Salah Hussein

Salah Hussein

Country General Manager & R&D Director

AI & Generative AI leader — digital transformer applying GenAI to real industry problems, with roots in AI research and cybersecurity.

  • AI Leadership
  • Generative AI
  • Digital Transformation
  • GenAI for Industry
  • Cybersecurity
  • AI Research
  • Team Building
  • Software Development
  • General Management
Egypt · Cairo linkedin.com/in/salahhussein salahhussein.com

01 About

I am a strategic AI and digital-transformation leader with 25+ years across software engineering, cybersecurity, R&D, and general management.

My roots are in cybersecurity: I began my career engineering antivirus, encryption, and intrusion-detection systems, and my published research applies intelligent agents to worm detection. That security foundation — combined with two decades of software architecture and team building — is what I now bring to AI: helping organizations adopt AI that is secure, practical, and tied to real business outcomes.

As Country General Manager & R&D Director at VIAVI Solutions Egypt, I balance operational leadership with a research mindset — building and mentoring high-performing teams while delivering measurable business impact.

I am also a founder and an AI researcher (PhD candidate, Computer Systems Networking & Telecommunications, Cairo University), driven by one question: how do we turn technology — from AI to digital transformation — into value that lasts.

Today my focus is Generative AI — applying LLMs and AI agents to real industry problems: turning a business description into a working application, analyzing field data, and recommending the next best action. I lead GenAI that removes real operational friction across telecom, manufacturing, dairy, and logistics — AI deployed where it changes how an industry actually works, not for its own sake.

02 Generative AI & AI for Industry

I apply Generative AI where it solves a real industry problem — not as a demo, but as a system people use every day.

  • GenAI for field operations — LLMs and AI agents that generate operational apps, analyze field data, and recommend next actions.
  • Industry depth — telecom, manufacturing, dairy & agriculture, logistics, and field services across MENA and globally.
  • Business-first adoption — GenAI deployed where it removes friction and ties to measurable outcomes, on a secure BYOK / data-privacy foundation.

03 Experience

Country General Manager & R&D Director

VIAVI Solutions — Cairo, Egypt
Nov 2018 — Present
  • Lead engineering and all operations & administration for VIAVI's Egypt site — from software R&D to day-to-day business.
  • Drive digital transformation and innovation across the organization, championing AI adoption in engineering and operations.
  • Build and mentor a high-performing team, fostering a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous growth.

Technical Solution Manager & Architecture

Nokia — Cairo, Egypt
Nov 2017 — Dec 2018
  • Designed end-to-end solution architecture for a new high-scalability, high-availability Nokia initiative.
  • Solution infrastructure & cloud design on AWS; integration design with SaaS systems.
  • Solution security-compliance and data-privacy design.

Senior Software Development Manager

Nokia — Cairo, Egypt
May 2008 — Dec 2018
  • Managed a 40-person R&D organization — developers, testers, analysts, architects, technical writers, and support — shipping two products.
  • Led recruitment and onboarded 50 engineers; built the team from the ground up.
  • Delivered 32 releases on a per-quarter cadence across Web, Windows, and mobile.
  • Deployed 35 applications across 70 countries worldwide.
  • Improved a key tool's performance 240% and reduced technical tickets 74% in 6 months.
  • Led data-migration and complex system-integration programs (interfaces, constraints, scope, cost, risk, value).
Key awards: VP Excellence & Innovation Award (2015) · Best-Performance Employee — EMEA (2013)

Team Leader & Solution Architecture

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise — Cairo, Egypt
May 2005 — May 2008
  • Founded a new R&D unit and recruited a 5-member team.
  • Led prototyping, work breakdown, effort estimation, and feature prioritization across multiple projects.
  • Authored application requirements, architecture, UI specifications, use cases, and logic flowcharts.
  • Introduced Agile SDLC best practices — development environments, deployment, build automation, version control, release management.
  • Delivered 20 releases (C#, ASP.NET, MSSQL, Ajax, jQuery, JavaScript, Web Services, OOP/OOD/SOA); deployed 10 applications across 30 countries in Middle East & Africa.

Senior Software Development Engineer

Norton · McAfee · EMRM
May 2000 — May 2005
  • Built security and systems software across search-engine development, encryption, anti-hacking tools, and text parsing.
  • Reverse-engineered tools and viruses; developed virus and worm detection systems and firewall software.
  • Worked across C, C++, Assembly, Perl, JavaScript, Java, and multiple databases.

04 Education

Doctor of Philosophy — Computer Systems Networking & Telecommunications

Cairo University
2025 — 2028 (in progress)

Master's Degree — Computer Science

Cairo University
2005 — 2010

B.Sc. — Computer Science

Cairo University
1998 — 2002

Contact Me

Have a question, a project, or an opportunity? Send a message — I reply personally.