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.
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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), NetBeans, Subversion, git, Ant, Maven, JIRA, Jenkins, SonarQube, MySQL, Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Apache, LaTeX, Windows, Linux & Mac.
Professional Experience
Feb 2014 — Present: Principal Software Engineer at (Current Employer)
Currently 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 am rolling it out as part of ongoing projects in the mine countermeasures and anti-submarine warfare spaces.
I also continue 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.
I have recently completed work leading £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 Working with People 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.
Marine Qualifications
VHF DSC Short Range Certificate
STCW Personal Survival Techniques
Published Work
Renton, I., Motson, D., Dart, F. and Lane R. (2017). Approaches to testing of COLREGs-Compliant Collision Avoidance Algorithms for Unmanned Surface Vessels. In: Undersea Defence Technology. Bremen, Germany: UDT.
Mediavilla Varas, J., Caharija, W., Smith, R., Bhuiyan, Z., Naeem, W., Carter, P. and Renton, I. (2016). Autonomous COLREGs Compliant Ship Navigation, Using Bridge Simulators and an Unmanned Vessel. In: 15th International Conference on Computer and IT Applications in the Maritime Industries. Lecce, Italy: COMPIT, pp. 280-286. Available at: http://data.hiper-conf.info/compit2016_lecce.pdf.
Cowling, D., Kanouras, A., Renton, I. and Stinchcombe, D. (2004). Apparatus and method for sorting objects by colour. Patent application PCT/GB2003/005027. Available at: https://www.google.com/patents/WO2004045781A1?cl=en.