Mahmoud Elshenhab
Staff Compliance Automation Engineer @Okta
Table of Contents
Professional Summary
Staff Compliance Automation Engineer with 10+ years of experience in software development, infrastructure automation, and system engineering. Currently at Okta, focused on developing tools and processes to automate compliance evidence collection and reporting, significantly reducing manual effort while improving data reliability. Previously at ServiceNow, enhanced cloud infrastructure reliability through proactive monitoring and alert automation. At Amazon Web Services (AWS), led key initiatives to streamline region builds and patching workflows, reducing cycle times from 40+ days to 7 days, and provided expert-level support for enterprise customers on complex infrastructure, particularly Relational Database Services (RDS). Skilled in designing resilient systems, developing automation scripts (Python, Ruby, Bash), and implementing database solutions (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB) to improve operational efficiency and eliminate manual intervention.
Professional Experience
Staff Compliance Automation Engineer
OKTA | Dublin, Ireland (Remote)
- Developed an internal survey tool to automate the collection of compliance-related information from various teams.
- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to ensure the tool met compliance requirements.
- Implemented a user-friendly interface to facilitate easy data entry and retrieval.
- Designed and implemented a CI pipeline to automate testing the survey tool, ensuring high code quality and reliability.
- Mentored junior engineers on best practices for developing secure and efficient software solutions.
- working on designing and implementing a project to automate the collection of compliance evidence from various teams.
Staff Site Reliability Engineer
ServiceNow | Dublin, Ireland (Remote)
- Maintain and improve the operational reliability of the ServiceNow Cloud platform.
- Enhance infrastructure stability and performance utilizing internal automation services.
- Manage and respond to system alerts, collaborating effectively with customer support teams to ensure timely resolution.
- Develop automation processes for alert handling, thereby reducing manual workload and improving response accuracy.
- Contribute to the refinement of internal team operational procedures and workflows.
System Development Engineer
Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Dublin, Ireland
- Developed automation for AWS networking service region builds, enhancing deployment speed and consistency.
- Participated in on-call rotation, assuming ownership for production fleet reliability, maintenance, and incident response.
- Engineered automation solutions for service deployments, contributing to improved service quality and reduced release cycle times.
- Resolved complex system issues, developed new service features, and enhanced operational automation capabilities.
- Resolved a critical software defect related to fleet monitoring by applying expertise in the Gossip protocol.
- Served as a subject matter expert in automating patching workflows; led a project reducing patching cycle time from over 40 days to 7 days.
- Initiated development of zero-touch build workflows for bastion fleets to minimize manual configuration.
System Engineer I
Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Dublin, Ireland
- Developed automation for AWS networking service region builds, enhancing deployment speed and consistency.
- Participated in on-call rotation, assuming ownership for production fleet reliability, maintenance, and incident response.
- Engineered automation solutions for service deployments, contributing to improved service quality and reduced release cycle times.
- Resolved complex system issues, developed new service features, and enhanced operational automation capabilities.
Cloud Support Engineer II
Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Cape Town, South Africa
- Provided expert-level technical support to AWS Enterprise customers, diagnosing and resolving complex infrastructure issues, specializing in Relational Database Services (RDS).
- Executed database migrations involving MySQL, MariaDB, and Amazon Aurora across multiple AWS regions with minimal downtime.
- Conducted in-depth root cause analyses for system and database failures for both customer and internal AWS service teams.
- Collaborated with AWS Solution Architects to design and recommend best practices for highly available, durable, and performant database solutions.
Cloud Support Engineer I
Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Cape Town, South Africa
- Achieved recognition as an RDS Subject Matter Expert (SME).
- Executed numerous database migrations involving MySQL, MariaDB, and Amazon Aurora across multiple AWS regions, consistently achieving minimal downtime (under 5 minutes).
- Conducted in-depth root cause analyses for system and database failures for both customer and internal AWS service teams.
- Collaborated with AWS Solution Architects to design and recommend best practices for highly available, durable, and performant database solutions.
- Advised customers on optimal AWS service selection based on workload requirements, feature needs, and budget constraints.
- Guided internal and external clients on application redesign to optimize database communication methods, significantly improving workload performance.
- Developed Python and Bash scripts to automate operational tasks for customers.
- Identified and reported bugs in AWS internal workflows impacting customer experience; created reproducible test cases facilitating service team investigations and subsequent fleet-wide patches.
- Developed automated onboarding training materials for MySQL, MariaDB, and Aurora support.
- Mentored and trained new Cloud Support Engineers to proficiency.
System Engineer
Freelance | Egypt
- Designed and implemented a home multimedia streaming system leveraging DLNA and Torrent technologies on a Linux platform.
- Resolved multi-user access limitations for a local company's Microsoft Access database application, enabling concurrent operations across multiple branches.
NIX System Engineer
Link Data Center (LinkDev) | Cairo, Egypt
- Administered Linux servers (primarily CentOS/RHEL) and led project implementations within a data center environment focused on web hosting.
- Executed migration of hosting infrastructure from Apache HTTP Server to Nginx.
- Designed and implemented distributed media hosting solutions for enhanced performance and scalability.
- Developed Bash scripts for automated DNS record migration and proactive service monitoring.
System Administrator
International Turnkey Systems (ITS) | Cairo, Egypt
- Administered servers operating Microsoft Windows Server and Linux distributions within a VMware ESX virtualized environment.
- Managed database systems including Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase ASE.
Education
Bachelor of Computer Sciences
Misr Higher Institute for Commerce & Computers | Mansoura, Egypt
Grade - Good (70.73%)
Certifications
Microsoft Certified - Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)
Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python
Cloud Computing Concepts, Part 2
Cloud Computing Concepts, Part 1
Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) - RHEL 5 (EX200)
Former Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT) - RHEL 5 (RH202)
RHCT was superseded by RHCSA
Projects
YamlCV
Created a Jekyll-based CV management system that uses YAML as a single source of truth for resume data. The system generates both an interactive, visually-rich HTML resume and an ATS-friendly version from the same data source. Features responsive design, elegant timeline-based experience visualization, and customizable styling. Built with HTML, CSS, Jekyll/Liquid templating, and JavaScript for interactive elements. Repository available at https://github.com/shenhab/YamlCV
Football Player Data Visualization Tool
Developed a software application using Python (and relevant data analysis/visualization libraries) to process and visualize football player statistics sourced from FBref.com. Implemented features enabling comparative analysis of player performances, designed to make complex statistical data accessible and understandable to a general audience. Continuously exploring enhancements for football data analysis presentation.
Skills
Cloud Platforms
- AWS
- Azure
- GCP
Infrastructure as Code
- Ansible
- Puppet
Containerization
- Kubernetes (K8s)
- LXC on Proxmox
Monitoring
- Grafana
- Splunk
Programming Languages
- Python
- Ruby
- Bash
- JavaScript
- HTML
- CSS
Databases
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- MS SQL Server
- Sybase
- MariaDB
- Amazon Aurora
Operating Systems
- Linux (CentOS/RHEL)
- Windows Server
- VMware ESX
- Proxmox
Web Services
- NginX
- Apache HTTP Server
- SMTP (Postfix)
- DNS (Bind)
- WordPress
- Varnish Cache
Other
- ServiceNow Platform
- Software Debugging
- System Development
- Services Architecture
- Dashboarding
- n8n
- CI/CD
- GitHub Actions
- GitHub
- Jira
- Confluence
- Slack
Networking
- TCP/IP
- DNS
- DHCP
- VPN
- Firewalls
- DLNA
Diagram as Code
- Mermaid Diagrams
CV as Code
- YamlCV ;)