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https://ianrenton.com/
Ian Renton
Software & Systems Engineer
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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. V-model & waterfall lifecycle. IEC 61508 SIL2 systems. |
Programming languages | Java, LabVIEW, MATLAB, Ruby, JavaScript, Python, C, C++, PHP. |
Specific packages | DOORS, Enterprise Architect (UML), NetBeans, SharePoint, Apache, Subversion, git, Ant, Jenkins, SonarQube, MySQL, MSSQL, Microsoft Office, LATEX, Windows, Linux & Mac. |
Professional Experience
Feb 2014 — Present |
Principal Software Engineer at (Current Employer) Lead engineer for £1M+ of software effort on a major £15M+ “game-changer” project for the company. Produced customer-focused technical documentation at the bid stage to help secure the work, followed by the full range of requirements, architectural design, detailed design and test documentation. Interviewed and selected three new members of the team to support the work. Having completed the main software development phase of the lifecycle through to summer 2017, I am now working as part of a multi-disciplinary team in the project’s trials and testing programme, with the goal of achieving customer acceptance within the next few months. |
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. |
Qualifications, Education & 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. |
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.
Miscellaneous
UK National, security information available on request.
Full UK drivers’ licence.
References are available on request.