London, England, United Kingdom
I've launched my own AI education business, providing uniquely interactive, informative and entertaining workshops for students and staff in primary and secondary schools. My aim is to demystify what AI is, how it works and why it makes mistakes. I help participants develop the critical thinking skills they'll need to make informed decisions about responsible and ethical use of AI. The workshops require no prior knowledge of AI or computing. I've worked as a software developer in industry for twenty years, including a key technical role in the contactless ticketing project for London's public transport network, which was a world-leading technology solution. I am recognised as a champion of apprenticeship and graduate early career schemes. Along the way, I've learnt a lot about what young people enjoy about tech careers, the preconceptions that wrongly become barriers to them joining, and the skills that employers are looking for.
I have setup Standup Computing to develop a new style of inspiring and entertaining AI Literacy workshops for primary and secondary schools. We enable pupils to explore and understand how AI works, in a completely safe offline environment, without coding being a potential barrier to engagement.
I managed TfL's software apprenticeship and graduate development schemes and co-led their technology and data schools outreach programme. Over three years I refined our schemes to provide maximum support and learning opportunities for our wonderful apprentices and graduates, as they began their careers in software development. I line-managed a team of up to 20 learners at a time and provided technical coaching and personal development advice to allow each person to thrive, enjoy their job and reach their full potential. In parallel, I worked with a colleague to create a range of entertaining and interactive workshops for primary and secondary schools, which showcased the technology that TfL uses to improve customers' journeys. As a TfL STEM Ambassador, I personally delivered these sessions to over 3,500 pupils across 40 London schools.
I led the software team developing the fare calculation engine behind TfL's world leading Contactless ticketing system. This flagship project was developed in-house using Agile Scrum, unusually for public sector IT. The fare calculation engine was a high performance distributed C# component, which applied complex business rules to the incoming stream of transactions generated by customers tapping their bank cards on rail and bus card readers. A grammar-driven state machine grouped taps into logical journeys, to which TfL's zonal-based fares were then applied. The most complex part of the software was the capping algorithm which minimised each customer's daily and weekly charges, removing the need for them to pre-purchase a travelcard. When Contactless launched to the public in 2014, the software had already been tested to reliably handle 4 million transactions every day. As the Oyster and Contactless systems continued to evolve, I went on to manage multiple development teams and acted as a subject matter expert on fare calculation in account-based ticketing systems, liaising with both business and technical stakeholders.
Designed and implemented thirty systems for interactive kiosks and digital signage within respected US retailers. Liaised with customers to define requirements and developed SQL databases, web services, web sites and Flash user interfaces. Created a JavaScript framework to monitor the real-time health and usage of networks containing up to six hundred kiosks. All projects demanded retail-hardened solutions providing high availability with minimal support effort. A customized Windows XP image was developed to satisfy retailer security requirements. Agile development methods were adopted which required the use of automated unit testing and code coverage analysis.
Overall responsibility for day-to-day operation of digital signage networks, guaranteeing reliable playback of multi-format content on remote displays. Tasks included scheduling, content delivery, network management, server administration and troubleshooting. Developed and tested scripts to securely synchronise content and playlists between media servers and multiple sites. Provided technical support to media booking agencies and content providers.
Initially designed and programmed control systems for leading-edge commercial audio-visual installations. Liaised directly with clients to specify, implement and demonstrate the user-interface. Wrote software design brief for new digital signage system and coded proof-of-concept algorithm for customisable time-of-day scheduler. Responsible for the testing and deployment of 30 platforms in time for the opening of Bullring Shopping Centre in Birmingham.