Jules May, Project Manager in Dundee, United Kingdom
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Jules May

Verified Expert  in Project Management

Bio

Jules is a systems architect, project manager, mathematician, and programmer with a long history of implementing novel solutions to real-world problems. A regular conference speaker, Jules likes handling challenging mathematical problems and has a taste for safety-critical and high-reliability development.

Project Highlights

Engineer for Uber-like Routing Project
Rescued a project lacking technical leadership and had delivered no value after a year by providing the architectural redesign and project leadership to turn around the project to deliver an MVP in just under a year.
Mathematical Consultancy for Trainline
Designed, prototyped, and led a project to deliver a novel solution to an emergent problem at this rail ticket reseller.
Software Development Manager for Senergy
Led a transformation program—switching from an uncoordinated flow to agile development—and managed a team of 22 developers, introduced version control, and rearchitected the core product.

Expertise

  • Agile
  • Lean
  • Mobile Apps
  • Networking
  • Reliability Engineering
  • Safety-critical
  • Security
  • Serverless

Work Experience

Engineer for an Uber-like Routing Project

2020 - PRESENT
Vellity
  • Designed and specified technical architecture, intended as a migration of existing (half-finished) design for this complex real-time delivery service.
  • Worked on AWS serverless back end, repurposed the Laravel front end, and developed the Kotlin app.
  • Directed a small team of developers to construct the design over a period of about a year.
  • Took responsibility for the redevelopment of the mobile app in Flutter; worked on the complex real-time app by integrating messages from the server as well as handling the intelligence and optimization onboarding of the app.
  • Developed the key part of the commercial proposition, which was the optimization of drivers' routes.
  • Designed novel constraints and an optimization approach and coded it into the app.

Lead Developer — Path/Ray Tracing

2020 - 2021
Solemma
  • Extended the exiting open-source ray tracer to replicate materials previously coded in Radiance. Even though LuxCoreRender used a very different model of light to Radiance, it was important that the results were identical.
  • Assisted with every additional material needed to work identically in multi-thread CPU code and in GPU code (OpenCL), and was tested on a range of different hardware.
  • Extended and developed LuxCoreRender's shell application, to make LuxCoreRender accessible to the client's existing (C#) development.
  • Diagnosed and fixed several bugs in LuxCoreRender and contributed them to the project.

Developer

2019 - 2020
Support.com
  • Wrapped the existing code in a Desktop Bridge package for the client's product, which had been developed to work under MFC, but which they wanted to be able to put into the Windows Store. More specifically, they needed it to work under Windows 10 S-mode.
  • Assisted the modification of the native part of the code to work around security limitations while maintaining backward compatibility with the single codebase. The code was for a screen-sharing and remote control application, and much of its behavior was prohibited by W10's security measures. The result of my work outperforms Microsoft's own screen-sharing utility.
  • Designed the delivery process and informed the minimal set of back-end changes required to support it since the new code was delivered through the Windows Store instead of the client's website, which meant that the delivery and packaging process was entirely different.

Senior Computing Scientist

2018 - 2018
Adobe
  • Designed and demonstrated a strategy to enable versioned data storage. The system had to include both historical records and putative future records and had to be retrofitted to the existing system without any forced changes to it.
  • Designed, developed, and led technical efforts on a project to replace an existing aggregation node with a fully validated version.
  • Led the academic outreach team—recruiting graduates from local universities and raising joint projects.

Data Scientist

2017 - 2018
Global Data (via Toptal)
  • Built an evaluator that used Bayesian reasoning over correlations to mine relationships from multivariate unstructured data.
  • Developed algebra-over-probability distributions, so the distributions could themselves be correlated. The system was able to interpolate missing values (for graphing) and to extrapolate (for prediction), with confidence intervals built-in.

Protocol Designer and Developer

2017 - 2018
Trinity (via Toptal)
  • Contributed to the design and testing to a new kind of internet protocol that the company was formed to develop and exploit.
  • Wrote the code to implement the new protocol. This required a detailed understanding of the IP protocol stack and especially the characteristics of the various forms of TCP. The code had to be entirely transportable between PCs, mobile devices, and servers.

Audio Developer

2017 - 2018
Voicescript (via Toptal)
  • Converted a (defective) implementation of a voice detection algorithm from MATLAB into C++.
  • Corrected the defects and improved the performance.
  • Migrated from batch processing to stream processing.
  • Scoped and designed further development projects including speaker tracking and noise removal.

Low-level Database Service Developer

2017 - 2017
Exponential (via Toptal)
  • Developed code to replace an approximately 1GB database suffering from 1+ second response times with an 80MB database with around a five-millisecond response time.
  • Researched and implemented highly efficient storage and search algorithms. Tuned them for optimal L1 and L2 cache access and transparent multi-core support.
  • Exposed the database as a web service so it could be used efficiently in the existing network.

Consultant

2015 - 2016
Keysight Technologies
  • Developed specialized hardware for digital triggering. The hardware had been prototyped; my role was to design and develop a toolchain to program it.
  • Designed a language, Newt, to express complex triggering patterns.
  • Designed the mathematical foundation by which a compiler could be constructed.
  • Designed and developed a compiler (in C++) to turn Newt codes into various types of hardware models.
  • Contributed to the continuing development of the hardware (in Verilog) in order to maximize performance and generality.

Consultant

2014 - 2015
Trainline.com
  • Led the technical design and development of Journey Planner, a key component of the commercial proposition. The objective was to avoid conventional solutions in favor of one which could deliver some additional value to the business.
  • Researched, applied, and explained the core mathematical foundation.
  • Designed, developed, and communicated the function of the architectural foundation.
  • Provided the initial development and road mapping and served as the technical lead throughout the development cycle.
  • Introduced F# into the company's development process.
  • Wrote, in one week, a compiler which saved the company £1.2 million per year.
  • Spearheaded a data mining project. Initial results contributed to redirecting the company's strategy.

Software Specialist | Consultant

2013 - 2014
Senergy Group
  • Led numerous technical projects operating under business development/innovative products and services. They originated and researched ideas and the existing IP from within and without the business and then delivered those ideas as turnkey products.
  • Elicited requirements and ideas from stakeholders.
  • Researched and gathered technologies and personnel.
  • Designed the systems, managed the development effort, and took a leading role in core development tasks on several projects.
  • Contributed to commercial and business planning.
  • Participated in the IP registration.

External Supervisor

2011 - 2014
University of Aberdeen, Institute of Mathematics
  • Spearheaded the idea that the math undergrads tackle real, commercial problems which we had within our development team for their final-year project; it aimed to expose students to opportunities with real-world industrial and engineering contexts.
  • Sought out (and characterized in mathematical terms) suitable tasks and conveyed them to the institute and students.
  • Provided ongoing supervision and guidance.
  • Participated in the final marking of student tests and grades.
  • Helped to transfer the solutions found by the students back into the development team.

Software Development Manager

2012 - 2013
Senergy Group
  • Managed a department of 22 developers and two project managers, developing two home-grown programs (over # million lines) and several third-party assets.
  • Oversaw budgeting, recruitment, project scoping, delivery, and the implementation of all quality standards.
  • Supervised the transition from ad-hoc development to fully agile processes.

Technical Architect

2011 - 2012
Senergy Group
  • Directed the core, architecture, and futures team, which was charged with re-architecting the company's entire product range and future-proofing the business' roadmap.
  • Oversaw architectural design, team leadership, prototyping, and toolmaking.
  • Communicated and evangelized the new structures to programmers outside of the team and "sold" the ideas to non-technical stakeholders.

Senior Developer

2009 - 2011
Senergy Software, Ltd.
  • Developed and delivered a radical approach to rectifying and analyzing wireline image logs based upon cross-correlations.
  • Architected the project such as to work as part of a desktop app, when embedded on downhole hardware and when deployed onto GPU arrays.
  • Handled conception and design as well as mathematical and theoretical foundations.
  • Submitted the product for a patent (GB1016556.1, Methods for providing for correcting data and associated apparatus).

Web Developer

2008 - 2009
NHS Education Scotland
  • Collaborated with a teammate to develop this high-load, highly-visible, and politically-sensitive internet-delivered service.
  • Implemented a website with a complex, extended-time, multi-agency workflow. Even though deadlines were set before the project began, requirements were generally conflicting and were still changing even after the deadlines had passed.
  • Designed and developed an innovative user interface to explicate complex workflow to untrained (and highly-stressed) users.
  • Catered to system demands for multiple, complex security and confidentiality requirements, at some points of a national security level; basically, we designed security into the heart of the system.

Project History

Engineer for Uber-like Routing Project

Rescued a project lacking technical leadership and had delivered no value after a year by providing the architectural redesign and project leadership to turn around the project to deliver an MVP in just under a year.

• Designed and specified the technical architecture intended as a migration of existing (half-finished) design for this complex real-time delivery service.
• Worked on the AWS serverless back end, repurposed the Laravel front end, and migrated the Kotlin app to Flutter.
• Directed a small team of developers to construct the design over a period of about a year.
• Worked on the key part of the commercial proposition, optimizing the drivers' routes by designing novel constraints and the optimization approach and coding it into the app.

Project Architect for Adobe

Designed and directed a project to replace the existing subscriptions manager and fit in in a wider workflow.

Adobe had a large, complex, mission-critical system to deliver authorizations against user's licenses. The existing system was old, tough to test (many errors happened in practice), and didn't integrate well with the rest of the fabric.

I designed and led a project to replace this with a more modern version. It introduced novel technologies to provide highly testable failsafe functionality.

Mathematical Consultancy for Trainline

Designed, prototyped, and led a project to deliver a novel solution to an emergent problem at this rail ticket reseller.

• Led the technical design and development of Journey Planner, a key component of the commercial proposition. The objective was to avoid conventional solutions in favor of delivering some additional value to the business.
• Researched, applied, and explained the core mathematical foundation.
• Designed, developed, and communicated the function of the architectural foundation.
• Provided the initial development and road mapping and served as the technical lead throughout the development cycle.
• Introduced F# into the company's development process.

Software Development Manager for Senergy

Led a transformation program—switching from an uncoordinated flow to agile development—and managed a team of 22 developers, introduced version control, and rearchitected the core product.

• Managed a department of 22 developers (remote and local) and two project managers in the development of two homegrown programs (over 3 million lines) and several third-party assets.
• Oversaw budgeting, recruitment, project scoping, delivery, and the implementation of all quality standards.
• Supervised the transition from ad-hoc development to fully agile processes.
• Rearchitected the core product and road mapped the migration.

Education

1979 - 1983

Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science

University of Warwick - Coventry, England

Skills

Tools

Trello, Jira, Slack, Zoom, LuxCoreRender

Paradigms

Agile, Lean, Scrum, Kanban

Platforms

Amazon Web Services (AWS), iOS, Firebase, Windows 10, Android

Other

Reliability Engineering, Security, Safety-critical, Embedded Software, Mobile Apps, Graphics, Networking, C++, Software Development, Technical Hiring, Technical Project Management, Project Management, Project Planning, Software Design, Leadership, Software Architecture, Serverless, Healthcare IT, Innovation, Early-stage Startups, Lean Startups, C#, JavaScript, User Experience (UX), App Store, Google Play API, Flutter, Laravel, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Project Rescue, EventStore, Agile Coaching, C#.NET, Kotlin, Central Processing Unit (CPU), Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), OpenCL, Network Data Storage, Bayesian Statistics, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), Computer Science, F#, Mathematics, Technical Architecture, Audio Processing

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