Mohamed Hisham
06:30, blinds up, coffee on
I draw the architecture, then make it hold.
- Director of Enterprise Architecture, RTG
- Founder, NightShade Health
15years in the industry
11of them at Robusta
08:00, home office
Coffee first, then the briefing.
Jarvis, his home assistant, reads him the morning briefing. Then he plans the day.
What I do
Seven things I do, and where you can see them.
Each one has a place in the room. Keep scrolling and the camera will show you.
i. The screens
AI and data transformation
ii. The board
Enterprise architecture
iii. The chair
Engineering leadership
iv. The busy bar
Cross-functional delivery
v. The bookshelf
Technology strategy
vi. Jarvis on the shelf
Building with AI agents
vii. The notebook
Founder and product work
What changes
Before I arrive, and after.
Seven kinds of mess I walk into, and what they look like when I leave. Drag the line to compare.
i. AI and data transformation
Most companies already have the data. It sits in six systems that disagree with each other. I start by making one of them the truth, then put AI where people already do their work, not in a pilot nobody opens.
ii. Enterprise architecture
I map how the business actually runs before deciding how the systems should. System design and wireframes come before anything reaches a backlog, so teams build the right thing once.
iii. Engineering leadership
I have led engineering teams for more than a decade, from five people to over thirty. Good teams need clear ownership and room to focus. My job is to give them both.
iv. Cross-functional delivery
Strategy, sales, design and engineering speak different languages. I sit between them and make sure what was promised is what gets built, with a number behind every claim.
v. Technology strategy
I help leadership decide what to build, what to buy and what to stop paying for. A roadmap is only useful if it says no to things and the budget behind it is honest.
vi. Building with AI agents
I work next to a small team of AI agents every day, at work and at home. They write, check and run things while I decide. It changed how I scope work and how big a team needs to be.
vii. Founder and product work
With NightShade Health I am taking an idea from a sketch to an app people use. Being the founder keeps me honest about every trade off I ask other teams to make.
10:00, busy bar says coding
Deep in the code.
Two monitors, one coffee, and a handful of agents working next to him.
History
Fifteen years, eleven releases.
15 years in the industry, 11 of them at Robusta. Every role was a new version of how I work, and each one left a note.
Android Developermash Ltd.
Shipping something people hold in their hand beats a perfect plan on paper.
Ruby on Rails Developermash Ltd.
Most of a product lives on the server. I learned to care about the data before the screens.
Freelance Rails DeveloperIndependent
When the client is also the boss, agreeing the scope is half the job.
Senior Rails DeveloperRobusta
Joined a team with real standards. Code review taught me more than any course had.
Team LeaderRobusta
I stopped counting my day in lines of code and started counting what the team shipped.
Senior Technical Account ManagerRobusta
Most technical problems arrive as business problems first. Listen for the number behind the complaint.
Solutions ArchitectRobusta
Draw the system before anyone builds it. A box on a whiteboard is cheaper to move than a service in production.
Software Engineering ManagerRobusta
Hiring and team shape are architecture too. A team ships the shape of its org chart.
Deputy General Manager, AppsRobusta
The work started to carry a price. Every technical choice became a business choice.
Apps Business Unit LeadRobusta
Running a unit is mostly deciding what we will not build.
Director of Enterprise ArchitectureRTG
Across a group, the job is one source of truth and fewer systems that disagree.
13:45, the busy bar is lit
On a call. Don't knock.
The agents carry on without him.
On my own time
NightShade Health
Founder, In development
An app that reads food labels for people who avoid nightshades: tomato, potato, peppers and eggplant. It shows what it found, where it found it and how sure it is, in Arabic and English.
nightshadehealth.comAlso on the bench: a few SaaS ideas, not named yet.
NightShadeScanning
Ingredients:
water, sugar, modified starch, paprika extract, salt, natural flavourings.
Found paprika extract: a pepper, so a nightshade
Unclear natural flavourings: could hide one, check
Drag the scanner down the label, or press Scan.
How I think
Rules I run on.
Written the way I write automations at home: when this happens, do that. Each one runs on its own. Pick one to run it again.
automation.truth
waiting
Where the work went
Five countries, one desk in Cairo.
Clients I have worked with, by country.
- Egypt36
- Vodafone / Orascom Development / Fawry / Orange Egypt / Al Ahly / Dsquares / Uppingham / Govtech / Faragalla / Befit 360 / Manara Schools / Voom / Motherbeing / Cilantro / Bluebus / AlHassan Foundation / NawaPro / GoBus / Chemipharm / MasterEd / AppsNow / Menabytes / Do.er / MallBuddy / GS1 Egypt / SeaShell / JCareer / PassApp / RecForFree / Mirqah / Couponat / P&G / filkhedma / shebang / Weka.la / Raneen
- Saudi Arabia5
- Govtech / Palladium / Meshkati Solutions / HUED / Enjz
- United Arab Emirates1
- OLX MENA
- Germany5
- GIZ / Friedrich Ebert Stiftung / Trusted Jobs / Hospitality Digital / Transparency At Work
- United States1
- FarmRaiser
23:00, blinds closed
Offline. The agents aren't.
If you are working on something messy and want it to hold, write to me.
info@mohamedhisham.me