Engineering that has to actually work.
I'm Edward Laurence, an aerospace-trained engineer turned AI and data platform builder. 15 years shipping safety-critical control systems at Jaguar Land Rover, followed by a deliberate pivot into modern AI, ML, and cloud-native data engineering.
Melbourne, Australia · Python · GCP · ML · LLMs
Years shipping software that has to work
Crawler throughput gain as startup CTO
Engineers led through an 18-month platform migration
Data latency, down from 24+ hours
Where I've worked
Experience
20+ years across safety-critical automotive systems, startup CTO roles, and modern AI/data platform engineering.
Independent Projects
Self-directed
- Developing Nurcha: a full-stack hardware/software IoT product for automated indoor plant care — now live across 4 installations with a commercial beta underway
- Extending AI/ML expertise across the modern stack: LLMs, RAG, QLoRA, and agents
- End-to-end project management of two concurrent residential apartment renovations — budget, trades coordination, and delivery to completion
Technical Project Lead
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
- Led cross-functional team of 8 engineers across software, data, and programme 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 through JIRA adoption and engineering process redesign
- Automated client invoicing, eliminating recurring manual-error failures through systematic pipeline tooling
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
Consulting 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
- 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
- Led migration to agile development methodologies; formed a cohesive engineering team structure as headcount scaled
Hybrid Control Systems Consultant
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
Transmission Software Consultant
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
Powertrain Feature Consultant
Ford Motor Company
- Powertrain control systems strategy design and development, rapid-prototyped on Freescale MPC555 hardware
- Calibration lead and technical expert on Ford launch assist strategies across flagship diesel passenger cars
- Simulation of common vehicle manoeuvres using dynamic Simulink vehicle models coupled with transient engine models
Selected work
Personal projects
Full-stack builds outside the day job — hardware, mobile, and web products shipped end-to-end, solo or as founder.
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
Personal projectPowertrain & 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.
Onceover
Personal projectUsed Car Inspection Guide
Web app guiding non-expert buyers through condition checks for 300+ popular second-hand cars in Australia. Full content and decision logic authored and maintained independently.
ProtoBlox
Personal projectDevelopment Toolbox for PIC Processors
Consumer development toolbox for rapid prototyping on PIC microcontrollers, distributed commercially to embedded engineers.
Sold 100+ licenses
Toolbox
Skills
Equally fluent in embedded C++/Matlab and Python/cloud-native stacks — from firmware to LLM agents.
AI & ML
Data Engineering
Infra & Tooling
Systems & Embedded
Web & Product
Academic background
Education & certifications
MSc Intelligent Systems & Robotics
De Montfort University
2013 · 1st Class
PG Dip Engineering Management
RMIT University
2004
BEng Aerospace Engineering
RMIT University
2003 · Honours
AI Engineer Core Track
Udemy
LLMs, RAG, QLoRA, Agents
Machine Learning
Stanford University
2020
IBM Data Science
IBM
2020
Get in touch
Building something in climate, research, or animal welfare?
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.