Helping early stage companies make sense of lab automation.

Responsible for developing, scaling, and running the LabGenius automated wet lab platform. This meant making sure the platform capabilities for a fast growing, ever-changing biotech startup constantly stayed in lock-step with demand while not spending money prematurely. It was one of the most challenging things I've worked on. Consequently it involved some of the most creative solutions in my life spanning far wider than just technology. I also had to make bold moves in science, organisation, hiring, budgeting, supplier relations, inventory and communications in order to make it work. Some examples listed below.Organisational changeOne such change was forming a cross functional Platform Team consisting of delivery and results oriented people with enough science and automation expertise to both run and continuously improve the discovery platform. Separating deep science development from execution and operations created huge efficiency gains the most important being lead time of experiments. This required mindset shifts in most parts of the business and did not come without resistance. The value of clear (and repeated) communication became a valuable lesson for me in driving this change. Capital expenditureAs we raised Series A it dawned on me that I needed to deploy ~£1M capex on the wet lab platform. having see the all too common scenario os expensive machines collecting dust in a corner of the lab I knew this would require a deliberate strategy. By building trust and making bespoke deals with equipment suppliers I managed to eliminate the risk of these investments completely and made sure they provided value and got embedded into our workflows before we had to commit to purchase. This strategy of deploying money made it ever more easy to get board approval and as we came through on the purchases and the the company grew the suppliers saw the potential for both current and future revenue and a positive cycle had been established.

Started the automation team and laid the foundations of its mindset and mission. Over the course of a year I grew the team and we built the MVP of the LabGenius automated platform from nothing. The aim was demonstrating what high degrees of automation means for the business. What it enables but also what it restricts. My first taste at marrying modern engineering practices with biological science was not straightforward and having never worked in biotech before (and only having taken high school biology!) the learning curve was steep to say the least.I quickly realised trying to develop technology for science from the 'outside' was not going to work. I had to firmly step into the lab and learn wet lab science from the ground up. This became a corner stone of the automation team - The job is not done until you have proven the workflow is adding bottom line value. Adding value means you need to consider not only the automation development in isolation but take a holistic view including things like co-optimising the science and the operations of running this process especially considering what is upstream and downstream. Doing this journey for the first time meant it took me months to get myself and later get the new hires truly productive. Having turned engineers into true hybrids understanding enough of all areas involved and having created a culture that orients around outcomes makes for an extremely high performing part of the business.

Driving through the change from non-agile, functional teams to becoming an agile and cross functional sub-organisation. My teams were the first in Volvo Group to make this transition. The outcome was a success and I held a gemba walk and presentation of the benefits (and drawbacks) with the CEO and CTO of Volvo GTT.Day to day I was leading cross-functional teams developing and testing the software for tomorrows trucks. After the cross functional transition the teams were responsible for both developing software and doing full ECU component testing. We took it much further than that and made sure what we delivered actually worked on the system level. The saying "Does it actually work in the truck?" Became our mantra and we made sure to short circuit any feedback from testers or customers straight into our teams.I was personally involved in all aspects of agile leadership and embedded software development. From doing the real work (writing C code, doing RCA and developing test cases) to improving processes, hiring and product decisions. Eating ice cream and drinking coffee was of course also important parts of day to day life in an agile team of teams. I saw it as my main goal to be a servant leader and constantly drive improvements that made an actual difference in our performance. With thousands of people working on the same product, in the midst of an agile transformation, efficient communication and short term vs. long term decision making was two of our biggest challenges. Volvo is an amazing company with a wonderful culture that fit me very well. Trust is a word that has a very real meaning there.

Software engineering and Test Automation being the main two tasks. Writing Application logic (SWCs) in embedded C for AUTOSAR including unit tests (V1/2) and integration tests on the hardware (V3).

Feasibility studiesChoosing componentsBuilding prototype on breadboardPCB DesignAssembling and solderingEmbedded software development

Internet startup focused on helping photographers improve through feedback and critique from others. Essentially a community with a purpose.Being a founder in a start-up means you have every different hat possible. One day you are writing code, another day you are doing customer support, sales, making product decisions, budgeting or moving furniture. One thing is always clear; You won't get away with spending time on things that are not moving the needle of the business.TechnologiesHTML, Javascript and CSS as well as a back-end running apache with PHP on a CodeIgniter (MVC) framework. For user feedback I held many interviews and relied heavily on SurveyMonkey and A/B testing to find what new features are most useful. Google analytics was another goto tool for insights.My main responsibility was building the back-end and doing customer interviews.

OverviewSmall Web Development firm in Gol, Norway. Only client work.- Various smaller clients that needed a place on the web. - Clients include a gaming community with divisions and tournaments focused around the game DotA.- An online betting site (similar to fantasy football), overtaken from other firm.Started part time and then transitioned into working full time.

Brødrene Dahl is a wholesale company for HVAC supplies with the largest market share in Norway.Standard warehouse duties such as fork lifting, preparing shipments and taking care of incoming goods. Also keeping the warehouse in order and stocked.

Helicopter division, special mech infantry