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Google Hash Code 2020 - GUC Hub

Hussein El Feky

Android Software Engineer

About Me

Hussein El Feky

Hi there! I'm Hussein, a Software Engineer based in Cairo, Egypt. I love being unconventional and going on adventures.
Here's a little about me:

    Random Facts:
  • I am a father of a Siberian Husky. She's called Lisa, and she's so adorable. ❤️
  • I developed and published my first Android app when I was 15.
  • So far, I have accumulated over 2 million installs on Google Play.
    Daily Habits:
  • Running with Lisa, my forever puppy.
  • Coding for next iterations of my products.
  • Listening to some inspirational music almost throughout the whole day.

Skills

I am an Android Software Engineer, who likes to turn ideas into beautiful Android apps.

I write in Kotlin, always striving to build the best apps and experience a user can possibly have, with simplicity in the user interface. I believe that a killer design along with some unique useful features no other app has are what make a project stand out.

Meanwhile, here is what I love to do:

Learn

I live to learn. I believe that there is a learning experience in every failure. I strive to learn from my personal losses & seek out for advice to gain a broader understanding of the world.

Design

I love to design and sketch new products - I want to develop products that perform complex functions with simple commands. I believe clean user interface is the key to a sustainable product.

Prototype

I am a huge fan of creating different prototypes of new ideas; as when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability.

Volunteer

I volunteer at my university to teach Computer Science to students in their first year of study, and let them get an insight into the vast fields of Computer Science.

Experience

Below are some experiences that I gained throughout my life. My main interests lie in Android Development, but I also like to explore new things whenever possible. Here is more about me.

  • Education
  • German University in Cairo
    • B.Sc. in Media Engineering and Technology
    • Graduated with High Honors
    • Google Hash Code Hub Organizer for my university
    • Android Instructor at Savvy student club
      Thesis: Built a touchless secure QR-based ATM system, enabling users to perform secure transactions through the bank’s mobile app without needing to touch the ATM, to minimize the risk of spreading contagious diseases such as COVID-19.
    German University in Cairo
  • Nefertari American International School
    • Graduated with High Honors with a GPA of 4.00
    • Ranked in Top 1 Percentile worldwide in the Math section of the Old SAT Test, getting 780/800
  • Professional Experience
  • Lead Android and AI Software Engineer | Yaw AI
    • Built Yaw AI Android app, an AI chat app, built with Compose, where you can talk to AI characters or your friends or even an AI version of your friends, by leveraging OpenAI and Google Gemini language models to generate human-like and contextually relevant responses to user messages.
    • Led the strategic planning and execution of roadmaps, collaborating with cross-functional teams, including engineering, design, and marketing, to align app vision with business goals and drive user growth.
  • Android Kotlin Mentor | Udacity
    • Invited to review the new Android Kotlin Developer Nanodegree, by providing thoughtful detailed feedback and giving suggestions/improvements to the nanodegree program before releasing it publicly.
    • Gave 3 weekly online sessions, teaching Android with Kotlin to 229 students as a part of Egypt FWD initiative.
    • Mentoring students from diverse backgrounds worldwide, reviewing their projects and addressing their questions, providing them help and support.
    • Ranked among the top 100 mentors in Q1 of 2021.
  • Senior Software Engineer I | Careem
    • Worked with the Food Android Engineering team, improving Food and Groceries ordering user experience in Careem’s super app, by reiterating on features and implementing campaigns, that aim at increasing the orders rate.
    • Built a release management desktop app using Compose Multiplatform, that facilitates the engineers and the QA, in automating some parts of the app’s weekly release process, by integrating the app with Bitrise and GitHub APIs, eliminating the weekly chores needed to release a new app version.
    Careem
  • Software Engineer II | Swvl
    • Enabled users to book travel trips through Swvl’s Android app, by supporting Swvl’s marketplace rides in new countries along with external travel aggregators, expanding the app to various new regions worldwide.
    • Built a new Android logger library along with custom lint rules that sends reported events and crashes to multiple internal services, providing insights into more metrics and users’ sessions.
    • Led an initiative to introduce native UI tests to the codebase, migrating the whole app from Dagger to Hilt, and creating new CI workflows, parallelizing UI tests with unit tests, improving code quality and developer experience.
    • Built a new open-source library (swvl/linta) that consists of custom lint checks built with Android Lint API that detects bad practices done when implementing UI designs.
    Swvl
  • Software Engineer Intern | Google
    • Refactored Android Google Maps logging API to run asynchronously, solving various contention issues, reducing the app startup time by ~100ms and reducing potential ANR crashes, making the app run smoother.
    • Got awarded 1 spot and 2 peer bonuses in recognition of the internship work impact.
  • Android Software Engineer | Robusta Studio
    • Worked in an agile scrum team, building robust maintainable e-commerce Android apps for various clients, including Fawry, Blue Bus, and HyperOne, using a variety of different technologies.
  • Android Software Engineer Intern | Orange
    • Designed and built an app using Kotlin and Firebase that facilitates Orange employees to select the best Orange bus line from/to work, increasing employees’ daily productivity.
    • Developed an AR app for future career fairs using Kotlin and ARCore that aims at increasing the job applications rate, by grabbing the attention of all attendees to an immersive experience.
    Orange
  • Junior Teaching Assistant | German University in Cairo
      Volunteered to teach the following courses to 50+ 1st year students:
    • CSEN 102 – Introduction to Computer Science (Python)
    • CSEN 202 – Introduction to Computer Programming (Java)
  • Talks & Conferences
  • AISI Conference 2022
    • Built a touchless secure QR-based ATM system, enabling users to perform secure transactions through the bank’s mobile app without needing to touch the ATM, to minimize the risk of spreading contagious diseases such as COVID-19.
  • Droidcon Egypt 2022
    • Large-scale mobile apps often involve large teams of developers. Without proper lint checks in your codebase, one might fall into the pitfall of inconsistent UI designs with different colors being used in layouts and other resources, making the app theme hard to maintain.
    • This session discusses some solutions for having a solid maintainable design system by adding custom lint checks to your Android app using Android Lint API, and finally demonstrates how to unit test them.
    Droidcon Egypt 2022
  • Leadership
  • Google Hash Code Hub Organizer
    • Founded German University in Cairo Hub, creating and organizing a lively place for 30 teams from my university, to compete together side-by-side in Google Hash Code 2020 Online Qualification Round.
    • Ranked 1st among 30 teams in my hub, 2018th among 10k+ teams worldwide.
    Google Hash Code
  • GDG New Cairo | Event Organizer
      Led the organization of many events, including GDG DevFest and Google I/O Extended, by setting up the decorations, reviewing speakers, welcoming guests and surveying them.
  • Menschen Bewegen 2016
      Got selected by Goethe Institute in Cairo to participate in Menschen Bewegen 2016, a 3-day event in Berlin, Germany, where introspective students from 30 countries and from 50 selected schools met to exchange cultures with each other.
    Menschen Bewegen
  • Stack Overflow Active Contributor
      As I gain knowledge from Stack Overflow, I like to return it by helping other developers as well, and so I usually answer questions on Stack Overflow whenever possible. Currently I have 2 tag badges,  android  and  android-layout , and looking forward to increase those tag badges.
    • Ranked in Top 6% Users Overall, having a reputation of 6,500+.
    • Answered 159 questions, making impact on more than 460k people.
    • Helped new Stack Overflow users to feel more welcome on Stack Overflow by volunteering in Mentorship Research Project, where I guided new Stack Overflow users in asking a good readable understandable question.
    Hussein El Feky Profile on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites
  • Extracurriculars
  • Vector Game Studio | Game Art & Design Member
      Currently learning the different perspectives of Game Art & Design by applying Octalysis technique in Game Development.
  • Open-source Contributor
      Contributing to open-source projects has been a wonderful and rewarding experience; Not only do I give back to the community but also I gain new knowledge and get to know other developers who are interested in the same field as mine.

8

Android Apps

2,000,000+

App Installs

100,000+

Lines of Code

too many

Cups of Coffee

Projects

These are all the personal projects that I've developed from idea to deployment as well as the projects that I worked on during all my previous working experience. I'm constantly working on a new project - stay tuned for more!

Typing Master
Typing Master | Android Game on Google Play
750,000+ installs, 4.6 rating

An educational game that helps you type faster while learning new words simultaneously. Random words fall down from the screen and you have to type them as fast as you can.

  • Ranked among Top 100 in Word Games category in more than 25 countries, including #15 in India and Bangladesh.
    [view source]
Get it on Google Play
Character Pad
Character Pad | Android App on Google Play
1,400,000+ installs, 4.7 rating

A tool for copying and pasting any Unicode character in a fast and orderly way. You click on any character to copy, then paste it anywhere you like. You can also long click on it to know more details about that character.

Get it on Google Play
GPA Calculator
GPA Calculator | Android App on Google Play
90,000+ installs, 4.7 rating

A tool for calculating one's GPA and Cumulative GPA. This app is applicable for all schools and institutions as you can create your own custom GPA scale in case it is not listed in the app.

Get it on Google Play
Items Counter
Items Counter | Android App on Google Play
4,000+ installs, 4.0 rating

A tool for counting and recording anything from inventory, supplies, customers, laps ... to scores or votes. You can create many lists, each with their own items. Each item has its unique name, value and color.

Get it on Google Play
Be Like Bill
Be Like Bill | Android App on Google Play
4,000+ installs, 4.6 rating

A small project where one can generate Be Like Bill memes, a famous trend at the past, and edit them as he/she likes.

Get it on Google Play
Orange Bus
Orange Bus | Android App on Google Play
Currently published in the alpha track

A service, in which all employees working at Orange Egypt headquarters can view all the company's bus lines from/to work, including bus stops exact locations with their specific arrival and departure time, and get the most recommended bus lines based on any given destination in a fast convenient way, increasing employees’ daily productivity.

Orange Explore
Orange Explore | Android AR App
Proof of concept

An augmented reality app, developed for Orange future career fairs, in which there will be photos of every department manager printed on a large wall readily available at the booth. When a user hovers the camera over them, a video that explains what the department does will be played above the detected image as if the person is brought to life, grabbing the attention of all attendees to an immersive experience.

Ain Assistant
Ain Assistant | Android AI App
Proof of concept

An artificial intelligence app, developed for visually blind people as the main target audience, which aims at helping them to identify any near object with as much accessibility as possible, using a very simple user interface and IBM Watson TTS service to provide any spoken feedback to the user. The app has 5 options; it can detect food, clothes, banknotes, text, or color. The user can select any option of them, then he/she captures an image, which is then sent to a server that will analyze the image, using trained Machine Learning models, and returns the result, reading it to the user.

My Portfolio
My Portfolio | Website

A simple project that introduced me to the basics of Front-End Development. It was one of the best ways to learn Web Design while producing a tangible project.

Writing

In my spare time, I like to share my knowledge and stories with other enthusiasts. As of now, I have only written one article, but I'm planning to write more very soon.

My First 1 Million Installs as an Independent Android Developer
My First 1 Million Installs as an Independent Android Developer
Published July 13, 2019

A Medium article, in which I explained my first one million installs in a 4-years journey as an independent Android Developer, discussing how I started and how I reached there, from idea, development, monetization, to marketing strategy.