Passionate technology leader. Hands-on computer buff for 20+ years with last 14 years at Verizon.
- Expertise in AWS & Google cloud, Big data, Data engineering etc. with hands-on skills in Java, Go, Python etc.
- Built teams from ground up to build large-scale systems and provide carrier-grade services
- Provided thought leadership on cloud, big data, machine learning and digital transformation
- Technology management
- AWS & Google Cloud, Data lake, Machine Learning
- DevOps, Security, Agile
- Digital Transformation
- People Management
- Managed 30+ developers at onshore and offshore locations, hired people, molded teams, executed with laser sharp priorities
- Process management
- Agile, CI/CD, source control, code review, security analysis, risk mitigation, budgeting, project planning
- Managing social system
- Leadership, Marketing, Digital Ops, Customer Experience, Field Support, Product Development, Peers, yeasayers and naysayers
Oct 2011 – Mar 2019
Led Big Data team to setup a multi-tiered data lake in AWS used by different enterprise teams to analyze sales trends, customer insights, application behavior etc. Worked extensively in all phases such as Data Ingestion, Storage, Transformation, Processing, Analysis, etc.
- Used technologies such as Amazon Kinesis, S3, Redshift, Apache Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, Python, Go, Hive, Amazon EMR, Redshift Spectrum, etc.
Led Data Science and App Analytics team to build Machine Learning solutions for company initiatives such as to reduce customer churn from 1.1% to 1%, improve customer adoption rate of value added services by 100%, increase accessory sales by 300% etc.
- Regression and Classification problems
- Used Python, Keras, TensorFlow, Pandas, Seaborn, Scala
- Increased the customer acceptance rate of a new product offer by 500-800% (from 1-2% to 9-11%)
Architected multiple AWS-based applications to help reduce annual infrastructure expense by $100M. Led the team to migrate systems to AWS cloud and develop cloud-native apps.
- Won the DevOps cup, the annual competition for managing company apps in the best practice-compliant manner.
- AWS technology stack (EC2, ELB, S3, CloudFront, Aurora PostgreSQL, SQS, SNS, DynamoDB, Cloud Formation, Cloudwatch, CloudTrail etc.).
- Increased availability of a critical app from 99.2% to 99.99% and scalability by 400% while reducing annual system cost by 60%.
Developed key modules of My Verizon Mobile, Verizon’s flagship app which is at the core of the company’s drive to reduce annual customer care cost by $200M in 3 years by increasing users’ digital engagement from 46% to 70%.
- Enables customers to self-serve for managing accounts, plans, payments, shopping, devices, diagnostics, etc.
- 16M+ monthly active in users in a user base of 40M
- Massively scalable app of n-tier architecture sustains 1M+ active users per hour with 99.96% availability
- Server technologies - AWS stack (EC2, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, Lambda Serverless etc.), Java, Go, Spring Boot, React JS, Microservices
- Mobile technologies - Swift/Objective-C, Android Java/Kotlin
- Impacts $1.5B service expense and $30+ billion revenue channel.
- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vzw.hss.myverizon
- https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-verizon/id416023011
To reduce each store rep’s customer engagement time by 20% (from 20 minutes to 16), built the Content Transfer mobile app that transfers content between smartphones irrespective of make, model and carriers.
- Saved $12M+ direct cost and reduced $20m+ opportunity cost
- 9+ million downloads in 4+ years. Ranked #30 in Productivity
- Swift/Objective-C, Kotlin, Android Java
- AWS cloud technology stack including EC2, S3, Postgres etc.
- 4.7 app-rating in Apple App Store (13k feedback) and 4.7 in Google Play (30k feedback).
- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.verizon.contenttransfer
- https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/verizon-content-transfer/id1127930385
To improve the Net Promoter Score from 40% to 50% among subscribers, built Verizon Cloud suite of applications to enable customers manage their photo, video and other mobile device content from web
- NPS improved to 47% in two years
- Served a customer base of 5+ million
- Impacted a $230M+ annual revenue stream.
- Spring Boot, Java, Spring, MQ, Microservices, Splunk, Lambda serverless, EC2, S3, Postgres, DynamoDB NoSQL
Built a home-grown mobile app ecosystem for enterprise needs.
- Hosted 100+ apps for a user base of 65,000+ employees
- Mission-critical system that helped mobilize 17,000+ stores with a 60,000+ strong sales force having 70,000+ mobile devices
- In the critical path of $40+ billion per year revenue flow
- Implemented AAA, SSO, device and data security, web app container, broadcast message etc.
- Swift/Objective-C, Kotlin, Android Java
- AWS stack (Lambda, EC2, S3, Postgres etc.), Spring Boot, Java, Spring, MQ, Akka Microservices, Scala, Splunk.
Provided strategic leadership by showing value in adopting a React Native architecture for My Verizon mobile app migrating from native tools.
- Coded a POC app in React Native to evaluate the framework
- Would improve app release cycle from 2/month to 2/day and also save $2M+ of annual direct cost when implemented fully
- Github for source code: https://github.com/shahidcc/myAlbums
Built Verizon MDM service that enables corporations manage their mobile and IoT devices from cloud (OMA-DM and LWM2M protocol)
- 1,500+ companies manage 1M+ devices
- Generates $30+ million per year revenue
Jun 2009 – Oct 2011
Built the company's first Visual Voicemail app
- Preloaded in 20+ million Android, 6M+Blackberry, 2M+ Windows 8 phones and downloaded on 5M+ iPhones
- Objective-C, Java, C++ and OS-libraries/tools for native apps
- WebSphere, J2EE, IBM MQ series, Oracle used in the backend
Sep 2005 – Jun 2009
Built the company's first generation customer self-serve application
- Used by 2+ million BREW basic phone users every month.
- WebSphere, J2EE, Spring, Hibernate, IBM MQ series, Oracle etc. used in the backend
Built #MIN/#BAL app, the company's first automated customer call support system
- Used by 20+ million mobile customers every month.
- Deflected 1+ billion calls to call-center reps
- Saved the company $200+ million dollars in its lifetime
- AWS cloud stack, Java, Go, Python, Spring
- Microservices, Docker, Apache Hadoop, Spark, Kafka,
- NoSQL, DevSecOps, CI/CD etc.
- M.S., Information Systems- Stevens Institute of Technology 2006 – 2009
- Google Certificate - Machine Learning with TensorFlow - 2019
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate - 2018
- 11 patents
Organizer of Cloud Computing NJ Meetup (210+ members). Leads regular sessions on AWS and other cloud technologies https://www.meetup.com/aws-cloud-NJ-meetup/
Presented in various conferences including IBM Impact in Las Vegas, Lotus Notes Conference in LA etc.
Published articles online as well as in print media. Example:
- Programming in Go for Web Scraping (Aug-2019) https://medium.com/@shahidahmed.org/programming-in-go-for-web-scraping-aedf937e769d
- Deep learning, Meetup and a nice discussion (Feb-2019) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/deep-learning-meetup-nice-discussion-shahid-ahmed/
ml@shahid.cc ∙ (908) 967-9191 ∙ http://shahid.cc