Ian Read

An experienced engineer and leader with a strong product-focus & energy for hard technical challenges. At Macaroni and KEY ESG, I've come onboard at the early stages to shape a technical product in search of product market fit. The situation presented has necessitated I expand my skillset beyond technical, to share responsibilities for product and design, as well as the technical direction of an early stage start up. I have also worked with a wide range of organisations including McKinsey & Company, McLaren and UK Parliament. With 30 years of development experience, I have been conscious to challenge myself to keep up with a modern stack, infrastructure and techniques to stay relevant. In the dark ages, I did a PhD using machine learning for improving text-to-speech synthesis and it helped make speech sound more natural. Key career achievements: + Advanced the naturalness of text-to-speech synthesis. + Led the development team for the DVSA’s learning to drive apps (the #1 top selling app on the UK Apple App Store) + Implemented an enterprise warehouse management system for McLaren Automotive to manage the logistics and stock for the production of their road cars. + Led development of a cloud application for drafting legislation used by UK Parliament. + Built various development teams embracing automated testing, code review, UX testing and pair programming. My side project is exploring a discourse modelling for news and a simple web app for exploring and planning mountain biking road trips. I love JavaScript, ES6/7/8, python, node, react, redux, D3, visualisations, HTML5, CSS3, postgres, mongodb, SQL programming and optimization, automated testing tools (Jest etc.).