Ali Mohamad

Consultant/Architect and Senior Software Developer

I am an Applications architect and Project Manager with experience in team leadership, large system implementations and enterprise-wide high-performance solutions in a variety of industries, including Finance, Retail, Public Safety, government and shrink-wrap software.

I provide consulting and custom solutions architecture and development services. Having worked with various organizations both small and large, in the US and Canada, both as a consultant and employee, I had interfaced with stake-holders, consultants, developers and customers at all levels. I have designed and developed retail inventory management systems, financial systems, evidence and crime scene management software, and digital document and media storage and management applications to name a few. While I am a strong leader and coach, I am also a developer at heart and love to get my hands dirty with designing and coding.

If you need a team lead to help your development team achieve its goals, need a software architect to design and help develop a new application/system or require the help of an experienced architect to help migrating a legacy application to new technology, contact me by email or phone.

  • Employment/Contract History
  • Project List
  • Skills
  • Patents

 

2000 – 12/2015
FileOnQ, Seattle WA

FileOnQ provides Desktop/Web/Mobile products that help businesses manage their business processes and the creation, storage and retrieval of their physical and digital documents utilizing digitizing and barcode technologies, and help police departments manage the chain of custody and location of physical evidence from initial collection at crime scenes to final destruction. Mobile solutions include in-vehicle PDTs (Laptops) and several models of the Motorola barcode-equipped mobile devices including MC65 and MC75 running Windows CE, all of which communicated with the host server via 3G/LTE wireless connections or via synchronization once docked at the HQ. (see Project List for details)

Senior Software Architect & Development Lead (Contract, remote): 2006 - 2015

Architected and developed the client’s Web and Cloud platforms and Digital Media strategy and software.

Vice President of Development - Chief Technology Officer (Full-time) : 2000 - 2006

As a member of the executive team, I participated in strategic planning, business plan development, and corporate decision-making.  As a VP of development, I was responsible for R&D planning and execution, product technology and development processes including architecture and design decisions.

  • Worked with Product Management in formulating new product function and release plans
  • Supervised concept design and prototype development
  • Mentored development and testing staff throughout the project on various aspects of software design and development in order to deliver a highly optimized solutions and achieve a on-time delivery 
  • Oversaw the redesign of the existing commercial software to conform to enterprise level requirements and product strategic goals
  • Managed QA, Development, and software production
  • Designed and developed major pieces of the desktop Evidence and Document Management software
  • Designed a highly optimized database model for use in the commercial software package to handle several million records
  • Architected and developed the WebView browser-based companion product for use by remote users
  • Participated in writing responses to RFPs and perspective client presentations
1997 – 2000
Claremont Technology Consulting Group, Seattle WA

Director of Applications Technology Consulting (Full-time)

Claremont Technology Consulting was a large 700+ employee consulting firm based in Oregon WA with satellite offices all over the United States and Canada, providing project management and consulting services to various industries in the Healthcare, Financial and other industries. (see Project List for details)

  • Responsible for managing a technical consulting practice comprising 20+ consultants
  • Oversee proposal writing, pre-sales support, project QA and oversight, and client relation activities
  • Conduct presentations to prospective clients on proposed technical architectures and project approaches
  • Help in business and strategic partnership development, and cross-office resource sharing
  • Responsible for recruiting, team development and training activities related to the practice
  • Help set the technology direction for the Seattle branch
1991 – 1997
STS Systems, Montreal PQ

Product Manager – Stock Replenishment System – Research & Development (Full-time)

STS Systems provided software systems that managed retail business operations including inventory management, allocation, warehousing and financial operations, and had over 700 employees. (see Project List for details)

 

Architected and developed the client’s Web and Cloud platforms and Digital Media strategy and software.
DigitalOnQ, Digital Media Processing/Storage Windows Application/Platform, Consulting (Seattle, WA)

The DigitalOnQ software is designed to manage digital media (photo, audio and video) collected by evidence technicians and police officers at crime scenes and incidents using various digital camera technologies including body-worn cameras deployed department-wide to police officers. I designed, developed and delivered the software with such features as a custom thumbnail viewer, on-the-fly thumbnail generation for different platforms, encryption and digital media authentication, body-worn camera integration (several models/vendors) and image editing capabilities.

EvidenceOnQ Hosted Cloud Platform, Evidence and Crime Scene Management, Consulting (Seattle, WA)

The Web & Cloud Services is a platform for providing evidence and crime scene management solutions via a subscription based model. Clients would be able to access the functionality via either a vendor-hosted Web interface or via customer-provided application utilizing a unified Cloud-based infrastructure and RESTful APIs.

Architected and developed the platform and delivered a library of RESTful Web services that can be hosted on a local server or in the Cloud.

EvidenceOnQ Desktop/Web/Mobile Evidence and Crime Scene Management, FileOnQ Inc. (Seattle, WA)

Designed the architecture and Lead a team of developers in developing a desktop product that manages the storage and tracking of physical files and digital documents within large enterprises, utilizing barcode technologies to track the history of creation, movement and access of physical files and digitized documents throughout their life.

Also, designed and developed a companion ASP.Net product to allow users perform similar functions to the desktop product from remote locations through a browser, and a Mobile solution including in-vehicle PDTs (Laptops) and several models of the Motorola barcode-equipped mobile platform devices including MC65 and MC75 running Windows CE, all of which communicated with the host server via 3G/LTE wireless connections or via synchronization once docked at the HQ.

Project Manager/Chief Architect – Integrated Software Solutions, WA (Claremont Tech. Group, Seattle WA)

OnQ was a document management solution running in a 16-bit environment. Many factors deemed this product obsolete from both a technological and functional perspectives. To ensure the continuing life of the product, ISS had decided to improve it by porting it to a 32-bit platform and rethinking its strategic and marketing direction. As the project manager and chief architect, my responsibilities involved:

  • Help set the strategy for the new product
  • Introduce new technology where appropriate
  • Manage the undertaken effort to ensure successful, on-time, within budget delivery
  • Architect/design the new solution
Consulting Architect – The Frank Russell Company, Washington (Claremont Tech. Group, Seattle WA)

The Frank Russell Company was undertaking an effort to set standards for an Enterprise Architecture that maximizes reusability and sharing and enforces standard usage of technology across the different business units. Key technologies considered included Distributed design, XML, Browser technology, data storage, and massaging systems.

As a consulting advisor, I helped the architecture team and business analysts set the direction and provided expertise in the various technologies being considered.

Chief Architect – TMS – Office of the State Treasurer, Washington (Claremont Tech. Group, Seattle WA)

The Washington Treasury had an existing aging mainframe system that was becoming hard and expensive to maintain and enhance with new features. The office of the Treasurer published a RFP for a new system that utilized new technology. The system maintained cash, debt, investment, and portfolio information for the state of Washington. The project involved Object Oriented Architecture and Design of a n-tier distributed system utilizing UML, Visual Studio Suite 6.0 (C++, VB, Interdev...), MTS, MSMQ, SQL Server 7.0, ERWin, and Rational Rose. After 2.5 years, 3 months ahead of schedule, the system was delivered and put into production, all financial systems balanced to the penny.

  • Oversaw the technical proposal effort and conducted the final technical presentation to the Deputy Treasurer and about 40 individuals from the department’s technical and business staff. Our firm won the bid against IBM Consulting, KPMG and Anderson Consulting among others
  • Designed the application architecture framework to support multi-tier LAN and Web deployment
  • Designed the security infrastructure to support the protection of the system from unauthorized access, and role-based object/data viewing and editing
  • Managed a team of 8 consultants and 15 in-house developers throughout the different phases of the project including business re-engineering, functional specification, application architecture, all UI and module development activities and testing
Senior Systems Architect – Odyssey Project, Weyerhaeuser Inc., Oregon (Claremont Tech. Group, Seattle WA)

The project required the development of a DCOM-based multi-tier, distributed enterprise system to perform daily sales and inventory allocation activities of the Wood Products business. The project followed object-oriented methodologies and was implemented using UML, Visual C++, Visual Basic, DCOM, MTS, ODBC, ADO, and SQL Server 6.5 & 7.0.

  • Architected and designed the middle tier of the application, allowing transaction integrity, dynamic data formatting, resource sharing, and simplified deployment, management, and maintenance
  • Designed the data location and movement schemes within the whole system, allowing real-time sharing of data between remote sites and other existing systems, such as accounting
Chief Architect – Vendor Bliss – Colonial Pacific Leasing Company, Oregon (Claremont Tech. Group, Seattle WA)

Vendor Bliss linked Vendors, Brokers, and Customers to the client’s computer network via Dialup/Dedicated Internet connections to automate the credit approval and lease estimation process. The software utilized Internet technology and was developed using Visual Basic 5.0, COM/ActiveX, Active Server Pages, and Visual C++.

  • Designed the technical infrastructure of the application
  • Designed and developed encryption and authentication modules to provide a security framework for the application
Tech. Team Lead – LeasePak – Colonial Pacific Leasing Company, Oregon (Claremont Tech. Group, Seattle WA)

LeasePak managed lease, customer, asset, and profitability information for the enterprise. The project utilized Sybase SQL Server 11, C, embedded SQL, and TCP/IP Sockets in a UNIX environment

  • Lead and mentored a team of 16 analysts in the design, and construction of a data translation and movement system that allowed the sharing of data between legacy applications and the client/server environment
  • Executed system performance tuning and successfully reduced processing time including nightly stored procedures by up to 95%
Senior Analyst - En-Vue Enterprise - New Technologies Department (STS Systems, Montreal QC)

En-Vue Enterprise was a Data Warehousing support application for the retail market. The application was developed in Power Builder 5.0 and Sybase SQL Server.

  • Helped design the logical and physical models
  • Wrote Stored Procedures and Triggers
  • Fine-tuned the application (query and plan analysis, index selection, and selective module rewrites)
  • Analyzed front-end application and recommended changes where required
Senior Analyst - Allocator's Workbench – New Technologies Department (STS Systems, Montreal QC)

Allocator's Workbench was a sophisticated warehouse inventory allocation and replenishment/distribution system that generated distributions from warehouses to stores. The application involved extensive use of statistical methods to derive allocation quantities based on detailed historical sales.

  • Designed the logical and physical models
  • Wrote major parts of the mathematical/statistical forecasting models/modules used in the software
  • Developed all number crunching modules in C as DLLs, and developed parts of the GUI in PowerBuilder
Product Manager – Stock Replenishment System – Research & Development (STS Systems, Montreal QC)

This was an enterprise-wide automated replenishment and distribution system, that automatically generated purchase orders and distributions based on sale forecasts for up to 998 stores and 4 years of full SKU sales history. The system was developed in Business Basic on the DG Aviion, DG MV/AOS, and the IBM RS6000 platforms.

  • Supervised a team of 13 analysts and customer support personnel
  • Designed and developed software modules according to new release specifications
  • Developed support tools in C and C-Shell (UNIX)
  • Supported (including on the phone and pager) existing and newly developed modules
  • Managed software bug lists and followed up with clients to insure problem resolution and customer satisfaction
  • Traveled to client sites as a consultant to assist on the technical aspects of presentations and courses
  • Delivered technical courses to employees and customer support staff on automated replenishment software
  • Delivered seminars in the STS Retail Convention on automated replenishment and the STS software

c# VB.Net C++
ASP.Net WCF SOA
AJAX/JQuery HTML5 XML
LINQ & Entity Framework Javascript CSS
 Objective-C iOS (iPhone/iPad) Swift 
 Restful MVC MDM Hub
Microsoft SQL Server Oracle Database   MySQL
 Linux/Unix Joomla PHP (some)
TCP/IP TOGAF Agile Project Management 
Project Management QA  

I have two US patents issued under my name for a unique method of building and customizing database-driven applications using a drag and drop application builder (Profiler) that is capable of producing Windows and their matching Web and Mobile applications.

CUSTOMIZABLE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (US 7,599,942 B1)

Issued on October 6, 2009

Link to US Patent Site

 

CUSTOMIZABLE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (US 8,176,093 B2)

Issued on May 8, 2012

Link to US Patent Site