Edward Laurence — Senior Data & AI Engineer, building modern engineering stacks with a safety critical mindset.
A Data Platform and AI Engineer with 20+ years of technical delivery, specialising in the architecture, scaling and operationalisation of high-throughput data systems and machine learning models. Built on a 15-year foundation of engineering safety-critical control systems and enterprise-scale data tooling, followed by a dedicated pivot into cloud-native data platforms, ML engineering and AI systems.
Melbourne, Australia · Python · GCP · ML · LLMs · Technical Leadership
Impact at a glance
Software and data products on modern stacks
Years leading highly impactful engineering teams
Data pipeline latency reduction at JLR
Infrastructure cost reduction at Jump! Education
Where I've worked
Experience
20+ years across safety-critical automotive systems, startup CTO roles, and modern AI/data platform engineering.
Principal AI & Data Platform Engineer / Co-founder
FrontPoint Digital- Developed Shufti: a mobile-first app using AI to guide a buyer through a used car inspection generated from extensive vehicle fault databases and coach you through the negotiation, turning what you find into a data-backed offer
- Developed Nurcha: a full-stack hardware/software IoT product for automated indoor plant care — now live across 4 installations with a commercial beta underway
Lead Data Platform Architect
Jaguar Land Rover
- Architected and led migration of a business-critical desktop calibration platform from Matlab to Python across 20+ code repositories — zero disruption to daily engineering workflows
- Redesigned GCP data ingestion to a granular event-driven architecture; cut data availability latency from 24hrs+ to under 10 minutes, enabling real-time quality oversight for the first time
- Defined and implemented a modern, low-cost stack and development standard including BigTable, BigQuery, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, venv, pytest, pydantic, docstrings, pytype, and Black, which remains in place
- Led cross-functional team of engineers across software, data, and program disciplines through an 18-month platform migration
Head of Data
GetSetUp
- Owned full data stack across ingestion, transformation, and reporting; managed team of 3 engineers
- Architected geolocation-enriched pipeline and connector layer, adding critical business context to analytics dashboards across client-facing teams
- Drove 5× increase in dashboard delivery throughput by championing company-wide JIRA adoption and engineering process redesign
- Automated key areas of client invoicing, eliminating recurring manual-error failures through systematic pipeline tooling
- Identified anomalous traffic patterns across IP, user-agent, and metadata signals, uncovering bot-driven activity corrupting platform engagement metrics — led technical investigation and remediation in partnership with leadership
Fractional CTO
Jump! Education
- Appointed CTO with 8 direct reports; set full technology direction across architecture, devops, data infrastructure, and ML
- Designed end-to-end platform architecture: API layer, data structures, devops, ML pipelines, and crawling infrastructure from seed stage to production
- Built proprietary NLP-based job and education classification system — core algorithmic engine still powering the platform
- Achieved 52× improvement in web crawler throughput through parallelisation architecture redesign
- Reduced infrastructure costs by >50% through data compression and redundancy optimisation
Data Scientist
Jaguar Land Rover
- Designed and deployed fully-automated data processing and reporting pipelines covering fleet and rig-based transmission shift events for engineering quality oversight
- Implemented analytics dashboards providing vital context for quality investigations at 10x+ sample scale — a jump-off point for engineers to address issues before detection by the fleet or consumers
- Integrated data analytics into the bespoke calibration engineering toolset, streamlining the investigate → fix → verify development cycle and significantly reducing engineer workload
- Led migration to agile development methodologies; formed a cohesive engineering team structure as headcount scaled
Lead Software Engineer
Jaguar Land Rover
- Defined and implemented a modular app framework for component reuse across a growing developer team — reduced duplication, improved maintainability and delivery velocity
- Built simulation tooling that materially reduced dependence on expensive prototype vehicles for calibration and testing tasks
- Implemented a library of automated verification algorithms to evaluate calibration engineers' contributions, ensuring safety and adherence to design philosophies
Hybrid Control Systems Engineer
Jaguar Land Rover
- Designed torque coordination and driveability functions for seamless dual-powerplant integration in hybrid vehicles — production-deployed safety-critical code
- Maintained formal software requirements and externally audited change logs under strict version control for safety-critical systems
- Automated objective peer review processes, improving validation speed and consistency across the engineering team
Transmissions Software Engineer
Jaguar Land Rover
- Developed control algorithms using signal processing, neural networks, fuzzy logic, and genetic optimisation — validated on HIL (dSpace) and vehicle environments
- Designed and deployed standalone Windows calibration tools and CAN/LIN signal manipulation units across the engineering team
Software & Controls Engineer
Ford Motor Company
- Early career roles in driveability and software engineering — built foundational skills in control systems, algorithm development, and embedded software for automotive applications
Selected work
Projects
Full-stack builds — hardware, mobile, and web products shipped end-to-end.
Shufti
2025 — PresentUsed Car Inspection Guide
A mobile-first app using AI to guide buyer through a used car inspection generated from extensive vehicle fault databases and coach you through the negotiation, turning what you find into a data-backed offer.
Nurcha
2025 — PresentAutomated Indoor Plant Care
Full-stack hardware/software product built end-to-end: custom hardware unit designed in SolidWorks, C++ firmware with OTA updates, Dart mobile and web management apps, and GCP analytics dashboarding.
4 residential installations · 1 event plant-hire company in beta
MoleMonitor
2013 — 2016Skin Lesion Tracker
iOS and web app for photographing, tracking, and monitoring skin lesions over time, with structured history reporting for medical professionals. Solo-built from design through App Store submission, managing an off-shore team of 20 developers at peak.
Reviewed and approved by the UK's NHS · 1,200 downloads in first 12 hours
Solar-Powered Electric Trail Bike
2010-2012Powertrain & Controls Build
Designed and built an electric dirtbike on a 2008 Honda CRF450 frame — powertrain, battery, and control systems. Field-validated on research trips to Morocco and South America.
ProtoBlox
2008-2009Development Toolbox for PIC Processors
Consumer development toolbox for rapid prototyping on PIC microcontrollers, distributed commercially to embedded engineers.
Sold 100+ licenses
Personal
GitHub activity
Combined contribution history across my personal and Nurcha development accounts.
1,113 combined contributions in 2026 across ed-laurence, spacehorsetimecop and nurchadev
Toolbox
Skills
Fluent in Python/cloud-native stacks with strong AI/ML and a safety-critical/embedded background.
AI & ML
Data Engineering
Infra & Tooling
Systems & Embedded
Web & Product
Technical Leadership
Academic background
Education & certifications
MSc Intelligent Systems & Robotics
De Montfort University
2013 · 1st Class
BEng Aerospace Engineering
RMIT University
2003 · Honours
PG Dip Engineering Management
RMIT University
2004
The Complete AI Curriculum (Ed Donner) · 1/5
Get in touch
Building something great with positive social impact? Let's talk.
Available now for contract and remote work. Longer term, I'm looking for a permanent role on a mission where data and AI can genuinely move the needle — or if you just need an engineer who can go deep and ship fast, I'd love to hear from you.