August 2017

Embedded Software Engineer @ Valeo

Having studied electronics and communication Engineering in one of Egypt's top universities: Cairo University, I did learn a lot about the inner workings of both networks and processors. However, after studying both for 5 years in college, the main takeaway for me was that I didn't really find myself doing either as a career 😂 They felt too low-level and abstract from real applications.

The first job I got out of college was as an embedded software engineer in Valeo, A large French company in the automotive industry, with one of their biggest R&D centers in Egypt.

I worked with my team on a core part of one of Honda's self-driving cars; specifically the sensor fusion platform, where our job was to take readings from all the different types of sensors that the car had on board (cameras, radars, lidars, etc…), merge them, and produce a map in real-time, so that the car knows where it is and where the objects around it are.

Sounds pretty cool, right? It was, and I learned a lot while working on that project. However, even though we had this really cool application of the technology, I found that I spent most of my time working on writing c and assembly code, going through data sheets for custom hardware, and looking at meaningless dots on charts.

Very low-level things again… To the point where despite working on the project for nearly 2 years, I never actually got to see the car itself! We’d spend months on end for example trying to get 2 pieces of hardware to talk together before we get to the application logic 🤯

Not being able to see the impact of my work was quite demotivating after a while, and I started exploring other fields to see if there was something I’d find more fulfilling.

2018

Top Rated Freelancer @ Upwork

I started freelancing part-time on Upwork. This allowed me to explore different fields in a lower-risk setting than a full-time job, and the direct client interactions really helped shape my sense of how impactful and problem-oriented engineering is, which helped shape my mindset in ways I didn't recognize until much later.

I explored different fields: machine learning, computer vision, data science, and web scraping, before finally landing on backend and cloud computing. I fell in love with the field for many reasons:

It leveraged my existing low-level experience (I was now working on custom Linux distributions in my full-time job)

I could build something that easily impacts hundreds if not thousands of people.

💡But most of all, all I needed to get started was an internet connection and a laptop! This was a very stark difference compared to embedded systems or electronics design, where you had expensive hardware and software licenses and very long turnaround times for projects.

Freelancing also gave me an opportunity to work directly with clients and share my product-oriented mindset. To be an effective problem solver, I learned to better understand the business goals, and help clients achieve them efficiently, even if it meant I make less because we ended up with a simpler solution 😃

I climbed the ranks in Upwork over a few months and held and maintained a top-rated rank for a couple of years. I had the opportunity to work on a lot of great projects and with great clients, one of whom turned into my next full-time role :)

August 2018

Founding Engineer @ Tempo

It started as another Upwork project, a US startup based in Silicon Valley was looking for an experienced Backend engineer to help build their system. The CEO (Moawia) reached out over Upwork and we hit it off cause he was a fellow Egyptian, and the CTO (Josh) was a versatile engineer across the full stack, with a bias towards action and delivery.

Tempo (Pivot at the time) was building a very unique product in an area I had no exposure to before that time. They took Xbox’s stereo camera (Kinect) and built a system where people could work out in front of it, and it’d offer them feedback in real-time, similar to how a personal trainer would! So if you're doing a Bicep curl for example with a heavyweight, and you end up leaning backward, It’d prompt you to adjust your form or lower the weight.

Tempo had a mission to improve people's lives from day one, which I personally connected with, given how challenging it was to prioritize my health at the time, with work and other commitments at the time.

We worked together part-time for about 8 months. We found that despite:

• the timezone difference (8+ hours between Egypt and the US)
• the language difference (My main language is Arabic, but my English was decent at the time 😀)
• the geographical difference (a 15+ hour flight, we never met in person till years later)

Things worked out quite well! So I moved to work with them full time, and we started growing the team in Egypt 🎉 We hired more engineers, got an office, moved into a bigger office, and nearly 4 years later, Tempo had:

<Insert Metrics>

Over the next five years, my role changed quite a bit, I got to experience the company growing from an early-stage startup to a series D company (Covid really helped accelerate that, lucky us… Or not so lucky? 🤔), and my role was always about where I can add the most value, some highlights were:

• Building our first e-commerce pipeline that charged our first few thousand orders? Check ✅
• Building our first analytics report and data pipeline based on user behavior? Check ✅
• Pushing a critical bug into production that cost us over 10k in lost revenue in less than an hour? That was my lucky contribution as well 😂 (happy to tell you all about it another time!)

I also oscillated between doing deep IC work, and managing a team of up to 5 engineers at different points in my tenure, and had an opportunity to collaborate with a lot of different stakeholders from Analytics, Accounting, Operations, Content, etc…

Before I left in 2023, I was a staff Software engineer, and the tech lead for one of 2 main product groups at Tempo, called top-of-funnel, which was responsible for:

• How the user finds out about us (Marketing)
• How we craft our story to convert users (our main website)
• How we enable users to buy things from us (our e-commerce integrations, including supply chain)
• Their first few weeks into using our products (onboarding)

I had an opportunity to work under great mentors and collaborate with excellent colleagues during my time at Tempo, as well as help in offering lots of opportunities in Egypt to work on this mission as well, and I'll always cherish that ❤️ Tempo was a big part of my life during those 5 years, and I’d not have chosen to leave unless it was for something as special (or even more), as you’ll see 😀