Curriculum Vitae

Experience

Senior System Engineer at Verifymy

October 2025 — Present

Realigning engineering to embrace and utilise AI enhanced development practices. Optimising our codebase for AI context acquisition, discoverability, and reproducible developer tooling and verification.

Rust Specialist at WoodMackenzie

April 2024 — March 2025

Completing work begun by a former employee of WoodMackenzie’s on converting their energy markets pricing analysis modelling engine from Perl to Rust. Training other members of the team and producing resources to train future members of the team to be able to work on the Rust codebase. One year contract work, ended one month early due to the completion and integration of the projcet.

Senior Software Engineer at SteamaCo

July 2023 — January 2024

Developing, maintaining, and extending DLMS (Device Language Message Specification) protocol integrations for SteamaCo’s core platform using Rust. Creating integrations with a large variety of electricity meters into a centrally managed service providing usage monitoring and theft detection to African communities both on and off-grid. In addition to this I provided tuition to 7 colleagues to upskill them in working in Rust, enabling them to assist in developing on the DLMS service. In February of 2024 over half of the company was let go due to funding insecurity as a result of a large investor withdrawing.

Senior Fullstack Engineer at Element Human

January 2023 — June 2023

In January of 2023 I started work at Element Human building AdTech solutions enabling companies to pre-test their advertisements and receive feedback based on facial expression, emotion, and attention detection by analysing webcam footage from a test audience.

The backend was built primarily out of Python/Django backend services and a React frontend, with GCP providing the ops layer.

I led a rewrite of the core client facing data API from python into Rust/Axum, and substantially improved its performance and uptime through this rewrite.

The company made a large number of its employees redundent in June 2023 in order to secure profitability by reducing personnel expenses. I chose to leave alongside the rest of my departing colleagues in order to mitigate the risk of financial instability if the salary elimination was not enough.

Rust Engineer at Modeldrive

March 2022 — September 2022

March 2022 brought me back into the world of startups, and secured myself a four day work week—something I have negotiated for in all of the roles I have held since.

Modeldrive was building a new generation of data modelling software to compete with the ubiquitous spreadsheet.

The server backend was built in Rust/Axum, and the core data evaluation engine was built in Rust and compiled to WASM to run in browser on the client device.

In my time there in addition to extending the software and fixing bugs in Rust, I built the real time communication engine in Typescript, which enforced data syncornisation between peer-to-peer connected clients using CRDTs and Operation Transformations.

The company went bankrupt in September 2022, due to inability to secure stable venture capitalist funding.

Backend Engineer at Prima UK

January 2022 — February 2022

At the start of January 2022, I began working at Prima UK. My hope was that the larger more well funded and established company would bring me greater opportunity for career growth.

Prima developed fast, automated, and efficient insurance cover and claims processes in Italy and began its expansion into the UK.

The technology being built in the UK was primarily built in Elixir with common services used across regions provided in Rust.

Unfortunately Prima UK was a poor fit for me personally, and by the end of February 2022, I had a final day set and was lined up to change roles again.

Rust Engineer at MotionMetrics

September 2020 — December 2021

Having left the University of Reading during the pandemic, and temporarily switching to working at Brace IT fulltime, the opportunity to switch to writing Rust code full time presented itself to me in September 2020, and I jumped at the chance.

MotionMetrics are the creators of a product called Carv, a wearable technology ski coach in the form of a “smart insole”. Sensors in the insole and attached to the boot transmit data to the Swift/Kotlin iOS/Android applications, which then communicate over FFI with a Rust codebase defining common business logic to process the data and give in ear feedback. Data is then syncronised with Rust/Axum servers to store and persist the data, and provide later reprocessing.

While working at MotionMetrics:

• I led a complete rewrite of the piste detection system using modern geospcial algorithms and to improve their memory efficiency.
• Implemented a redesign of the in ear feedback system to eliminate repeated advice and improve performance uplift.
• Assisted data science with a large upgrade to the model in mid 2021 to allow for precise turn by turn analysis (instead of requiring a completed run).
• Rewrote the base data processing algorithm to allow parallelisation of independent parts of the system.

At the end of 2021, I left MotionMetrics to persue opportunities at a larger company with higher potential for career growth.

Various Work at Brace IT

Junior Systems Administrator

June 2014 — May 2015

Brace IT was where I got my foot in the door of the tech industry. It was a local web hosting company of the sort that has been obsoleted by the cloud. A physical server in the corner of the room serving websites for local businesses and schools, and a dream to be something bigger.

I joined as a junior hire in June of 2014, working on the internal network infrastructure, setting up new network interfaces, and building out a DMZ to improve our security in line with requirements for a local government Job the company took on at the time. In addition to this, I set up the on premisis email hosting, and was partially responsible for deploying new virtual machines to Hypervisor, and maintaining and updating existing deployments to new software versions.

At the time, I was still in full time education, and so I worked full time at Brace IT during the holidays, and part time during the week. Working 1 day per week, as well as working some evenings.

This was a fantastic learning opportunity for me, and as I progressed at the company I began doing less administrative work and more development work until I dropped the Junior from my title and switched to development full time at the same company in June of 2015!

Systems Engineer

June 2015 — August 2016

With more and more engineering work being done, the administration mostly automated, and a years experience under my belt, it was time for an internal promotion at BraceIT.

From June of 2015, I spent my time there doing lots of web development. There were two main product lines this was done on.

Providing end-to-end development and on premises hosting for local businesses, schools, and charities. This work was done largely in PHP, extending Wordpress with bespoke plugins to suit each businesses needs, such as complex survey systems for data collection, and automated report and certificate generation.

Developing a synchronization system for short stay lettings and hotels to keep their calendar availability, and pricing (Prop-Sync). This was built as a Java/Spring monolith application.

In addition to those two primary sides of the business, I also developed internal tooling which was used to automate our deployments and upgrade testing. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “DevOps”, though there was certainly skillset overlap.

In September of 2016, I decided it was time to get a degree, and so my time as an Engineer at Brace IT came to an end.

Technical Consultant

September 2016 — August 2020

Going to University to study for my degree wasn’t the end of my involvement in Brace IT. From when I began my studies in September of 2016, to over a full year after I graduated in September of 2020, I worked as a consultant at Brace IT.

This work consisted of pitching in with development work when I was not otherwise ensnared in the clutches of coursework and exams, as well as providing architectural advice and support to the company.

During the university holidays, this resembled much more closely my previous role at the company.

Education and teaching

Student at The University Of Reading

September 2016 — June 2019

While not a role or responsibility, I’ve included this to provide context for some of the other roles I held during this time.

I began studying Computer Science at the University of Reading in September of 2016, and in June of 2019 I graduated with a 1st Class BSc.

While a student at the University, I began offering private tuition to my peers. In many aspects of the course I was significantly ahead of the taught materials (due to my previous employment, and personal interest). This led to me developing a strong passion for teaching and education.

Graduation wasn’t the end of my involvement at the University as I still live local to it, and to this day I am involved in helping out societies which I held a membership of while a student.

Teaching Assistant at The University of Reading

September 2018 — February 2020

In September 2018, at the start of my final year of studies, I began working as a teaching assistant at the University of Reading.

In this role, I worked to support a number of courses taught to first and second year students.

• Programming in C and C++ (1st Years)
• Fundamentals Of Computer Science (1st Years)
• Applications of Computer Science (1st Years)
• Programming in Java (2nd Years)

Due to poor staffing at the university, and my experience, I eventually was set to work rewriting the 1st year programming course. The teaching materials I produced for this are still used to this day, and I have had consitently excellent feedback from current students who I remain in contact with.

It is a point of personal pride to me that I have had multiple students inform me that they can tell when they finish the materials I produced and move on to the ones I did not have the time during my employment at the university to rewrite, due to the immediate and substantial drop in quality.

I believe that if nothing significant had changed, I may have remained in academia forever, persuing a doctorate and moving from a teaching assistant to a lecturer, and hopefully eventually a professor. Unfortunately, COVID 19 occured.

The University did not lock down promptly, and so I left my position in February of 2020 when the first cases began showing up in Reading. While moving into the private sector was not my intention at the time, I do not see myself returning to Academia as the salaries available are simply not enough to support my family.

Rust

While not a role, I’ve included it as the substantial years of experience I’ve had in the language have been a primary reason I have been hired at a number of the roles I have held.

In April of 2015, I watched a talk by Dan Callahan at PyCon2015 entitled “My Python’s a little Rust-y”. This talk awakened my interest in Rust, and I began learning it the same week, around a month before the language hit its stable 1.0 release.

After taking a few weeks to get over Rust’s well known “learning cliff”, I was in love with the language and began using it for all academic projects with a free language choice, and used it to develop some internal tooling at Brace IT.

Before encountering Rust, I had never fully settled on a langauge that felt “right” to me. Languages like C and C++ had speed and performance, but lacked the nice APIs I had learned to rely on from Python such as it’s iterator adaptors. Languages like Java and PHP felt too bloated and over-engineered. I’d just about settled on “pythons ergonomics, with strong typing, and C performance” as what I wanted out of a language, but had assumed was not technically possible.

Rust proved that assumption incorrect.

I continued using Rust for my personal projects and academic works, including on my final year thesis project.

In September of 2020, I picked up my first role writing rust full time at MotionMetrics. This set the trend for my career moving forward, and you can find the exact specifics of what Rust was used for in each of my roles on their respective pages.

I have also developed a 6 week course (one hour a week), which aims to get a team of competent programmers from a passing knowledge of rusts existence, to writing production ready code. I may make this course available publicly at some point, but to date I have used it to successfuly train the rest of the engineers at Element Human, and plan to do the same at SteamaCo.

Community and organising

Organiser at Reading Indie Gamers

April 2023 — Present

I co-founded Reading Indie Gamers in April 2023.

You can learn more about this social club on the TTRPGs page, or at the Reading Indie Gamers website.

Organiser and Technology Lead at Reading Trans Movement

April 2022 — Present

I became involved in Reading Trans Movement on the day of its creation in April 2022.

You can learn more about this protest and support group on the politics page, or at the Reading Trans Movement website.

Server Owner for the Necrotic Gnome Fan Community Discord Server

September 2020 — Present

I became a lead moderator on the Necrotic Gnome Fan Community Discord Server in September of 2020, and became the server owner in May 2022.

Responsibilities include:

• Moderating and running a large and active discord community with 4000 members and hundreds of messages each day.
• Coordinating with Necrotic Gnome on news and announcements.
• Managing and overseeing the rules and procedures.
• Leading the rest of the moderation team.

Lead Community Moderator at /r/conlangs

September 2014 — December 2019

In september 2014, I became the head moderator at https://reddit.com/r/conlangs.

My responsibilities included:

• Interacting with and running a large community (over 40,000 members when I stepped down in December 2019).
• Rules enforcement.
• Helping members.
• Representing the community at conferences.

For work enquiries, email lucy@llblumire.co.uk.