Muhammad Atif Sajid (Certified PMP)

 

Career Summary

I am a PMI Certified Project Management Professional who has more than 20 years of diverse and progressive experience in Information Systems, Networks, Infrastructure and Services design and operation related projects. An accomplished, self-motivated, performance-driven, and customer-focused technical project manager who has strong understanding and ability to implement PMI project management principles and best practices with minimal direction and supervision. Both hands-on and technical/project management experience in driving systems/software, network infrastructure and services related projects to success in both local and international markets.

Technical Management / Project Management Skills

Technical/Project Leadership Skills:

·               Team Leadership: Provides technology, project and team leadership closely aligned with department/company strategy and goals. Ability to mentor and coach team and project team members.

·               Collaboration: Lead teams across broad technical design, IT, operational and business domains. Ability to build strong team relationships, influence and motivate without authority through objective sharing and fostering trust & respect among team members.

·               Multi-tasking: Ability to handle multiple projects at the same time with clear prioritization and resource/time management.

·               Analytical Skills: Ability to apply my engineering background and can make sense out of variety of information in tough situations through analytical thinking.

·               Communication: Ability to communicate clearly and persuasively

·               Project Delivery: Requirement analysis and translating them into system, network and services solutions, impact analysis, proof of concept testing and realization, multi-vendor integration (IOT), New products and technology evaluation, development of project scope and baseline, work breakdown (task creation) and planning, project schedule with clear dependencies, resource estimation, identification and follow-up of key milestones and deliverables/artifacts, progress monitoring/reporting, risk/constraint/assumption analysis and management, tactical planning, disaster-recovery strategy, change control management, project documentation including high/low level design, testing strategy and guidelines, test cases & service assurance processes, pre-launch friendly user testing (FUT), product launch, lessons-learned sessions, post-launch issue resolution (through setting up war rooms).

Management Skills:

·               Budget and resource planning, budget tracking, reporting and efficiency monitoring, creating savings by carefully identifying technical requirements, reviewing vendor BOQs, vendor negotiations and endorsing cost-efficient designs, technical RFP/RFQ authoring, multiple vendors management, MSA and Contract negotiation

·               Team/staff management including creation of yearly performance development contracts, evaluation of staff performance and provide scoring against objectives and KPIs set in the beginning of the year ; staff mentoring, driving team/staff performance where required

Tools:

·               MS WORD, EXCEL, POWERPOINT, VISIO, PROJECT, SHAREPOINT. Ability to learn any new tool in no time.

 

Technical/Technology Skills & Knowledge

·               IP LAN/WAN technologies including interfaces, routers, switches, VLANs, EtherTrunk, IPv4/IPv6 addressing schemes, IPv6 address types, PPPoE, HSRP/VRRP, , SNMP, TCP/IP, DHCP/DNS servers; Routing Protocols and techniques like OSPFv2 and 3, EIGPR, BGPv4, RIP, redistribution, summarization, filtering and PBR; IP/MPLS technology, MPLS L2-VPN, MPLS L3-VPN, MP-BGP, WAN technologies, Metro-Ethernet OAM, 802.1ag, 802.3ah, Y.1731

·               Rackmount & blade server infrastructure, Operating Systems, System and Network Applications, Hardware and Software upgrades, UNIX/Linux servers, platforms, Linux shell scripting, Automation techniques, System Access Control (authentication and authorization)

·               IP Security technologies: IPSec, NAT/PAT, IKE, RADIUS, Diameter, Load Balancers, Stateful Firewalls, VPN Concentrators, Site-to-Site VPN, Remote Access VPN, Tunneling

·               Wireless technologies, Access Points,, 802.11a/b/g/n standards, AP controllers, service management platforms, captive portal, WiFi authentication techniques, WiFi offloading; Network access, policy, acct architecture; End-to-end multi-technology CoS/QOS

·               3G/LTE packet core (EPC), 3GPP interfaces and protocols, PCRF/PCC architecture and interfaces, Offline and Online (postpaid and prepaid)  Provisioning and Billing integration; RADIUS and Diameter protocols; Fixed broadband core (BNG/BRAS/AAA); GPON access, ODN integration with OLT, FTTH/FTTB, xDSL; VoIP, SIP, SIP Extensions, RTP/RTCP, SIP-Clients, SIP servers, SBC, IMS, IMS integration with EPC, IMS call flows

·               Virtualization, Cloud Service Models, VMWare, Virtual Machines, vSwitch, Data Center technologies, Overlay technologies like VXLAN, OTV, FabricPath, DMVPN; Software Defined Networks, SDN/NFV architecture, Southbound protocols like OpenFlow, NetConf, ETSI NFV guidelines, MANO architecture and components

Major Projects Completed As Technical Project Manager/Lead

Ooredoo Group – Technical/Project Manager Fixed Core and Services (Dec 2009 – July 2015)

 

Successfully delivered following projects in various domains:

·               EPC Core Deployment: Upgraded low-capacity and heavily congested 2G/3G packet core from Ericsson platform to SingleCore EPC from Huawei serving 3GPP 2G/3G/4G and non-3GPP technologies. The new enhanced geo-redundant packet core in three data centers provided multi-million attach/PDP/bearer and multi-Gbps per node capacity for current and future needs. As part of the migration deployed new hardware and software, conducted extensive IOT between multiple vendors and integration of new platform with the existing BSS/OSS (IT) systems. The new core fully integrated with the IP-MPLS core and Sandvine PTS 22000 series Policy Traffic Switch for network, subscribers and application analytics. Due to upgrade customer and traffic growth tripled in 1 year time.

§    Fixed Services Launch: Launched first-ever-in-the-middle-east fixed WiMAX, FTTH, DSL (FTTB), LTE (TDD) based broadband (data and voice) services in Oman for both residential and business customers; As the country was lacking proper fiber/copper infrastructure, WiMAX/LTE (wireless) based fixed broadband services proved to be the most revenue generating initiative for the company after voice business. Besides design/testing/implementation of new hardware and software, the project included end-to-end service provisioning and delivery components, full integration with OSS/BSS elements, CPE/Device tools for remote device management, soft-launch, friendly-user testing, survey and analysis, launch related problem identification, resolution involving multiple stakeholders.

§    WLAN Hotspot Services Platform Enhancement: As internal department project, took over the legacy Wireless LAN hotspot network and core and led the enhancement of entire core infrastructure (hardware and software) from Windows based platforms to Linux based platforms in geographically redundant datacenters. Project included deployment of new Linux based VMs, new web servers, migration of old MySQL database to Oracle DB, integration of new system with existing IT payment gateway system for credit and voucher-based charging, web based components leveraged on Java/J2EE MVC (Model View Controller), provided template based captive portal design options, enhanced performance and reporting system; also developed the policies, processes and guidelines for B2B and B2C services analysis, design, customization and implementation on a customer case by case basis. The enhancement reduced operational tickets from 2 per week to 1 per month.

§    Fixed Enterprise/Business Services Launch: Launched customized Layer-2 and Layer-3 data and voice (L2VPN, L3VPN, Analog Voice, Digital Voice, SIP Trunk) unmanaged and managed services for large enterprises over multiple access technologies including WiMAX, LTE, dark fiber, FTTX including SLA management; Several enterprise customized designs were based on OSPF/BGP routing protocols instances running in VRF environment through IP/MPLS; Project included end-to-end service provisioning and delivery components; Used CPE SNMP, Netflow/IPFIX capabilities and external Accedian Ethernet NID devices for customer experience management (CEM) and meeting tight customer SLA.

§    In-house Business Intelligence Solution Development (Software Development): As an internal department project, led the in-house development of software tool for retrieving, storing and analyzing EDR data from Huawei PCRF providing business and operational intelligence on different services through network analytics; the data analytics software tool was built on VMware ESXi Type 1 hypervisor, Linux OS, using MonetDB database tool with column-store database management system and Apache Pig (data flow scripting language) for data manipulation and storing. The tool helped service assurance and operation team to identify key issue areas to concentrate on and develop the solution.

§    Common PCC Framework: As an internal department project, envisioning a converged core in future (EPC) took the initiative and led the efforts through vendor for development, testing and implementation of PCC (Gx) interface for TD-LTE, BNG and Wireless LAN core elements. The efforts provided marketing and product teams an opportunity to build bundled products with Wireless LAN access.

§    Innovative Fixed and Mobile Services Launch: Launched many innovative services like GCC Roaming, Email Everywhere, IP-VPN over LTE, Family Share, Group Share M2M, Busy Time etc.

§    WiMAX to LTE Migration Program: Due to end-of-sale and end-of-support issues for WiMAX core network platforms, led the efforts of migrating all residential and business customers from revenue-generating WiMAX network to newly deployed TD-LTE network. It was a challenging undertaking for all the stakeholders including business, business support, IT, network, operation and customer support. Besides standard design , testing and implementation of services, the project included migration strategy, planning, business simulation, and customer and staff education while maintaining/improving the service value offered to the residential and business customers.

§    Residential and Business CPE Procurement: RFP authoring, vendor analysis, selection and later configuration template design for fixed residential and business CPEs including Layer 2/3 switches, 3G/LTE/FTTH/WiMAX CPEs, CPE routers, Integrated Access Devices and integration with SNMP, TR-069 and OMA/DM device management platforms

 

Major Projects Completed As SME

Sprint / Clearwire USA – Senior Network Development Engineer (August 2003 – July 2009)

§    WiMAX Core Design and Deployment: Worked on a Sandvine DPI based WiMAX Core solution (including load balancers, firewalls, IDS etc) for providing an architecture suitable for tiered services, flexibility of charging, performance awareness to optimize CAPEX and OPEX and security. Led the design for Nokia based ASN-GW & integration into IP based Core Data Network, worked on all IP, ports & connectivity details for first market deployment and then worked with engineering teams for general market deployment, integrated with Sprint’s core network which was built on Cisco/Juniper MPLS Edge & Core Routers, also worked on IP routing schemes using BGP & OSPF to fully integrate Nokia ASN-GW into the Core network

§    Service Access Control Design: Led the efforts of defining the Access Control for WiMAX subscribers in multi-vendor RAN environment from Nokia, Samsung and Motorola; responsible for architecture and design of Authentication/Accounting Framework (based on RADIUS & Diameter) and its interface with Subscriber Provisioning Database, designed access control, policies, and security architecture and subscriber services

§    Data Center Re-Architecture: Completed various Firewall & Network IDS implementation projects including multi-layer data center re-architecture.   The project included Cisco PIX firewalls & Network IDS blades for Cisco 7600 Product.   Also worked on threat and security data collection and analysis tools.  

§    ZTE Device Certification: Led the complete efforts of certifying the integration of ZTE WiMAX mobile USBs and also CDMA/WiMAX combo-USBs with OMA-DM system for remote management and software/configuration delivery

§    Roaming Projects: Worked on architecture and design of roaming scenarios between 3G/4G networks and also between Sprint/Clearwire and 4G MVNO Networks. Also, led the CDMA-GPRS roaming, iDEN-GPRS roaming projects based on Proxy Mobile IP solution, worked on complete design for interoperability between technologies, AAA interface & proxy, connectivity and routing between Sprint network and partner networks via CRX. Received Excellence Award for the project from Sponsor group because the project design saved $2.5M in CAPEX. Also, represented Sprint in 4 International Roaming Team Quarterly meetings (CDMA Development Group).

Achievements/Awards

§    Earned average performance rating of 4 (out of 5) consistently in Ooredoo Group Oman (2009-2015)

§    Nominated for “Clearly the Best” annual award in Clearwire

§    Received multiple “Excellence Awards” & “Certificate of Recognition” in Sprint/Nextel from technical and product management groups

Education / Trainings / Memberships

§    B.E. (B.S.) in Computer Systems Engineering Technology from NED University Karachi Pakistan

§    Project Management Professional (PMP) certified by Project Management Institute (PMI), member of PMI

§    Vendor/Industry Courses: 2G/3G PS Core, LTE PS Core (EPC), 2G/3G/4G Troubleshooting and Call Analysis, Huawei UPCC PCRF product and service design and analysis, Cisco IP/MPLS, MPLS-based VPN, MPLS-TE, Cisco Routers/Switches, Cisco Intrusion Detection System (Scanners, Policy Manager, CIDSM), Mobile IP, GSM Data Support (GPRS), Bridgewater Systems AAA Service Controller Authentication and Accounting Servers, GPON and MSAN Systems, WiFi Core & Offloading, Aruba Mobility Controllers for WiFi Hotspots, APIS VoIP and IMS technology

§    Project Management Professional: Prep for PMP by Joseph Phillips