David Ingram
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
Toptal member since October 8, 2021
David is a technical architect with experience in software engineering and leading teams of 50-100 engineers while working for notable clients such as Google, Facebook, University of Cambridge, Mendeley, and Linnworks. Having expertise as a solutions architect, technical project manager, and interim CTO, he helps companies solve problems and grow their business. David's approach is based on combining people with deep technical skills and simplifying complex tech solutions.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Work Experience
Solutions Architect
Simplified Systems
- Started Simplified Systems to help companies adopt the optimal technical architecture for scaling up and managing digital transformation projects.
- Evaluated tech stacks and made recommendations for languages, tools, databases, cloud services, and frameworks.
- Provided coaching on important trends such as Agile, Lean, DevOps, evolutionary architecture, and XFN design.
Head of Engineering
Linnworks
- Led the engineering team by developing the team’s Agile, microservices, continuous delivery, and continuous testing capabilities. Introduced learning and development practices and an improved tech stack.
- Developed the planning, user research, and design functions to drive product development of the industry-leading omnichannel platform for eCommerce retailers.
- Completed the organization design and built the hiring pipeline to scale the engineering team from 50 to 100 software engineers across two locations in the UK and Estonia.
Engineering Manager
- Led the development of collaboration and meeting applications on the web, embedded device, Android, iOS, and portal platforms. Reorganized the London-based engineers into the feature teams and created the collaboration apps and mobile team.
- Acted as a smart office project lead by working on the in-room video conferencing control panels, room door booking panels, wall-mounted intelligent map displays, and team area dashboard displays; deployed their new versions across the company.
- Grew partnership with the product team. Collaborated with the operations team in California and Messenger team in Seattle to unify the roadmaps.
Director of Software Engineering
Mendeley
- Advised the mobile team and delivered Mendeley’s first SDK for building mobile applications.
- Initiated development on social networking features regarding the profiles, institutions, followers, and news feed.
- Led the largest initiative in Mendeley’s 8-year history—the reinvention of research management. Reorganized the siloed teams into product feature teams and changed the technology stack.
- Grew the platform team from 12 to 35 software engineers in 18 months; seeded another big data team.
- Transitioned the structure to a guild model with vertically integrated cross-functional teams. Set up a network of tech leads, client liaisons, and project ambassadors.
- Ran a team of 65 engineers. Created the financial and business plans.
- Set overall technical direction for the team. Analyzed and designed solutions to technical problems. Led retrospectives and planning sessions.
- Collaborated closely with a complex network of stakeholders, including the product, project, and delivery management as well as clients.
Software Engineer
- Developed the YouTube app for Android, including the tablet, cross-device, and cross-OS support. Worked on the videos app for rented and purchased content.
- Implemented gesture recognition using the accelerometers in handsets.
- Used speech recognition on phones to trigger events.
- Mentored undergraduate students from minorities and three Google interns. Developed the programming workshops and trained others to run them.
- Oversaw the TeenTech outreach events around the country. Judged awards at the Royal Society.
- Liaised with the universities as a university champion. Led the interviews and workshops; reviewed the research awards.
Senior Research Associate
University of Cambridge
- Developed a component-based middleware platform optimized for sensor data streams from vehicles.
- Participated in a European project on security for eCommerce with partners in Glasgow, Dublin, Geneva, and Aarhus.
- Acted as a research fellow and director of studies in computer science at Jesus College, Cambridge, while teaching the undergraduates.
- Promoted to admissions tutor for sciences; selected students to be offered places to study at the University, chaired decisions meetings, and gave presentations to the schools and public.
Research Engineer
AT&T
- Created the world's first large-scale indoor augmented reality system using mobile devices with ultrasonic position sensors.
- Led a ubiquitous computing project based on the wall-mounted displays running walk-up and kiosk-style applications that are personalized to the user.
- Experimented with ultra-low latency networking hardware.
Project History
Facebook Video Conferencing
Increased the call target prediction accuracy from 60% to more than 90%, saving time at the start of thousands of meetings per day.
Linnworks Open Orders Screen
Engaged in a project that had been in development for over a year with no end in sight, pushed it through to release, and deprecated the previous screen.
Sutton Trust Computer Science Summer School
96% of the student attendees were inspired to study computer science at the university level.
YouTube Mobile
Increased the number of minutes of YouTube watched on phones and tablets from a minority to exceed that on all desktop platforms combined.
Linnworks Product Management
Introduced a quarterly planning cycle that the whole company successfully adopted, including the engineering, sales, marketing, customer operations, and HR department.
Mendeley 2.0
Led a $2.2 million project to rebuild the reference management product using web technology.
Linnworks Scalability
Scaled the Linnworks eCommerce architecture to accommodate ten years of organic order volume growth within six months during the pandemic.
I successfully led that effort, converted an aging non-scalable printing system to flexible load-balanced architecture, and increased the efficiency of database access. I also improved monitoring and alerting and utilized Redis caching to speed up queries.
Elsevier Graduate Training
Successfully implemented an 8-week graduate training program with two new grads at Mendeley, which is now adopted by 27 graduates in teams across Elsevier.
As the site lead across Elsevier's Moorgate and London Wall offices, I worked with the site lead in Oxford to transform the annual graduate program for the UK. I contributed to the selection process and raised the profile of the graduate program internally.
Mendeley Continuous Improvement
Led the continuous improvement initiatives within Mendeley to establish a culture of technical excellence based on best practices, engineering standards, and iterative development.
Therefore, I launched the Infrastructure Week and Green Builds Day initiatives that improved the quality across the board. I formed an infrastructure team and API steering group to provide ownership and continuous improvement for critical infrastructure.
Education
Doctorate in Computer Science
University of Cambridge - United Kingdom
Master's Degree in Computer Science
University of Cambridge - United Kingdom
Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics
University of Cambridge - United Kingdom
Skills
Tools
Google Docs, Jira, Google Slides, Google Sheets, IntelliJ IDEA, Slack, Miro, Mercurial, Jenkins, SQL
Paradigms
Real-time Systems, Event-driven Architecture, Microservices, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), Agile, Kanban, Agile Project Management, B2B, B2C, Test-driven Development (TDD), Lean Project Management, Lean, Agile Delivery, Requirements Analysis, DevOps
Platforms
Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure
Industry Expertise
Business Technology
Other
Research, Algorithms, Data Structures, Software Engineering, Distributed Systems, University Teaching, Interviewing, Java, Mentorship & Coaching, REST APIs, HaXe, eCommerce, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Backlog Management, Staffing, Technical Requirements, APIs, SaaS, Software as a Service (SaaS), RESTful Microservices, Cloud, Information Technology, Presentations, Databases, Outreach, Project Management, Agile Coaching, Publishing, User Stories, Social Networks, API Integration, Stakeholder Management, Business to Business (B2B), Google Meet, ClickUp, Dropbox, Email, Probability Theory, Queueing Theory, Operating Systems, Networking, C++, OpenGL, IT Security, CI/CD Pipelines, Line Management, Product Management, Python, C#, User Experience (UX), Teaching, Team Leadership, Education, Technical Project Management, Statistics, Software Design, Legacy Software, Mobile Apps, Internet of Things (IoT), Feature Backlog Prioritization, Discovery Workshops, Online Dating, Project Delivery, Project Planning, Order Management, Product Information Management (PIM), Mobile Project Management, Web Applications, Mobile App Development, Web App Development, Project Discovery, Requirements & Specifications, Software Project Management, .NET, Quality Assurance (QA)
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring