Welcome to our Featured F5er Series. For July we are spotlighting momahdy, an exceptional contributor to our DevCentral community.
DevCentral: To start, please introduce yourself and tell our community a little about yourself. What you do and why is it important?
Mohamed: Hello everyone! My name is Mohamed Mahdy and I’ve been with F5 for the last 8 years, 4 of them in Consulting and the past 4 years in Technical Marketing team. Through the 8 years I covered different sectors whether Government, Defense, Services Providers, Financial or Education sectors. Why I got into security in general; I always loved learning everything, and one major part of our work involved understanding every deployment and project, not just the technical elements but the impact it leaves on every person involved.
Few seconds delay, a breach or even a complex solution can be the difference between critical systems and efforts being protected or wasted. In addition to the actual work, I really enjoy educating the community because that’s how I learn the best; The moment I meet a friend who says that he used any of the articles or any of our conversations and those were helpful, I feel the message is well delivered.
Away from Work, I’m leading ISC2 chapter in West Midlands and participating in multiple community activities for security education.
DevCentral: As a Principal Technical Marking Engineer at F5, what is your typical workday like?
Mohamed: Big part of it connecting with my colleagues in Product team and field team to explore how can we get more end-to-end use cases to the community to help customers get familiar with the use cases and try them out. In some cases we are engaged with our colleagues in the field to help accelerate troubleshooting activities or solutions enhancement.
One of the interesting areas of Technical Marketing Engineering team, is that we set at the cross roads between Technical and Business, that allows us to speak both languages and understand both; So, we help getting the end-to-end solutions use cases those actually help our customers and contribute to the field.
DevCentral: What do you do to maintain a work life balance?
Mohamed: Having great colleagues sometimes make work time feels like home, in addition to this I would say running and family time is what keeps the spark
DevCentral: Can you give us a glimpse into your technical expertise?
Mohamed: My approach is why not give it a try ? It’s not working, let’s roll up our sleeves. I started in Service Providers where packet captures solve your most critical issues, moving into F5 I got exposed to everything from L1 up to L7, whether it’s a deployment, design or troubleshooting. F5 products are unique, you don’t need to know F5 configurations only but also understanding the underlying protocols.
DevCentral: What’s the most exciting thing you’re working on right now?
Mohamed: Currently I’m focusing on BIG-IP Service Providers technologies and Kubernetes offerings (BNK / CNF / CIS ). Also leading the hybrid integrations with BIG-IP security products in general.
I’m working on more articles to introduce those topics in an easy way to our community and make sure we are not lost in the new terms, and we are actually focusing on what works.
DevCentral: What has been your most memorable achievement at F5?
Mohamed: I would say every time a field colleague mention that any of the labs or articles helped I consider that a memorable moment. The most memorable one would be participating in AppWorld Vegas preparations. Seeing all those technical content in booths and customers talking and asking our SMEs after months of preparation, that was awesome.
DevCentral: As an F5er who participates in the DevCentral community how has it helped or influenced your work?
Mohamed: DevCentral community was special not just when I joined F5 but even before being part of F5; the ease of discussing solutions, raising queries and talking to peers in different industries in such community spirit really helped.
DevCentral: Are there any challenges that community has helped you overcome? If so, what was it and how did community help? (Does not have to be DevCentral related)
Mohamed: I would start with iRules, the other one would be learning to find different ways to deliver the information to suite different audiences.
DevCentral: What does community mean to you?
Mohamed: A group of diverse background persons crowdsourcing their knowledge to get the best outcome, the community acts as incubator for ideas
DevCentral: What is your favorite or best piece of advice someone has given you?
Mohamed: Security shouldn’t be forced; Through my career I found this is the best advice, talking to the business and application teams to first understand their needs and then walk them through how security can be an enabler not a gate keeper proved to be the best approach.
DevCentral: If you weren’t in your current profession what would be your dream job?
Mohamed: I would go for farming, I’ve been doing random trials here and there to plant mint and other plants, and I would say it’s fun and very comforting
DevCentral: What are your favorite or go to comfort foods?
Mohamed: Yam yam yam! I would go for the Egyptian Koshari
DevCentral: Now that we have entered summer, what are your favorite summer activities?
Mohamed: I would say if I’m in Egypt, going to the sea at Marsa Matrouh.
DevCentral: Lastly, what motivates you?
Mohamed: New challenges, problems we need to find solutions for.
- Connect with Mohamed on LinkedIn
Thank you Mohamed for all of your contributions to DevCentral and for being July’s Featured F5er!
