Mentorship 2025-2026
This year I am mentoring 7 bright young graduates, selected through short interview sessions across different universities. The focus of the program is to make them industry-ready — combining practical software-engineering habits, Azure cloud skills, and AI integration patterns — so that they step into their first roles confident in both the fundamentals and the modern stack.
20-Week Azure & Software-Engineering Training Program for Fresh Graduates
This program is designed specifically for fresh graduates. Most university curricula skip the professional habits that actually get exercised on the job — Git workflow, debugging, testing, logging, API design — so the program opens with a foundations week, builds Azure breadth through the middle, and closes with a capstone plus an interview-prep week so each mentee leaves with a deployable project and a polished portfolio.
Schedule
Daily sessions are 2 hours long, scheduled between 1 PM and 6 PM.
Each mentee picks their own project at the start of the program and applies every week's content directly to it, so training and project work reinforce each other throughout.
Curriculum
Week 1
Engineering Foundations
- Git and GitHub workflow: branches, pull requests, code review etiquette
- IDE and debugger proficiency: Visual Studio and VS Code, breakpoint-driven debugging
- Unit testing with xUnit and designing code for testability
- Structured logging and an observability-first mindset
- SOLID principles, clean code, and safe refactoring
Assignment: fork a starter repo, implement a small feature on a branch, and open a pull request with tests and a clear description.
Week 2
Azure Fundamentals and Cloud Computing Essentials
- Cloud deployment models: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS
- Azure Portal, resource groups, and subscriptions
- Cost Management and the pricing calculator
- Azure CLI, Azure Developer CLI (azd), and Cloud Shell for scripted, environment-first resource management
- Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) fundamentals
Assignment: create an Azure account and deploy a resource group with a small set of resources.
Week 3-4
Web Development on Azure
- Azure App Services: deploy and scale web applications
- .NET Aspire: cloud-native app composition, local orchestration via the App Host, service discovery, resilient HTTP, and built-in OpenTelemetry
- Docker fundamentals and Dev Containers in VS Code for reproducible environments
- Azure Container Instances and an introduction to Azure Kubernetes Service
- CI/CD with GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines
- Azure Static Web Apps
Assignment: build a small .NET Aspire solution, containerize it, and ship it through a CI/CD pipeline.
Week 5-6
Data and Storage Solutions
- Azure Storage: Blob, File, Queue, and Table
- Azure SQL Database in depth: service tiers (Hyperscale, Serverless, Elastic Pools), connectivity from App Service and Functions, and geo-replication
- Azure SQL performance tuning: Query Store, execution plans, indexing, and wait-stats analysis
- Cosmos DB: partitioning, consistency levels, and when to reach for distributed NoSQL
- Relational schema design: normalization, indexing, and transactions
- Data migration basics with Azure Data Factory
- Database security: managed identities, firewall rules, Always Encrypted, and auditing
Assignment: design and implement the schema for your project on Azure SQL, with EF Core migrations and a performance baseline.
Week 7
REST API Design, Authentication and Background Jobs
- REST principles, API versioning, and OpenAPI / Swagger
- Authentication patterns: OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWT, and Microsoft Entra ID
- Authorization: role-based and claims-based models
- Background processing: hosted services, scheduled jobs, Hangfire / Quartz
Assignment: build a secured REST API that exposes a scheduled background job.
Week 8
Security and Networking
- Microsoft Defender for Cloud: threat protection and posture management
- Azure Key Vault and managed identities for secret-less code
- Virtual Networks, Network Security Groups, and Azure Firewall
- Azure Front Door and Content Delivery Networks
- Conditional Access and identity protection
Assignment: add defense-in-depth to your project — secrets in Key Vault, NSGs on the network, Conditional Access for admins.
Week 9-10
Azure AI Fundamentals
- Overview of Azure AI Services (Cognitive Services)
- Computer Vision, Custom Vision, and Document Intelligence
- Speech and Language services
- Responsible AI principles in practice
Assignment: integrate a cognitive service into your project to solve a real user problem.
Week 11-12
Consuming AI Services — Azure OpenAI, Prompting, and RAG
- Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Foundry
- Prompt engineering: system prompts, few-shot patterns, structured outputs
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) with Azure AI Search
- Evaluating AI outputs: offline test sets, user feedback loops, hallucination checks
- Cost, latency, and safety considerations for production LLM use
Assignment: build a RAG flow over a document set relevant to your project.
Week 13-14
Azure Serverless Computing
- Azure Functions: triggers, bindings, and event-driven patterns
- Logic Apps: low-code workflow automation
- Event Grid and Service Bus for event processing at scale
- Durable Functions for stateful workflows
Assignment: build an event-driven pipeline that reacts to a storage event.
Week 15-16
DevOps, Infrastructure-as-Code, and Monitoring
- Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions: deeper pipelines, environments, and approvals
- Infrastructure-as-Code with Bicep (and an introduction to Terraform)
- Azure Developer CLI (azd) end-to-end: azure.yaml service mapping, azd up, azd deploy, and azd pipeline config for one-command provisioning and CI wiring
- Application Insights, Log Analytics, and Azure Monitor (with OpenTelemetry from .NET Aspire feeding in automatically)
- SLIs, SLOs, and effective alerting
Assignment: provision your project environment entirely from code using azd + Bicep, and wire up dashboards and alerts.
Week 17-19
Capstone Project
- Week 17 — Architecture review, component design, and milestone backlog
- Week 18 — Milestone 1: core feature delivered with tests and green CI
- Week 19 — Milestone 2: security hardening, observability, performance, and deployment to a non-local environment
Assignment: each week produces a reviewable, demo-able deliverable.
Week 20
Portfolio, Demo, and Interview Preparation
- Polish the capstone GitHub repository: README, architecture diagram, run instructions
- A crisp 5-minute project demo
- System-design walkthrough of the capstone — trade-offs and alternatives considered
- Technical and behavioral interview preparation
Assignment: present the capstone to the group and submit a polished portfolio.
Each mentee picks their own project at the start of the program and applies the training to it week by week. The projects in this cohort range from enterprise payroll automation to AI-powered video analysis and secure file sharing — a deliberate mix that keeps the group learning from each other's trade-offs.
Tech focus across the program: Azure services (App Service, Functions, Azure SQL Database, Cosmos DB, Storage, AI, Entra ID, Key Vault, Monitor), C# / .NET with .NET Aspire for cloud-native composition, REST and OpenAPI, Docker and Dev Containers, CI/CD with GitHub Actions, Bicep and the Azure Developer CLI (azd) for infrastructure-as-code and one-command provisioning, prompt engineering and RAG with Azure AI Foundry, and the software-engineering fundamentals that tie it all together.
Mentees
AD
Working on a payroll generation engine that includes sub modules like attendance, leaves, holidays, policies, off days calculation, and payroll generation with reports.
CH
Chaima Husni
Working on a SPA application related to leaves management.
EA
Ebrahim Ahmad
Working on a secure file manager backend, where users can upload and share files, with folder level security.
FK
Working on an algorithm using Azure AI to detect human activity and liveliness in a remote video feed.
HT
Working on detecting infected activities from a system using AI.
MB
Maryam Behzad
Working on tuning custom Azure OpenAI models.
J
Working on a Survey project with a list of users where admins can post and share surveys, with reporting built on top of the survey results.
Mentorship 2025-2026
This year I am mentoring 5 bright young graduates, selected through short interview sessions across different universities. The focus of the program is to make them industry-ready — combining practical software-engineering habits, Azure cloud skills, and AI integration patterns — so that they step into their first roles confident in both the fundamentals and the modern stack.
20-Week Azure & Software-Engineering Training Program for Fresh Graduates
This program is designed specifically for fresh graduates. Most university curricula skip the professional habits that actually get exercised on the job — Git workflow, debugging, testing, logging, API design — so the program opens with a foundations week, builds Azure breadth through the middle, and closes with a capstone plus an interview-prep week so each mentee leaves with a deployable project and a polished portfolio.
Schedule
Daily sessions are 2 hours long, scheduled between 1 PM and 6 PM.
Each mentee picks their own project at the start of the program and applies every week's content directly to it, so training and project work reinforce each other throughout.
Curriculum
Week 1
Engineering Foundations
- Git and GitHub workflow: branches, pull requests, code review etiquette
- IDE and debugger proficiency: Visual Studio and VS Code, breakpoint-driven debugging
- Unit testing with xUnit and designing code for testability
- Structured logging and an observability-first mindset
- SOLID principles, clean code, and safe refactoring
Assignment: fork a starter repo, implement a small feature on a branch, and open a pull request with tests and a clear description.
Week 2
Azure Fundamentals and Cloud Computing Essentials
- Cloud deployment models: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS
- Azure Portal, resource groups, and subscriptions
- Cost Management and the pricing calculator
- Azure CLI, Azure Developer CLI (azd), and Cloud Shell for scripted, environment-first resource management
- Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) fundamentals
Assignment: create an Azure account and deploy a resource group with a small set of resources.
Week 3-4
Web Development on Azure
- Azure App Services: deploy and scale web applications
- .NET Aspire: cloud-native app composition, local orchestration via the App Host, service discovery, resilient HTTP, and built-in OpenTelemetry
- Docker fundamentals and Dev Containers in VS Code for reproducible environments
- Azure Container Instances and an introduction to Azure Kubernetes Service
- CI/CD with GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines
- Azure Static Web Apps
Assignment: build a small .NET Aspire solution, containerize it, and ship it through a CI/CD pipeline.
Week 5-6
Data and Storage Solutions
- Azure Storage: Blob, File, Queue, and Table
- Azure SQL Database in depth: service tiers (Hyperscale, Serverless, Elastic Pools), connectivity from App Service and Functions, and geo-replication
- Azure SQL performance tuning: Query Store, execution plans, indexing, and wait-stats analysis
- Cosmos DB: partitioning, consistency levels, and when to reach for distributed NoSQL
- Relational schema design: normalization, indexing, and transactions
- Data migration basics with Azure Data Factory
- Database security: managed identities, firewall rules, Always Encrypted, and auditing
Assignment: design and implement the schema for your project on Azure SQL, with EF Core migrations and a performance baseline.
Week 7
REST API Design, Authentication and Background Jobs
- REST principles, API versioning, and OpenAPI / Swagger
- Authentication patterns: OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWT, and Microsoft Entra ID
- Authorization: role-based and claims-based models
- Background processing: hosted services, scheduled jobs, Hangfire / Quartz
Assignment: build a secured REST API that exposes a scheduled background job.
Week 8
Security and Networking
- Microsoft Defender for Cloud: threat protection and posture management
- Azure Key Vault and managed identities for secret-less code
- Virtual Networks, Network Security Groups, and Azure Firewall
- Azure Front Door and Content Delivery Networks
- Conditional Access and identity protection
Assignment: add defense-in-depth to your project — secrets in Key Vault, NSGs on the network, Conditional Access for admins.
Week 9-10
Azure AI Fundamentals
- Overview of Azure AI Services (Cognitive Services)
- Computer Vision, Custom Vision, and Document Intelligence
- Speech and Language services
- Responsible AI principles in practice
Assignment: integrate a cognitive service into your project to solve a real user problem.
Week 11-12
Consuming AI Services — Azure OpenAI, Prompting, and RAG
- Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Foundry
- Prompt engineering: system prompts, few-shot patterns, structured outputs
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) with Azure AI Search
- Evaluating AI outputs: offline test sets, user feedback loops, hallucination checks
- Cost, latency, and safety considerations for production LLM use
Assignment: build a RAG flow over a document set relevant to your project.
Week 13-14
Azure Serverless Computing
- Azure Functions: triggers, bindings, and event-driven patterns
- Logic Apps: low-code workflow automation
- Event Grid and Service Bus for event processing at scale
- Durable Functions for stateful workflows
Assignment: build an event-driven pipeline that reacts to a storage event.
Week 15-16
DevOps, Infrastructure-as-Code, and Monitoring
- Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions: deeper pipelines, environments, and approvals
- Infrastructure-as-Code with Bicep (and an introduction to Terraform)
- Azure Developer CLI (azd) end-to-end: azure.yaml service mapping, azd up, azd deploy, and azd pipeline config for one-command provisioning and CI wiring
- Application Insights, Log Analytics, and Azure Monitor (with OpenTelemetry from .NET Aspire feeding in automatically)
- SLIs, SLOs, and effective alerting
Assignment: provision your project environment entirely from code using azd + Bicep, and wire up dashboards and alerts.
Week 17-19
Capstone Project
- Week 17 — Architecture review, component design, and milestone backlog
- Week 18 — Milestone 1: core feature delivered with tests and green CI
- Week 19 — Milestone 2: security hardening, observability, performance, and deployment to a non-local environment
Assignment: each week produces a reviewable, demo-able deliverable.
Week 20
Portfolio, Demo, and Interview Preparation
- Polish the capstone GitHub repository: README, architecture diagram, run instructions
- A crisp 5-minute project demo
- System-design walkthrough of the capstone — trade-offs and alternatives considered
- Technical and behavioral interview preparation
Assignment: present the capstone to the group and submit a polished portfolio.
Each mentee picks their own project at the start of the program and applies the training to it week by week. The projects in this cohort range from enterprise payroll automation to AI-powered video analysis and secure file sharing — a deliberate mix that keeps the group learning from each other's trade-offs.
Tech focus across the program: Azure services (App Service, Functions, Azure SQL Database, Cosmos DB, Storage, AI, Entra ID, Key Vault, Monitor), C# / .NET with .NET Aspire for cloud-native composition, REST and OpenAPI, Docker and Dev Containers, CI/CD with GitHub Actions, Bicep and the Azure Developer CLI (azd) for infrastructure-as-code and one-command provisioning, prompt engineering and RAG with Azure AI Foundry, and the software-engineering fundamentals that tie it all together.
Mentees
AD
Working on a payroll generation engine that includes sub modules like attendance, leaves, holidays, policies, off days calculation, and payroll generation with reports.
EA
Ebrahim Ahmad
Working on a secure file manager backend, where users can upload and share files, with folder level security.
FK
Working on an algorithm using Azure AI to detect human activity and liveliness in a remote video feed.
HT
Working on detecting infected activities from a system using AI.
J
Working on a Survey project with a list of users where admins can post and share surveys, with reporting built on top of the survey results.