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ian@ianrenton.com
http://ianrenton.com

Ian Renton

Software & Systems Engineer

I am an experienced developer of unmanned maritime systems for global Naval forces, and my company’s lead engineer for unmanned vehicle command & control and autonomous navigation systems. I work within the company, with other industry players and with international groups to help define the future of unmanned systems at sea. I have experience of the full engineering lifecycle, from the bid phase through to in-country support, and provide technical leadership to our in-house software development team.

Technical Skills

Domain knowledge Autonomous/unmanned vehicles, maritime navigation, naval combat systems, mine countermeasures, RF & sub-sea communications, GIS applications.
Engineering processes Requirements capture, system & software design and modelling, User Interface design, usability testing, configuration management, integration & testing, post-sales support. Agile, V-model & waterfall lifecycle. IEC 61508 SIL2 systems.
Programming languages Java, LabVIEW, MATLAB, Ruby, JavaScript, Python, C, C++, PHP.
Specific packages DOORS 9 & N.G., RQM, Enterprise Architect (UML), Eclipse & NetBeans IDEs, Atlassian JIRA, Bitbucket & Confluence, Git & Subversion, Maven & Ant, Jenkins, SonarQube, MySQL & Derby DB, Microsoft Office & SharePoint, Apache Web Server, Microsoft Windows, Red Hat & Ubuntu Linux.

Professional Experience

Jun 2020 — Present

Expert in Autonomy at (Current Employer)

In my new role as a company “Expert”, I continue to lead the development of our Command & Control and Autonomy software, now used on over a dozen platforms in the UK and abroad.

I work closely with other members of the company’s Experts scheme to support and direct vital R&D innovation work, pushing both the business and the state of the art forward.

In the past few years my team has enabled the delivery of four major programmes of work totalling over £30 million to the Royal Navy and export customers.

Feb 2014 — Jun 2020

Principal Software Engineer at (Current Employer)

As a Principal Software Engineer, I served as a system architect for the company’s internally-funded Combat System software framework, aiming to improve software re-use across the company and allow us to enter new markets with the ability to produce larger-scale systems. As well as core development work on the framework, I oversaw the roll-out of the framework as part of projects in the mine countermeasures and anti-submarine warfare spaces.

I also continued to lead development of the company’s Unmanned Vehicle Command & Control and Autonomy systems, including bidding for work, management of requirements, design, implementation and test, as well as supporting in-service systems.

Between 2016 and 2018 I led £1M+ of software effort on a major £15M+ “game-changer” project for the company through the full project life cycle, including hiring several new members of the team to improve our capability.

Oct 2009 — Feb 2014

Software Engineer at (Current Employer)

Lead developer of my company’s vehicle autonomy software and front-end GIS application, with responsibilities including requirements management, cost estimation, test & evaluation and roadmap planning.

Specialised in user experience and User Interface design as part of the company’s newly-created HMI & Control team.

Led small teams of developers on a number of larger projects.

Continued involvement in all areas of the project lifecycle, and contributed expertise on tools and techniques to improve the company’s engineering processes.

Responsible for the management of the company’s source code repositories, issue tracker and build server.

Experience working with parallel software teams in Germany and customers in the Middle East.

Jul 2006 — Sep 2009

Software Engineer at QinetiQ

Worked on a variety of projects for defense and commercial customers, primarily in the naval arena.

Responsibility for the complete engineering process from requirements capture to commissioning on a number of smaller projects.

Worked to increase the adoption of configuration & issue management tools at the Winfrith site.

Summer 2004, 2005

Summer Student at QinetiQ

Applied scientific and programming knowledge to projects in a variety of disciplines including rail transport and biomedicine.

Sep 2002 — Sep 2003

Year in Industry Student at QinetiQ

First experience of the engineering process. Alongside working on a major QinetiQ project, I also took on a spin-off development and saw it through from initial R&D work to demonstration of a prototype and patent application.

Academic Qualifications & Memberships

2012 — Present Member of the Institution for Engineering and Technology (MIET). Presently working towards Chartered Engineer (CEng) status.
2003 — 2006 BSc (Hons) in Physics from the University of Southampton.
2002 — 2003 BTEC in Management from Pershore College, earned whilst on my Year in Industry placement at QinetiQ.
1995 — 2002 Attended Bournemouth School for Boys. Achieved A-levels in Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Electronics, as well as a certificate in Japanese Language & Studies.

Other Qualifications

Published Work