Usman Mahmood
MSc Network Systems 2005
Usman is Principal Software Engineer at oladoc.com, a company that offers healthcare bookings in Pakistan.
Currently based in Lahore, Pakistan, Usman has more than 16 years’ experience in the software industry, having worked in the top country software companies and institutions.
Before working for oladoc.com he was working in Dubai for an event base company, and prior to that he worked for a product named carswitch.com, which is a well-known product in UAE.
He explained: “I have always been curious to learn about new business domains and internal working flows of different organizations.”
Asked about his biggest achievement to date, Usman is proud to say: “Securing a good prominent position in the software industry as reputable and trustworthy person and employee.”
Usman was attracted to the University of Sunderland because it offered a course in Network Systems at Masters level, which was rarely available at other UK universities at the time.
He said: “The master’s degree in Network Systems was one of the courses that was being offered by few universities in the UK at that time i.e. 2003-2004. I came to know about this course, and I went through the course contents and I was impressed by the curriculum. It motivated me to apply and I graduated from this program having gained in-depth knowledge in the field of computer networks and network programming.”
Usman got to know very interested and talented people during his stay in Sunderland but remembers fondly Prof John Tindle, their senior Java instructor and lecturer.
“Prof Tindle had a very pleasant personality and his doors were always open for students. He never got annoyed by our questions and helped us a lot. He was also my project supervisor in the last semester.”
Usman advice to recent graduates entering the job market is to stay on top of the industry trends.
He advised: “Learn the latest technologies being used by top companies and organizations e.g. Node JS has been widely adopted as a back-end technology by organizations like NASA, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more. So, learning demanding technologies will land you a good job.”
Usman plans include learning as much as he can. He concluded: “We’re always learning and every day you learn something new. My goal is to help others succeed and provide coaching and mentorship to newcomers in this field.”
Usman has a Programming and Technology YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyTCHezYKkr7FPqBAVI2bcA
He has made the source code of all these videos open source and it is available on Github repository.
Repo link: https://github.com/techweber