Cloud Solution Map Case

What they ask

For pre-sales engineering roles in Cairo (Cloud Solution Engineer and similar), the process has three parts. A first interview checks your technical background. You are then given a discovery case to work on at home: a customer scenario for which you build a solution map and prepare a presentation. The second interview is you presenting that solution and defending it.

A representative case:

A mid-sized Egyptian retailer runs an ageing on-premise ERP and a separate e-commerce site. They want to move to the cloud within a year, keep the finance module stable, and cut infrastructure spend. Map their needs to a cloud solution, propose a migration path, and present it to their CIO.

Your solution map is expected to cover: the current-state pain points you discovered from the brief, which workloads move to IaaS versus SaaS, integration between ERP and e-commerce, security and data residency, a phased timeline, and a rough cost story.

What they look for

• Discovery before design: what questions would you have asked the customer, and which assumptions did you have to make.
• Correct mapping of business needs to product categories (compute, database, integration, identity), not just a list of services.
• A phased plan with a low-risk first step, since "lift and shift everything in month one" is a red flag.
• Presentation craft: a clear storyline for a CIO audience, few slides, and the ability to handle objections on cost and lock-in.
• Honesty about what you do not know. They probe technical depth on one or two components you picked.

Bring the deck as a file and be ready to present without it if the room setup fails.