurance Platform of BELL Canada ICN (Internal Corporate Network), in particular: IFNSS, TNOSS, DFMS, NSMS, ISNMS, SMARTS and COPS-TM

Create related testing cases for the acceptance activities, either manual or automated, using appropriate tools (MS-Office, Access, QARun, QALoad and QADirector) and participate into their execution.

As a representative of the Support Organization within CGI:

• Create WBSs and SOWs, in addition to Participating into weekly Conference Calls and Document Walkthroughs

• Evaluate, negotiate and recommend funding for the overall support organization (CM, PM and OM), current the overall project life cycle (Development & Support)

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• Interview support personnel and end users for the purpose of establishing an application SLA

(Service Level Agreement)

1995–1996 ERICSSON RESEARCH CANADA ...

Systems Test Engineer at the Integration & Verification Department (LMC/NI) Project CMS 8800/4 “INDIGO”

Analyze the features/services that this new package will provide to its customers. The result of the analysis is resumed in one document “Level Test Analysis (LTA)” that would be used as an input to System Test activities, i.e. Level Test and BAT specifications. Analysis used Object Oriented methods and targets a fully automated system testing procedures. OOA methods that were investigated: Shlaer-Mellor, SDL-MSC and UML. Project CMS 8800/3 “PACKAGE C3”

Design and Support of Simulated Background Traffic using TSS2000. Those scripts simulate different cases of interaction between an Ericsson Mobile Services Switching Centre (MSC) and the assigned Radio Base Stations (RBS’s) in its Area, during Busy Hour Scenario. Typical issues to be covered are Compliance with MTUP, IS41, IS136 and IS53

Design and Support of Background Activities scripts using AUTOSIS. Those activities are resumed by a set of Operation & Maintenance Functions that insure optimal system behavior. The complete list covers 65 functions, each one of them call the associated set of APT commands 1994–1995 AT & T / UoD ...

Research Assistant at the Advanced Mechatronics Research Center

Designed and implemented simulation software and its GUI, for a Fuzzy Controller, using OOAD provided by C language. The Fuzzy Controller was implemented in the fourth generation of the Automated Teller Machine (ATM)

Identified the sensing strategy, based on Fuzzy Pattern Recognition algorithms and using acoustic transducers 1990–1993 Scientific Study & Research Centre (SSRC) ... Consultant at the Finite Element Laboratory

Develop 2D and 3D finite element models, using Beam, Shell and Solid elements. The geometric structure can be defined under COSMOS/M graphical menu; or under AutoCAD, and transferred to COSMOS/M using the typical protocols (DXF/IGS). The models are investigated under different kinds of loads (static, dynamic, heat transfer, etc COSMOS/M can also tolerate already built models under ANSYS

Realize vocational training course on COSMOS/M and AutoCAD REFERENCES

Available on request

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