AI Transformation Lead · Cairo

AI transformation, built from within.

Ten years leading engineering teams, now building AI hands-on. I join as part of the team, take the problems everyone already knows about, and build the AI that solves them, all the way to production.

Book a call

01 · About

From leading teams to building.

I've spent about 13 years in engineering across fintech, food delivery, real estate, SaaS analytics and event ticketing, and about 10 of them leading engineering teams as an Engineering Manager.

I'm now making a deliberate move into hands-on AI work. As an AI Transformation Lead, I stay close to the work: I assess, design and build the solutions, not just oversee them.

02 · My approach

Three steps.

  1. 01

    Assess

    I work with leadership and the teams, from support and growth to finance, data and engineering, to pick the problems worth solving first, by impact, effort and data readiness.

  2. 02

    Propose

    A clear plan with my recommendations: what to build, what to buy and what to leave alone, with the trade-offs and cost of each, and how it will be measured.

  3. 03

    Build

    I build it myself, ship it to production, and stay until it works in daily use and the team can run it.

03 · Where AI can help

Where AI pays off.

Dept. 01

Customer support

  1. Issue
  2. Self-serve
  3. Agent

Bottleneck

A high contact rate from issues customers could fix themselves, like order status, refunds and cash-on-delivery problems, over WhatsApp, chat and phone in Egyptian Arabic and English.

AI can

Resolve common cases through a self-service model in Egyptian Arabic and English on WhatsApp and in-app, like compensating a missing item within set rules, and triage and draft replies for the rest.

Measured by

  • CR (Contact rate)
  • Containment (Share of conversations resolved without a human)
  • FCR (First contact resolution)
  • CSAT (Customer satisfaction)

Benefit

A lower contact rate, faster resolution, and agents who spend their time on the hard cases instead of repeat questions.

Dept. 02

Engineering

  1. Alert
  2. Triage
  3. Resolve

Bottleneck

Noisy alerts and manual triage, on-call digging through logs and health checks, risky releases with no quick way back, and teams that can't see how what they ship moves their North Star.

AI can

Triage and route alerts to the right owner, correlate logs and health checks, release behind feature flags with automatic kill switches, and give each domain a dashboard linking releases to its North Star.

Measured by

  • MTTAccept (Mean time to accept)
  • MTTA (Mean time to acknowledge)
  • MTTD (Mean time to detect)
  • MTTR (Mean time to recover)
  • CFR (Change failure rate)

Benefit

Faster detection and recovery, safer releases, quieter on-call, and engineers who see how their work moves company goals.

Critical

Dept. 03

Security

  1. Signal
  2. Triage
  3. Contain

Bottleneck

Attackers use AI to scale phishing, deepfakes and fraud, while startups can't afford a full security team: KYC checks for CBE and FRA run by hand, and the company's own AI tools open new gaps.

AI can

Give a small team round-the-clock coverage: triage alerts with fixed playbooks, detect fraud, automate KYC checks, verify payments against deepfakes, and govern which AI tools staff use.

Measured by

  • Time to patch (Time from disclosure to patch)
  • Fraud rate (Fraud losses as a share of transaction volume)

Benefit

Security coverage a startup couldn't otherwise afford, and fraud and attacks stopped before they reach customers or regulators.

Dept. 04

Product

  1. Hypothesis
  2. Test
  3. Roadmap

Bottleneck

Initiatives built on untested assumptions: scattered feedback, usage nobody tracks properly, experiments that are slow to set up and read, and prioritising by gut feel.

AI can

Cluster feedback into themes, turn assumptions into testable hypotheses, help design event tracking and A/B tests, read the results, and draft requirement documents for the next bet.

Measured by

  • NSM (North Star metric)
  • Activation (Activation rate)
  • Retention
  • Experiment velocity (Experiments run per period)

Benefit

More certainty before committing, fewer features nobody uses, and a roadmap built on evidence, not opinion.

Dept. 05

Growth

  1. Activate
  2. Retain
  3. Win back

Bottleneck

Users who sign up once and never return, churn spotted only after it shows in revenue, and the same lifecycle messages sent to every user at the same time, whatever they did.

AI can

Predict which users are about to churn, trigger personalised messages on WhatsApp, push and email at the right moment, run win-back offers, and show which actions turn new users into regulars.

Measured by

  • Retention
  • Churn rate
  • LTV (Customer lifetime value)
  • Win-back rate (Share of churned users who return)

Benefit

More users who stay, lower churn, and growth that doesn't depend on paying to acquire every user again.

Dept. 06

Marketing

  1. Segment
  2. Test
  3. Insight

Bottleneck

Campaigns aimed at broad audiences, user behaviour scattered across tools, slow A/B tests and funnel analysis, content produced at volume, and launch reports built by hand.

AI can

Build segments from tracked behaviour, draft content and variants for each, help design A/B tests, analyse funnels, and generate launch reports automatically after every campaign.

Measured by

  • CTR (Click-through rate)
  • CVR (Conversion rate)
  • CAC (Customer acquisition cost)
  • ROAS (Return on ad spend)

Benefit

Targeted campaigns that convert better, faster learning from every launch, and more output from the same team.

Dept. 07

Data

  1. Question
  2. Query
  3. Answer

Bottleneck

The same data questions every week, slow ad-hoc queries, dashboards people don't trust, and quality issues found at decision time instead of when the data first arrives.

AI can

Answer common questions in plain language from governed data, draft SQL for analysts to review, document tables and lineage, and catch data quality issues as data arrives.

Measured by

  • TTI (Time to insight)
  • Self-serve rate (Share of questions answered without an analyst)
  • DQ incidents (Data quality incidents)
  • Dashboard adoption (Share of people using dashboards each week)

Benefit

Analysts spend their time on real analysis, not repeat requests, and every other team's AI rests on data people trust.

Dept. 08

Operations

  1. Order
  2. Fulfil
  3. Reconcile

Bottleneck

Operational queues worked case by case: orders, onboarding checks and payment failures handled by hand, partners chased over WhatsApp, and systems reconciled at day end.

AI can

Clear routine fulfilment and onboarding cases end to end, forecast demand and stock, flag delays and failed payments early, track partner SLAs, and flag mismatches between systems.

Measured by

  • SLA (SLA compliance)
  • Cycle time (Time from request to done)
  • Backlog (Open cases waiting in the queue)
  • Mismatch rate (Share of records that disagree between systems)

Benefit

Queues that don't pile up, fewer customers hit by delays or failed payments, and an operations team that grows slower than the business.

Dept. 09

Finance

  1. Request
  2. Check
  3. Pay

Bottleneck

Cash-on-delivery and wallet collections reconciled by hand, reimbursements stuck in long approval chains, provider balances running out without warning, and a slow month-end close.

AI can

Reconcile cash-on-delivery and wallet collections against orders, route only exceptions for approval, flag duplicates and unusual spend, alert before balances run out, and prepare the close.

Measured by

  • Days to close (Days to close the books)
  • Reimbursement TAT (Reimbursement turnaround time)
  • Unreconciled collections (Collections not yet matched to orders)
  • Duplicate payments (Duplicate payments caught)

Benefit

Every cash-on-delivery order accounted for, faster reimbursements and close, and no service cut off by an empty balance.

04 · Experience

Where I've worked.

  1. Digital Zone

    Engineering Manager

    Jul 2025 – Aug 2026

    Dubai · from Cairo (Company based in Dubai, I worked remotely from Cairo)

  2. Edenred UAE (C3Pay)

    Engineering Manager

    Jul 2023 – Jul 2025

    Dubai, on-site

  3. Delivery Hero – Talabat

    Engineering Manager

    Mar 2022 – Jul 2023

    Dubai, on-site

  4. Crowd Analyzer

    Engineering Manager

    Aug 2021 – Mar 2022

    Cairo, on-site

  5. Aqarmap

    Engineering Manager

    Oct 2016 – Aug 2021

    Cairo, on-site

  6. Aqarmap

    Senior Backend Engineer

    Oct 2015 – Oct 2016

    Cairo, on-site

  7. Eventtus

    Backend Engineer

    Jan 2015 – Jun 2015

    Cairo, on-site

  8. Software agencies

    Backend Engineer

    Jan 2013 – Jan 2015

    Cairo, on-site

05 · Contact

Let's start the transformation from within.

A 45-minute call. I'm in Cairo, and the booking page shows times in your own time zone.

Book a call

I reply personally on

Request my resume

Leave your email and I'll send it to you personally within hours.