Walid Salem
IT Lead
Dubai
Summary
Award winner CIO by Global CIO200. Arabic and English speaking person with experience in Middle East , UK and Government sectors of both Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Multi-tasking Team Leader well-known for executing successful, new strategic initiatives. Creates dynamic and positive workplace culture to align with organizational mission and values. Trains new hires and mentors struggling workers to achieve overall team success.
Overview
21
21
years of professional experience
12
12
years of post-secondary education
11
11
Certifications
Work History
IT Lead
01.2020 - Current
- Set objectives and Strategic direction to support the business and ensure long-term success , profitability and cost saving resulted to a cost saving of $20M last 5 years.
- IT sourcing, outsourcing and IT staff recruitment, KPI Performance Management and deployment contributed to delivering 15 mid to large scale initiatives in 2023.
- Select and implement suitable technology to streamline all internal operations and help optimize their operational benefits which has resulted to automating 60% of the customer facing processes from 2021 to 2023.
- Lead Service Readiness and Change Management with both (external and internal stakeholders)
- Manage solutions Budget in excess of USD 60M.
- Shortlist and select right IT providers, monitor their performance and take immediate action as needed
- Own IT delivery program for all IT driven digital transformation initiatives.
- Understand the business requirements and deliver seamless solutions that meet these requirements which has resulted to delivering 300 Change Requests during 2022.
- Oversee the IT infrastructure (operating systems installations and networks) to ensure maximum performance and minimum downtimes which has resulted to ZERO downtime during first quarter of 2023.
- Going Live with the first of its kind ( Decision Support System) financial adviser which is based on the AI resulted in the increase of the Sales by 25% in the Q1 of 2023
- Delivered programs needed for DEWS ( the new pension program initiated by the Dubai government) to support 25000 employees from the Government of Dubai paying a premium amount of AED120m a year.
- Initiated Sustainability program within Zurich ME to promote the environment protection and building a sustainable future resulted to a 90% reduction of paper consumption , 5.5 tons of papers recycled and Zero printing marketing materials
IT Regional Manager
02.2014 - 12.2019
- Establishing and owning IT governance across ME resulted to building effective and customized IT procedures.
- Creating IT Operating Model resulted to 3 years in row of effective Audit rating.
- Establishing the Support Unit in ME as a 24/7 with independent infrastructure and resources.
- Assessing risk profile for ME IT and mitigating any risks.
- Managing IT projects and Business delivery portfolio resulted to delivering excess of 30 Large scale projects between 2014/2015.
- Liaising with different IT providers to support and deliver expected products
- Developing solution roadmap resulted to migrating all business-critical applications to cloud resulting a cost reduction of $2m a year
- Developing business applications which has resulted to delivering AI based capability that is resulting to increasing efficiency of Sales cycle , decreasing Sales decision time and customer identification by 13000% ( from 5 business days to 2 minutes)
- Delivering Digital Transformation customer facing capabilities to streamline the business processes and automate them which has resulting a 60% faster SLA
- Running the (Talk to Market) programs and (Involve our Customer) surveys to address the concerns and the queries , actioning them and responding back resulting to an overall increase of the TNPS to +60 from +40 in 2022.
IT Project Manager
Abu Dhabi National Insurance Company
09.2006 - 01.2014
- Carrying Responsibility for managing the application delivery budget roles in excess of $7 million USD
- Working as a point of contact between ADNIC and the Government of Abu Dhabi in all transformational and innovative programs.
- Creating the different technical documentation including the risk register, quality metrics, Requirement Specifications
- Ownership of several Documents ( e.g RSD, Technical specifications and Solution Documents SDD, UML diagrams, Database structure, Class diagrams and Sequence Diagrams).
- Coordinating, supervising, reports and continuous follow up with the different corporate stakeholders on the deliveries and business demand
- Managing the quality assurance, cost management , quality control and quality management of the deliverables throughout the project Lifecycle
Senior Systems Analyst
IT Education project, Knowledge
Dubai
07.2005 - 09.2006
- Analyzing and estimating all IT delivery needs within the Government of Dubai resulting in creating a common centralized Database for the E-government of Dubai.
- Arranging the training needs which has resulted in completing the training to more than 15 departments ( Dubai Municipality , Ministry of Education , Ministry of Interior , Dubai Police Academy , Dubai Economic department ..etc).
Application Developer
Software Technology Group
Abu Dhabi
01.2003 - 06.2005
Education
Master of Science - IT Computer Science
University Of Liverpool
United Kingdom 01.2010 - 09.2013
PGD - IT Software Engineering
University of Liverpool
Liverpool 01.2010 - 06.2012
Bachelor of Science - Computer Engineering
University of Cairo
Egypt 09.1997 - 06.2003
Skills
Operational Process Analysis
Strategic Planning and Leadership
Information Technology Governance
System Architecture
Business Process Automation and Improvement ▪
Committee leadership
Projects/ Program Management
Productivity and Efficiency Improvement
Organizational Design and Development
Outstanding community leader
IT staff leadership
Certification
CRISC ( ( Certified in Risk and Information System Control)
Timeline
IT Lead
01.2020 - Current
CRISC ( ( Certified in Risk and Information System Control)
01-2017
TOGAF
12-2014
IT Regional Manager
02.2014 - 12.2019
Chartered IT Status CITP- (British Computer Society BCS)
06-2013
INSIS Insurance Application implementer (FADATA INSIS)
06-2013
SCRUM Master Certified Jan 2013
01-2013
BI Publisher Development (Oracle)
10-2012
Java Development for ADF (Oracle)
09-2012
ITIL V3 Foundation (Exin)
10-2010
Master of Science - IT Computer Science
University Of Liverpool
01.2010 - 09.2013
PGD - IT Software Engineering
University of Liverpool
01.2010 - 06.2012
Project Management Professional PMP (Project Management Institute PMI)
06-2009
Oracle Development and Database 10g (Oracle)
02-2009
IT Project Manager
Abu Dhabi National Insurance Company
09.2006 - 01.2014
Senior Systems Analyst
IT Education project, Knowledge
07.2005 - 09.2006
Oracle Certified Professional (Oracle)
03-2005
Application Developer
Software Technology Group
01.2003 - 06.2005
Bachelor of Science - Computer Engineering
University of Cairo
09.1997 - 06.2003