Since VMware’s acquisition of Pivotal, I have been working as a full-time people manager, supporting a larger team of engineers through both the process of integration with VMware and the rapid transition to fully remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic.

From the beginning of 2019 I took on an additional people management role, managing a small team of other individual contributors. This gave me the opportunity to build longer-term mentoring relationships and get involved in broader engineering management tasks including recruitment, project allocation and employee evaluation.

As a staff engineer my responsibilities expanded to leading larger teams, working with more complex clients and experimenting with new ways of applying our practices. A standout project was helping a social impact firm bring a legacy codebase under control and build out a product development practice, without interrupting the service they were offering a vulnerable user group, as part of the Pivotal Act programme (https://tanzu.vmware.com/act).

I moved to Pivotal explicitly to focus on my software engineering skills, joining a highly skilled and experienced team applying best-of-breed development practices. Collaborating closely with colleagues in the lean product management and user-centred design practices, I worked with our clients’ development teams to enable them to rapidly and iteratively deliver high-quality software products that meet business needs and deliver real value for end users.

My primary responsibilities were as a research lead and as a developer of software tools for decision support and asset modelling. I also led teams to deliver more complex projects and, as an Associate Fellow of the TRL Academy, contributed to the development and delivery of TRL’s scientific goals. Significant projects included a technology horizons scan for the Department for Transport, which produced a published report and a presentation to the DfT's Chief Scientific Advisor's technical seminar; leading a team to design and deliver a multi-tier .NET web application for Highways England; taking a leading role in the development of a complex financial model for the DfT; and the development of a probabilistic analysis technique for Shell. Involvement in EU research projects (SmartRAIL, Capacity4Rail and DestinationRail) gave me experience of working with large, international, interdisciplinary teams.

Starting in the Technology Development group, developing algorithms for traffic-speed road condition monitoring, I moved to the Asset Management group in early 2008 to work on a network-level whole-life road maintenance cost model developed by TRL for the Highways Agency, carrying out analyses and implementing additional functionality. I also provided advice and validation for the Agency in acquiring a genetic algorithm-based system; provided updates, training and support for a scheme-level value management tool; and developed a bespoke modelling and optimisation tool in Python for Nynas.

During university holidays I worked at a Currys retail store in Nottingham, where my responsibilities ranged from stock management to direct customer service. This role gave me experience of dealing with a wide range of people, often in difficult situations.