Nadeem Rafi is a network professional with over 15 years of experience seeking a senior network role. He has extensive experience in network administration, management, operations, and security. He is proficient in technologies like Cisco, Microsoft, Linux and holds multiple certifications including CCIE Data Center and Routing & Switching. Currently he is leading network operations and migrations as a Network Engineer at Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank in the UAE.
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Nadeem 2xCCIE_28781
1. Nadeem Rafi
An achievement-driven professional targeting senior-level assignments in Network
Management , Network Administration and Network Operations with an organization of
high repute
Industry Preference: Network Administration/– IT
Location Preference: UAE/Europe/Worldwide
Nrafia@Gmail.com 00971-558199411
Key Skills
Team Building & Leadership
Network Administration
Routing & Switching
Network Security
Efficient Troubleshooting
Budget Management
Data Center Migrations
Core Requirement and Analysis
Solution Design / Process
Optimization
Vendor Management
Project Budgeting
Profile Summary
A goal-oriented professional with over nearly 15 years of experience in various IT
domains, Network Management, Network Administration and Network Security and
Network Operations.
Skilled in enhancing network infrastructure & provisioning support in network LLD
and HLDs.
Experienced in analyzing information system needs, evaluating end-user requirements,
custom designing solutions, troubleshooting for complex information systems
management.
Proficient in migrations of large scale networks/data centers, managing configuration,
and maintenance with a focus on network infrastructure administration including
diverse networking set-ups.
Excellent in technical project management including scheduling & negotiating with
vendors for iterative product deployment and delivery, balancing work distribution to
meet project deliverables & delivery as per quality & time norms.
Having broader understanding of security life cycle, provides enormous benefit for
network technologies deployments.
An effective communicator with excellent team leading skills and strong analytical,
problem solving & organizational capabilities
Ensure the completion of projects within Budget and timeline
Education
Intermediate Pre-Engineering
Associate Engineer of Electronics (3 Years)
Certifications
• 2 x CCIE #28781 - Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert
- CCIE DATA Center ( Dubai - 2016)
- CCIE Routing and Switching ( KSA - 2011 )
• CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) (KSA – 2006)
• CCSP (Cisco Certified Security Professional) (KSA - 2007)
• CFWS (Cisco Certified Firewall Specialist) (KSA)
• CSIPS (Cisco IPS Specialist) (KSA)
• CSVPN (Cisco VPN Specialist) (KSA)
• CNSS (Cisco Information Security Specialist) (KSA)
• CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) (KSA - 2006)
• MCSE (Microsoft Certified System Engineer) (KSA - 2002)
• MCSA (Microsoft Certified System Administrator) (KSA – 2002)
• Security+ (KSA – 2003)
• Linux+ (KSA – 2003)
2. Soft Skills Career Timeline
Work Experience
Achievements
Trained multiple Network and
Support engineers for Cisco ISE
operations.
Lead a team of 5 Network
engineers for data center
migration, operations,
maintenance and performance.
Migration to Pacific Controls
Data Center Bay2
New Data Center at PCDC Bay4
Provided thought leadership
management in defining,
implementing, ensuring,
measuring & continuous
improvement of defined process
along with quality standards,
frameworks, practices and
measurements
Acquired Skill set necessary to
operate complex data centers.
Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, United Arab
Emirates (2011 till present)
Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, United Arab Emirates March’12 – Present
Network Engineer
PakSpace/Pakistan Oct’11 – March’12
Senior Instructor
Al – Jeraisy, Riyadh, KSA 1998 – Dec’2011
Network and Security Engineer - Consultant
Key Result Areas (across the tenure):
• Supervising the entire gamut of network and datacenter operations including
redesigning & migration of data center
• Validation of LLD and HLD before imitating he project
• Design and Implementation of Routing and switching protocols over enterprise
architecture, converting business requirements to technology implementation
• Implementing technology planning and direction, strategy development, leadership
and implementation, business and operational transformation execution and business
solution delivery
• Following procedures, change management best practices, ensured network
availability and maintenance of disaster recovery stance
• Ensure resolution of complex issues effectively while maintaining minimum
downtime & maximum availability of networks
• Steering the successful rollout of projects with defining scope, setting timelines,
analyzing requirements, prioritizing tasks, identifying dependencies and evaluating
risks & issues as per budget
• Leading & monitoring the performance of team members to ensure efficiency in
process operations and meeting of individual & group targets
• Creating and sustaining a dynamic environment that fosters development opportunities
and motivates high performance amongst team members
• Monitoring project progress & outstanding issues and ensuring the quality &
timeliness of the deliverables; project health check metrics and weekly & fortnightly
status reports as well as extending post-implementation support to team members by
identifying defects, inconsistencies & errors
• Providing guide lines and trainings for team members for better carrier growth and
enhanced intra team relationships
Significant Accomplishments:
Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, United Arab Emirates (2012 till present)
• Network Upgrade (2012): I was tasked to implement and supervise upgrade and
replacement of EOS devices of ADIB network from more than 100 local and
international branches.
Devices Included: Switches (3550, 3560, 3750/3750-x, 4500, 6500, Nexus 7700,
Nexus 5500 and Nexus 2000) and Routers (2811, 2911, 7200, 7606)
• Cisco to HP Migration/Integration POC (2012): AS a precursor to deployment of
Collaborator
Innovator
Planner
Communicator
Al – Jeraisy
(Saudi Arabia)
PakSpace
1998– 2011
Oct’11 – Mar’12
Associate Engineer of
Electronics – Swedish
institute of Technology
(Pakistan)
1998
Mar12–Present
Abu Dhabi
Islamic Bank
(U.A.E)
3. PakSpace/Pakistan (Sep’2011-
March’2012)
NAC solution, I was tasked to evaluate capabilities of HP platform with our existing
Cisco deployment. Main focus was on access layer switches for phase 1. I have tested
different Layer 2 and Layer 3 technologies e.g. RSTP, VLAN, Link Aggregation,
LLDP and protocols like OSPF, BGP along with SNMP v2/v3. Some security features
e.g. AAA was tested and feasibility report was provided. POC was done in co-
ordination with HP presales and post sales team collaboration.
• Cisco ISE Implementation (2012 – 2013): I was tasked with deployment of Cisco
ISE in ADIB infrastructure. I am focal person for ISE deployment. ISE was deployed
with co-ordination of Cisco Advanced Services team.
With successful demonstration of POC, HLD and LLD were produced for distributed
deployment of ISE. Authentication and authorization polices were formulated in
reference to ADIB business requirements.
ISE was successfully deployed across ADIB network with posturing and compliance
capabilities. ISE deployment with posturing was one of the biggest deployment in ME
region with more than 8000 end points across 100 plus branches, international and
local.
I was tasked to provide training sessions for different IT teams including IT Support
and help desk for effective troubleshooting and better user experience.
We went through some major ISE upgrades which include migration from 1.1 to 1.2
and from 1.2 to 1.4 along with installation of numerous patches.
• Etisalat Link inventory and cost savings (2013): I worked with Etisalat team to find
out unused links and to upgrade or downgrade links as per Netflow bandwidth
statistics.
• Pacific Control Data Center Migration and Management (2014): I was assigned to
Pacific Control Data Center as team lead for overseeing migration of ADIB
infrastructure from Abu Dhabi to Dubai. This includes migration/co-ordination and
facilitation of resources for infrastructure and different banking services migrations.
Migration process was to co-ordinate migration of physical interdependent devices,
provisioning of services at PCDC. We migrated and provisioned services, like
Phoenix, Swift, RTA Salik, VISA, Master, DU, SMS, Managed ATM services etc.
We used latest cutting edge technologies in our DC, including OTV, FabricPath, and
Enhanced VPC with industry standard protocol like OSPF.
My team is assigned with all data center operations including but not limited to
provisioning of new service, maintenance of existing services, incident oriented
troubleshooting and co-ordination with different vendors, e.g. Etisalat, Cisco TAC and
Cisco HTTS, F5 etc.
• ADIB New Data Center – Disaster Recovery (2016): We are tasked with
deployment of new data center replicating the existing data center infrastructure as part
of disaster recovery. As a team lead, I am responsible for design implementation,
migration of services, link migration in co-ordination with Etisalat, co-ordination with
other IT teams to facilitate smooth migration. We are still in process of migration.
• Here comes another CCIE Data Center (April 2016): I successfully passed my
CCIE DC lab and became duel CCIE RS&DC.
• My Daily Operations: are included but not limited to managing my team,
understating business needs and converting those need to technical implementations on
different platforms. I am providing support for four data centers and 100 plus
branches. I am responsible for provisioning of new branches, providing access to ATM
setup. I am tasked with providing secure and segregated access to different segments
of network through different firewalls according to ADIB security policies, fulfilling
different routing and switching requirements.
PakSpace/Pakistan (Sep’2011-March’2012)
• I started this small cisco training company. I successfully run two batches of CCNA
Training batches.
4. Al – Jeraisy, Riyadh, KSA (1998 -
2011)
Al – Jeraisy, Riyadh, KSA
I was working with Al – Jeraisy (Asia’s biggest technical support company) around
twelve years (1998-2011) as IT consultant. My duties were included in house IT
management and securing networks along with customer consultancy in various IT
fields e.g. IT security, network administration and management for Cisco and
Windows based plate forms. I had leaded a team of more than 10 members.
Some of my project in KSA (Al – Jeraisy) were following
• Emarah Qassim (Governorate Offices) (2001-2010) – KSA: As a consultant, I have
started this project in early 2001. In upcoming years I had upgraded, redesigned and
secured the network as nodes become several hundreds. The entire network
infrastructure was Cisco based; being designed, implemented and secured. I have
provided supervision and consultancy up to 2010.
Provided IP Sub net design and implemented IP routing.
Designed, installed, configured, and provided support for WAN and LAN based on
Cisco technologies.
Provided high level technical support, including identifying and resolving problems on
Cisco supported products.
Reviewed all changes to network configuration for technical accuracy and impact
analysis, and provided Multi-Protocol Network problem resolutions.
Performed regular IOS upgrades of Cisco devices.
• Ministry of Tourism (Hail, Qassim, Tabuk etc) KSA: In this project I had provided
consultancy and implementation for 11 branches which need to connect with head
office in Riyadh. Project included supervision and implementation of IBM Servers,
Active directory and Cisco devices, Routers (2600/2800, 3600 Series), switches (2950,
3560/3750 Series) for connectivity and security to connect with head office.
• Network/Systems Security consultancy (Security Forces Military): In 2005, I was
consulted for network and security design and implementation; network OS was to be
Windows and network infrastructure was recommended by using Cisco routers,
switches and Pix devices. Part of the consultancy was to provide training for ISA,
Exchange Servers and Active Directory implementation and administration.
• Security Consultant (In-house): JGIT was one of our sister companies, which
provide IT services to all of Al – Jeraisy group of companies. I was consulted for IT
security and network analyses for traffic shaping and anomaly detection, from 2003-
2006. I have provided Security policies, procedures and general documentation of
network management. Major part of the consultancy was Security audit of Servers and
network infrastructure. I was responsible for implementation of IDS & IPS, Antivirus
solutions, email servers security and securing Cisco based network infrastructure and
optimizing network traffic patterns to off load unnecessary traffic along with detection
of illegal behavior outside the acceptable usage policy of organization.
• System Engineer – Chamber of Commerce: In 2002, I was consulted for installation
and configuration of a new network around 11 IBM servers based on Windows
(mainly Active Directory) and Symantec Security solutions (mainly Symantec
Antivirus Corporate Edition).
• System Engineer – Aum-Qura University Madina: In early 2001, I was hired as
consultant for implementation and designing of around 200 nodes network. This
network was deployed using Windows as main OS and Linux for some labs.
5. Trainings
Technical skills
• F5 – BigIP Administration 12.x (2 days)
• F5 – LTM Management 12.x (3 days)
• FireFly: Cisco ACI Test Drive version 3.3
• FastLane: Implementing and Configuring Cisco Identity Services Engine (SISE)
• FastLane: Configuring Cisco Nexus 7000 Switches (DCNX7K)
• StoneSoft: StoneSoft Firewall/VN Architect
• StoneSoft: StoneSoft Management Center Administration
• Stonesoft: StoneSoft IPS Architect
• INE: CCIE Data Center Boot Camp
• IXIA: Network TAP Implementation
• TCS: Intelligent Leadership
• FastLane: Implementing and Configuring Cisco Identity Services Engine (SISE)
• Routers: Cisco ISR-4431, Cisco 3845 , 2921 ,2911, 2851, 7200, ASR-1000
• Switches: Catalyst Switches 6500, 4500, 3700, 3500XL, 3200, 2900XL, Cisco Nexus
9000,Nexus 7700,Nexus 6000, Nexus 5000,Nexus 2000
• Security Devices: Cisco ACS, Cisco ASA, StoneSoft/ForcePoint NGFW, Fortinet
FireWall, Cisco IPS, Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine)
• Routing Protocols: Static Routing, RIPv2,RIPnG, EIGRP, OSPF, ISIS, BGP,
MPLS,IPv6, Traffic Engineering, Policy Based Routing PBR
• Switching & Bridging: VTP, STP, MST, RSTP Trunking, VLANs, Layer 3 Switches,
Link Aggregation Protocols, Cisco Nexus Technologies e.g. vPC, OTV , FEX,
FabricPath, Enhanced VPC, Cisco Catalyst (VSS)
• Various Features & Services: IOS and CatOS Features, HSRP, VRRP, NAT, SNMP,
SYSLOG, NTP, DHCP, CDP, DNS, HTTP, TFTP and FTP Management
• WLAN (Wireless LAN): basic functional knowledge of WLCs and APs
• Network Monitoring and Management Systems: SolarWinds, HP NNMI, HP
Service Manager 9
• Network Traffic Analyzers: Wireshark, Sniffer Pro, NetScout
• OS: Microsoft Windows Server 2000, 2003, 2008, Microsoft Windows
XP/2000/win7/win10, Linux Red Hat Fedora/CentOS, Linux Ubuntu
Personal Details
Date of Birth 1975
Languages Known: English, Arabic, Urdu, Punjabi
Address : Dubai, UAE
Marital Status: Married
Nationality Pakistani
Visa Status: Employment
Driving License: UAE/Saudi Arabia