Senior Network Engineer - UC Security & SD-WAN Expert

Hamzeh A. Tahat

Mckinney, Tx

Phone: 708-***-****

Email: ******.*****@*****.***

OBJECTIVE

To become an VOIP & IT and network engineering professional in an ever growing field of technology; filling myself with the knowledge through support and services as a reflection on the company. WORK EXPERIENCE

Meridian IT Inc. Deerfield IL, USA 1/2023 – 1/2025 Sr. Network Engineer and Consultant UC – SECURITY

● Led security projects for medium to large enterprises, including the design and implementation of Cisco ASA 5500/5500-X firewalls, Cisco Firepower, Firepower Management Center, and identity management systems

(ACS, ISE).

● Managed migration of Cisco ACS to Cisco ISE, including configuration of RADIUS, TACACS, guest access, wired/wireless access control, BYOD policies, and VPN-based access.

● Designed and deployed multiple Cisco Firepower solutions across various industries (finance, education, manufacturing, healthcare, insurance) to improve security posture and operational resilience.

● Architected and implemented enterprise-wide secure wired and wireless infrastructure using Cisco ISE and AnyConnect, employing EAP-FAST for user and machine authentication.

● Maintained Cisco Firepower systems and served as Incident Response Analyst by reviewing logs, analyzing traffic, and generating actionable reports to mitigate threats.

● Deployed client and clientless VPN solutions using policy-based access controls and integrated Cisco ISE to push downloadable ACLs (DACLs) to firewalls.

● Delivered proof of concept (PoC) solutions for cloud and security technologies to support pre-sales and sales teams in demonstrating and implementing solutions at customer sites.

● Assist the customers to migrate their current MPLS or Point to Point connection between main locations and Data Center to SD-Wan connection using their broadband or fiber connections to their local ISPs.

● Work on migrating customers security solutions to Palo Alto Prisma cloud as their SASE solution. Infosys, AT&T, Plano TX, USA 12/2021- 12/2022

Sr. Unified Communications Engineer

● Onboard new customers from their existing PBX systems to AT&T HCS UC system or Cisco Unified Communications Manager Cloud (Cisco UCM Cloud), by assisting and working with the team to migrate the users/configuration to UC suite (CUCM, UCCX, Webex Contact Center, Unity Connection, Paging, Expressway C and Expressway E), this requires Cisco Implementation team, and AT&T team to work closely with end customers to finish the implementation and the migration process.

● Working with the network and security team on Cisco ASAs and NGFW (Next Generation Firewalls) to enable VPN between Cisco/AT&T Clusters and customer locations, building DMZ for Expressway servers, working on Firewalls ACLs, SIP inspection enablement, NATing/PATing and Security Certificates.

● Assist the support team with providing solutions for high to medium critical incidents and outages of the system

● Provide assistance to the team to build a new UC Datacenter in the location and re-IP all the UC system to voice subnet.

● Work on building CER and RedSky E911 Locations for physical MRA and on-site Cisco phone, remote Jabber, Webex clients, and assist with

● Setup Jabber/Softphone devices for all the users on the system to work on these devices and support AT&T customers remotely

● Work with AT&T core team to Troubleshoot customers’ Voice Quality issues Systemware, City Of Carrollton Carrollton TX, USA 2/2021- 12/2021 Sr. Unified Communications Engineer

● Migrating all UC System to BE7K servers and Upgrade the collaboration solution to version 12.X version to make sure it is all update.

● Working with the network and security team on Cisco ASAs and NGFW (Next Generation Firewalls) to enable VPN between Cisco/AT&T Clusters and customer locations, building DMZ for Expressway servers, working on Firewalls ACLs, SIP inspection enablement, NATing/PATing and Security Certificates.

● Assist the support team with providing solutions for high to medium critical incidents and outages of the system

● Provide assistance to the team to build a new UC Datacenter in the location and re-IP all the UC system to voice subnet.

● Working on upgrading the VGs and CUBEs from old hardware to new 4400 series and make sure all the CUBEs are licensed and confirm they are functioning well with the local carriers including PRI and SIP connections

● Work with Cisco Partners to confirm all that UC system and CUBEs are licensed and functioning as requested

● Provide all CDR solutions and call records which require some call analysis

● Build call flows charts for main numbers and documentations for future reference. MNJTech - Equivoice, Chicago IL, USA 1/2019- 2/2021 Sr. Collaboration Architect

● Build reliable and competing UC Hosted and Cloud Solutions that can be implemented and designed for new Customers (UC over SD-WAN and UC Cloud Solution through Cisco Expressway)

● Re-Design and Implement Company voice core network to provide stable and reliable infrastructure with high availability

● Work closes with vendor's account managers and engineers to inherit their new solutions and repurpose them for our customers needs and requirements (Cisco Hybrid services, WebEx Teams, Webex Calling, and Flex plans and licensing)

● Working closely with Sales and pre-Sales teams to provide UC solutions for small, medium and large customers

● Design and technical review of services Statements of Work prior to delivery to customers.

● Build Demo UC and SD-WAN Labs for training and demonstration purposes

● Work on Oracle SBC to integrate MS Teams Direct Routing with Cisco CUCM to allow MS Teams client to make calls through customers’ UC clusters

● Review UC engineers Change requests and provide decisions and recommendations through CAB meetings.

● Design and manage AWS services to provide Backup and logging services for customer UC clusters MNJTech - Equivoice, Chicago IL, USA 1/2018- 1/2019 Collaboration Engineering Team Manager

● Recruited, trained and managed the assigned team of Engineers with diverse skills, proficiency levels, and work locations.

● Overseen the assigned team of Engineers to ensure the responsibilities of their roles are being met.

● Measured team performance using appropriate tools and techniques on an ongoing basis.

● Managed the flow of day-to-day operations for the team.

● Communicate clearly and professionally to each team member the expectations, assignments and responsibilities related to projects & tickets as well as appropriate coverage for each assignment.

● Taught and trained team members on the skills and tactics necessary to do the job on an as needed basis.

● Led large and complex projects for the delivery of services to customers.

● Designed and provided technical review of services Statements of Work prior to delivery to customers.

● Provided engineering, configuration, installation, maintenance and upgrade of technologies necessary to support the services provided by the company.

● Provided technical support to customers, other engineers in the organization and departments/users.

● Reviewed and resolved anomalies that are broad and potentially have service impact.

● Researched, evaluated, recommended and deployed hardware and software solutions.

● Acted as an escalation point for customer issues.

● Coordinated activities prior to the installation and/or configuration of technical solutions.

● Served as a liaison with customers, vendors and other third party providers.

● Attended product education conferences on an as needed basis.

● Obtained and maintained technical certifications such as CCIE, CCNP, and VCP.

● Led the effort of the consolidation of Enterprise Clusters upgrades

● Implemented and reviewed LLD and HLD design documents for customers network MNJTech - Equivoice, Chicago IL, USA 8/2015- 1/2018 Senior Unified Communications Engineer

● Managed 2000+ users’ projects that are responsible for the design, engineering, installation and maintenance of VOIP system on Cisco UC applications.

● Analysis, design, implementation and support of Cisco voice over IP system solutions including multiservice infrastructure, Cisco Call Manager, Unity, IP Gateways, legacy integration with traditional PBX systems and other voice components

● Fulfilled Contact Center needs on Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Application, including intermediate programming level of custom scripts.

● Configured CUCM, Unity Connection, IM&P, UCCX and other UC application’s (building blocks: Partitions, CSS's, Device Pools, Users, Extension Mobility, MOH, DN/DID, BAT Files, their modification and import, media resource/conferencing).

● Gateway configuration MGCP, H.323 and SIP, Dial-peers, COR, PRI/T1, SRST, ICT/UC Clusters, Route List, Route Groups, Hunt Groups/List, Translation Patterns, TEHO, CTI RP,etc.

● Configured VCS Control (Core), VCS Expressway (Edge), for video End-to-End Communication and/or CUCM

● Applied VoIP servers’ upgrades to latest versions.

● Integrated CUCM servers with third party Contact centers (I3 and InContact) and Fax Servers using H323 and SIP Protocols (CopiaFacts, directFax, and Xmedius Fax servers)

● Enabled XMPP Federation through Expressway server to allow Jabber communication with other companies.

● Enabled Instant Messaging Compliance for IM and Presence service by integrate IMP server with PostgreSQL Database server to log and archive all business records of Jabber chat messaging.

● High technical expertise and Expert-Level debugging and troubleshooting on Cisco UC infrastructure. Including reviewing traces and root cause analysis for the following technologies:

- Cisco Unified Communications Manager - CUCM

- Cisco Unified Communications Manager Session Management Edition - SME

- Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express – CME

- Cisco Unity Connection – CUC

- Cisco Unity Express - CUE

- Cisco Unified Presence – IMP and Compliance server

- Cisco Unified Contact Center Express – UCCX – Finesse - CUIC

- Cisco IOS Voice Gateways and Gatekeepers

- Cisco IOS Voice Protocols based on SCCP, SIP, MGCP and H.323

- Cisco Routers/Gateways (inbound, outbound call routing)

- Cisco Telepresence Video Communication Server VCSC and Expressway VCSE

- Cisco Jabber for Windows, Android and iOS.

- Cisco Paging system: InformaCast

- Cisco Jabber Guest

- Cisco Prime Collaboration Provisioning PCP and Deployment PCD

- Cisco Emergency Responder – CER

- Cisco Smart Licensing for Cisco Devices

● Deployed and implemented Mobile and Remote Access via Cisco Expressway Servers (MRA), to allow 78XX and 88XX series IP Phones to register remotely to CUCM without VPN in addition to Cisco Jabber registration and troubleshoot this deployment technical issues such as DNS SRV records and CA security certificates.

● Installed and Configured Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower for UC clusters to have MRA and Remote registration enabled as feature for the customer

● Enabled Cloud based Cisco Spark Calls and Messaging for new customers

● Enabled Business to Business calls and URI Dialing through Expressway servers.

● Setup and Activated Cisco WebEx Rooms and Boards

● Enabled and activated Cisco WebEx Hybrid Services (Hybrid Call Service, Hybrid Directory Service, and Hybrid Calendar Service)

● Enabled Cisco Umbrella accounts and configure policies and rules for the customers to use OpenDNS as their primary DNS service

● Provided technical trainings for Administrators and End user trainings for the end customers to handing off the voice system at the end of the projects.

● Evaluated and Deploy Cisco Hosted Collaboration solution (BroadSoft) for MNJ’s new small to medium customers as Cloud based collaboration solution.

Cisco Technical Assistance Center, Estarta Solutions, Amman, Jordan 1/2015- 8/2015 Voip Team Technical Leader

● Handled escalation requests team members raise for complex cases on all technologies we handle. This includes trace analysis and lab reproductions.

● Joined conference calls with customers –when needed- to explain troubleshooting path we are going through; especially for high tier ones.

● Built Lab setups equivalent to customers’ ones to reproduce problematic scenarios in case of an expected new defect or configuration verification.

● Performed proactive reviews for engineers’ workspaces and suggest troubleshooting methods suitable for each problem.

● Developed and delivered training sessions for Junior/Senior employees about new technologies or new versions features which includes:

- Unified Communication Manager (CUCM) and its features for new Hires

- Voice Gateways and Inbound/outbound voice Processing for Junior Engineers

- Unified Attendant Console (Enterprise, Premium, Advanced, and Standard Editions) for Senior Engineers

● Performed technical interviews for new hires to evaluate their basic network knowledge and experience

● Devising effective performance assessment systems by identifying areas of improvement and implementing measures to enhance performance level of the customer support engineers Cisco Technical Assistance Center, Estarta Solutions, Amman, Jordan 1/2010- 12/2014 Senior Cisco Unified Communications Customer Support Engineer

● Provided support to international Cisco customers’ Voice and Video deployments and implementations which may include:

- Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) version 4.x – 11.x

- Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express (CME) 3.x – 10.x on UC520 and Cisco IOS

- Cisco Unified Communications Contact Center Express (UCCX) version 5.x – 11.x and its scripts

- Cisco Unity Express (CUE) version 3.x – 9.x

- Cisco Unity Connection (UC) 7.X

- Cisco Paging Server InformaCast 10 and 11

- Cisco Voice Gateways (MGCP/H323/SIP/SCCP) connected to Public switched telephone networks.

- Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series for Small Business (UC500).

- Cisco Unified Attendant Console (CUAC) version 8.X -10.X with all editions

- Cisco Telepresence Video Communication Server VCS and Expressway VCSE

- Cisco Collaboration Endpoints/Peripherals (DX/EX Series)

- Cisco Jabber and its integration with CUCM and CUPS.

- Cisco UCS servers and Unified Communication Servers Virtualization (ESXI/VMware/VSphere)

● Handled Cisco TAC service requests submitted by Cisco customers at Unified Communications ranging from system down situations to configuration assistance through e-mail/ telephone and hands-on remote access

● Extensive knowledge and experience in Installing, integrating and troubleshooting CUCM, UCCX, Gateways and UC, upgrading and integration with Cisco and third party systems.

● High Experience in Installing, and upgrading Cisco IP phones, IPC (IP Communicator), SIP third party IP phones, also Troubleshooting Software and Hardware problem of Cisco MCS servers.

● Ascertained prompt attendance to customer inquiries, analyzed defects/ bugs in Cisco Unified Communication applications and performed requisite action for their resolution through application of TAC collaboration tools.

● Provided Unified communications training for the new employees and trainees. D & E Group (PC-Warehouse), Richardson, Texas 7/7/09 – 23/9/09 Technical Support Engineer

● Responsible for designing, managing and troubleshooting TCP/IP LAN's in a production environment.

● Extensive knowledge of TCP/IP, HTTP, Telnet, FTP, UDP, DNS, Vlan and routing.

● Built and maintained internal network—Cisco, SonicWALL, Netopia and WatchGuard Firewalls and Routers.

● Monitored and troubleshot communication outages.

● Isolated Problems with LAN/WAN analyzers.

● Knowledge of Internet connectivity: Perform application, database and system maintenance. Troubleshot problems and installed upgrades.

● Provided support to different customers’ systems and maintenance.

● Troubleshot hardware and software PC problems and HP printers.

● Performed troubleshooting, repairs and upgrades of all PC equipment. Monitored daily batch processes.

● Coordinated backups of four NT servers and one NetWare server. Assisted the management team with buying decisions through product and service research. EDUCATION

University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan, 2005 - 2009

B.A. Computer Engineering, GPA 3.2/4.0

Graduation Project: Enhancing TCP performance on link layer for wireless networks: It was a solution that combined Selective Acknowledgement (SACK) with Explicit Congestion Notification (ELN) and Rate Halving, and we extended our research to include the principle of Bandwidth Estimation and Congestion sensing.

PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATIONS

● Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert Voice Track, CCIE Voice # 37055

● Cisco Certified Network Professional Voice, CCNP Voice (Formerly known as CCVP)

● Cisco Certified Network Professional Routing and Switching, CCNP

● Cisco Certified Design Processional Design, CCDP

● Cisco Certified Network Associate Voice, CCNA Voice

● Cisco Certified Network Associate, CCNA

● VMware Certified Professional VCP5.5

● AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

● Oracle Communications Session Border Controller Basic Implementation

● Leadership Training Certification.

TRAINING COURSES

● Advanced Troubleshooting Training Given by Dorin Fleseriu (Cisco TAC duty manager in Brussels) A Training to enhance troubleshooting and problem solving skills in a systematic manner and according to European standards.

● Multicultural Training

A Training to increase multicultural awareness and how to deal with customers based on their cultural background.

● Cross Cultural Leadership Workshop

● Cisco WebEx Enablement Lab v1.1, Cisco Live 2016 Cancun, Mexico

● Cisco Viptela SD-WAN Deployment Lab v1.0, Cisco Live 2018 Cancun, Mexico SKILLS

● Extensive experience and knowledge in :

- Network simulation software’s Packet Tracer (Cisco CLI based simulator), NS2(C++ and OTCL based simulator) and GNS3.

- Programming languages as Java, C++ and HTML and their softwares

- Network Monitoring tools Orion and PRTG

- Remote support tools

- Wireshark Packet Sniffer tool

● Professional in such Comprehensive knowledge of Operating Systems

- Microsoft (Windows server 2003/2008/2012, and Windows 7/8/8.1)

- Linux-Based OS (Ubuntu, Red Hat)

● Good experience and knowledge of Microchip controllers PIC 16F876 and PIC 16F84

● Comprehensive knowledge of all Microsoft office software packages and Matlab with its toolboxes.

● Extensive Knowledge of Image and Photo editors Adobe Photoshop CS3 NON TECHINCAL SKILLS

● Proven ability to execute multiple tasks efficiently and effectively.

● Commitment to outcomes

● Helpful attitude

● Business awareness

● Teamwork

● Leadership

● Working under pressure

● Fluent Bilingual (English and Arabic

● Self-driven and motivated.

● Willing to learn in a high-speed environment.

● Strong customer service attitude and interpersonal skills. HONORS

● Certificate of Excellence was awarded by Cisco TAC Vice President in recognition of having Top Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) in Jordan Cisco Technical Assistance Center in the Fiscal Year of 2013; CSAT is one of the highest priorities of Cisco and a cornerstone of the Cisco Channel Partner Program. REFERENCES

● Samah Alhaqash, VOIP-Team Manager at Cisco TAC, Estarta Solutions, Amman, Jordan Mobile: +962-********* E-mail: ********@*****.***

● Hamzeh Alzubi, Team Technical Leader at Cisco TAC, Estarta Solutions. Amman, Jordan Mobile: +962-********* E-mail: *******@*****.***

● Wasan AlTalhouni, Technical Center Manager at Cisco TAC, Estarta Solutions, Amman, Jordan Mobile: +962-********* E-mail: ********@*****.***

● Trad Tobaishat, Customer Advocacy, Cisco Systems. Brussels, Belgium Mobile: +32-487****** E-mail: ********@*****.***

● Elif Topcu, Cisco System Engineer at Sekom Systems, Ankara, Turkey Mobile:+90-530******* E-mail: ****.*****@*****.***.**

● Gheith Abandah, Associate Prof. in Computer Engineering at The University of Jordan Office: +962-*-***-**** Ext. 23000 Email: *******@**.***.**

● Patrick Robin, UC Team Manager at MNJ Technologies Chicago, Illinois Mobile:+1-630-***-**** E-mail: ******@*******.***

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