Boeing award for best thesis
Awarded for the best final-year thesis of 3rd and 4th years (masters students) in my peer group.
Currently CTO at VyperCore. I have depth and breadth of technical, management and leadership skills. I have acquired these through the wide variety of businesses and projects I have worked on over the last 12 years (from the age of 15). Most of my work has been as part of globally distributed remote teams.
My CV was last updated in March 2023. Get the latest version from https://ednutting.com/cv
Along with Russell Haggar, I co-founded VyperCore: a RISC-V fabless general-purpose processor startup. VyperCore will be developing and commercialising my pioneering research to accelerate and secure general purpose computing. In March 2023 we closed our initial £4m seed fund giving us 24-months runway.
My original research, continued in collaboration with Emeritus Professor David May and Andrés Amaya García at the University of Bristol, created a novel extension to traditional processors enabling hardware garbage collection. This has profound implications for computing, including both substantial performance and energy efficiency and the elimination of the majority of significant vulnerabilities (memory-access/buffer-overflow errors).
TypeScript, Haskell, React, NextJS, NodeJS, AWS, PostgreSQL, Gitlab (VC/CI/CD), Terraform (Cloud), Docker, Serverless Stack (sst.dev)
GSuite, Slack, Asana, Linear, Xero, Slab, Miro
London-based team, hybrid working
Originally hired as Head of Engineering, I was promoted in December to Principal Software Architect to reflect the expansion of my role. In addition to full-stack engineering, I work with the non-technical members of the team to translate product ideas into product features. I coordinate the product roadmap and design UX flows, then coordinate with our UX design contractors for wireframe and hi-fi designs. I work with the engineering team to translate product features into technical deliverables, estimate time required and create a delivery schedule. My role also incorporates risk management in close collaboration with the CEO and CTO.
TypeScript, React, NodeJS, AWS, Redis, RabbitMQ, PostgreSQL, Hasura, Vonage, Auth0, DataDog, YouTube API (GCloud)
GSuite, Slack, Xero, Zoom, Slab, Remote.com
Fully remote team spread across USA (East & West), UK and The Netherlands
Co-founder and CEO of Clowdr (later d.b.a. Midspace), a UK-based Community Interest Company (CIC) creating a virtual conference platform from scratch, entirely open-source. I led the development of the business and the technical product, serviced clients (primarily overseas in the USA but many other regions globally too), and managed the team spread across the UK, the Netherlands and both coasts of the USA.
Midspace turned over in excess of $450k in our first sixteen months before an undisclosed exit in Q2 2022. Our original software remains open source for others to use on GitHub.
Midspace supported virtual academic conferences of 100 to 4,000 people (though it could scale to more), frequently with over 800 presenters. We supported over 20,000 users in our first year attending week-long conferences using our live-streaming, WebRTC, scheduling and real-time interaction features. A typical 5-day conference would have 3 parallel tracks, each with 8 hours of scheduled sessions, where each session would typically have 3 to 30 speakers and up to 1,500 attendees.
As the primary developer of the software, I architected significant parts of our cloud-based systems and developed, maintained and monitored every aspect from frontend to backend. I also participated in the UX design process with our UX designer (based in California).
Midspace's frontend is written in TypeScript using React. We also adopted Storybook for testing and UX design processes. The frontend interfaces to the backend services using GraphQL, Web Sockets (socket.io), WebRTC and HLS streaming. The platform offered WebRTC video calling (Vonage), live-streaming (AWS Media services), conference programme/schedule, and numerous real-time interactions.
I architected and implemented Midspace's real-time systems from scratch to accomodate the diverse needs of our users. This was built using Socket.IO to connect to Heroku NodeJS instances. The backend utilized Redis, RabbitMQ and PostgreSQL to deliver real-time persistent stable chats, polls, reactions, event updates and other live interactions. It also delivered push and email notifications. This system was capable of handling a sustained load of 5,000 messages per second on the smallest nodes and could be auto-scaled to support larger throughput. We frequently handled spike-loads of 2,000 messages per second, with sustained load around 10 messages per minute per conference.
We made use of Hasura as a GraphQL middleware layer connected to PostgreSQL and supported by a Redis-backed authorization webhook for optimal performance.
A significant amount of our infrastructure operated on AWS and Heroku. AWS services included IAM, S3, SSM & Parameter Store, MediaLive, MediaConvert, MediaPackage, Transcribe, Lambda, Chime SDK and others.
To monitor our site I configured DataDog for frontend (logging and session recording) and backend monitoring and logging. Real-time monitors triggered alerts that passed messages via email and to Slack to enable our team to respond within 60 seconds to any critical incident.
Alongside the technical work, I handled pre-sale qualification, sales calls, contracting & negotiation, post-sale onboarding, customer care, live-support (virtual events require real-time support via the support desk and in-app and sometimes directly with users on Zoom), invoicing, accounting, legal & compliance, security audits, board meetings, service provider contract negotiation, service provider support conversations, and many other aspects.
Overall I led the recruitment of a team of 7 people from engineering (dev & UX) to marketing and sales. Midspace was a successful social enterprise that has given me a huge depth and breadth of experience in both cloud applications and business leadership.
BeyondRISC was first attempt to spin out my pioneering research, co-founded with David and Andrés. BeyondRISC did not receive funding and was shut down in 2022, having been inactive since early 2020.
As part of attempting to spin-out from the University of Bristol, I participated in the QTEC Entrepreneurship Training programme. This developed my skills in writing and delivering pitches/presentations, creating business plans and gave me an understanding of venture capital.
My colleagues and I attempted to spin the technology out into a startup - see BeyondRISC above.
Towards the end of my PhD a number of factors came together that resulted in me stopping my PhD and pursuing Midspace - a web-tech startup co-founded with several USA academics I met at an online conference as part of my PhD. I completed the proof and the majority of the interesting work of my PhD but did not write up, and so do not hold a PhD qualification.
During my undergraduate degree, I was very active in student societies, outreach and the department, raising over £24,000 in sponsorship for the electronics society (BEEES), Women in Engineering Society and outreach. See also my FlingOS project. Please feel free to ask me about the modules I studied.
For 3 months each year I was one of three technical interviewers recruiting 2nd year undergraduates for 6 to 13-month placements each year for a company in Munich (now a part of Siemens).
Assistant to Caroline Higgins for 13 months during my final year helping to manage the University of Bristol Computer Science, Electronics and Electrical Engineering and Engineering Maths outreach programme. Set up the Digimakers Roadshow programme. As workshop leaders I trained 12 students and took teams of 4 to over 22 primary and secondary schools in the Bristol region. We primarily taught programming using the BBC Microbit platform.
2017 - 2020
Working remotely with clients in London, I designed and developed two one-week-long educational programmes for children aged 9 to 13. These programmes were to teach basic logic and state machines using popular platforms such as Minecraft and Python.
Lead mentor for a week managing thirty 17-year-olds in a week of learning and excitement with activities including robot building and programming, lectures, team building exercises and innovation challenges.
As a PhD student I was lead teaching assistant for Intro to Computer Architecture (1st year UG course), Overview of Computer Architecture (MSc Conversion course) and Design Verification (3rd year UG course).
During my undergraduate degree I delivered guest lectures in computer architecture, IDEs and debugging and other topics.
I have helped out teachers in various schools (primary and secondary) across Bristol including A-level CS lessons for particular topics, A-level project advice and tutoring, CS taster lessons and teacher training sessions.
Provided one-to-one tutoring for two students, both of whom suffered from severe mental health issues. With my support these individuals were able to pass all their exams and graduated with a 1st class degree.
OS and compiler written from scratch in C# for the purposes of teaching OS design and development. Raised over £8000 of funding from Imagination Technologies and Intel. This was used to develop the system, hire an intern, create a series of explainer videos, write online articles, and deliver lectures and workshops within the University of Bristol. I also gave presentations to tech groups across the Southwest UK region. This project inspired the question to which my PhD research was the answer.
Intern in the Windows Graphics Driver division of PowerVR graphics. Worked with C, Python and C++ to test the driver and develop sample video encode/decode drivers for customers.
I developed the technology behind the world-first, animated, online advertising system that used only HTML/CSS/TypeScript (no Adobe Flash). The backend was written in C# / ASP.NET connected to an MS SQL Server database. Adverts displayed correctly in every major browser on all major devices (desktop, laptop, tablets and mobiles including iPhone, Android and Blackberry). Entirely online, no-tech-knowledge-required editor and fully integrated with major ad delivery networks. Closed after Google launched HTML5 Creatives approximately 6 months after our launch.
Aside from my experience using C#, I was also one of the earliest users of TypeScript. As it happened, I wrote the first documentation generator extension for the language, which subsequently inspired mainline features and 3rd party packages.
I'm a full-stack developer: FPGAs to website front-ends. I am capable of picking up new frameworks and tools very quickly.
Software Engineering |
Full Stack Development Cloud-native Software Front-end design & development Object Oriented Programming Functional Programming Low-level Software Embedded Software Theorem Proving Computer Architecture | |
Programming Languages |
Proficient | Agda C Assembly (various) TypeScript JavaScript HTML CSS C# |
| Competent | Haskell Python MSIL Verilog SystemVerilog | |
| Familiar | SQL C++ Java PHP | |
Tools |
Proficient | VSCode (inc. numerous extensions) Visual Studio Git Github Github Pages Fork (Git client) NPM / PNPM Redis RabbitMQ Heroku |
| Competent | Emacs Gitkraken Slack Discord Vivado ModelSim JasperGold Notepad++ GHC GCC LLVM MSVC PostgreSQL BeyondCompare DataDog AWS (S3, Chime, Media Services, CloudWatch, Secrets Store, Billing, etc) | |
| Familiar | IntelliJ MS SQL Server Perforce Gitlab GDB WinDBG | |
Frameworks |
React (TS/JS) Chakra UI Express jQuery .NET (and Core) ASP.NET | |
Platforms |
Proficient | Windows Ubuntu Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) |
| Competent | Arduino Zedboard | |
| Familiar | RaspberryPi Docker AWS Google Cloud | |
Specialist knowledge |
Garbage collection Proof by refinement Computer architecture (supv. Prof. David May) | |
Soft skills |
Technical presentations, teaching and mentoring, team leadership, team management, recruitment and much more. |
I create YouTube videos in my free time explaining low-level topics in Computer Science: computer architecture, assembly code, operating systems, etc. I sometimes freelance and have been paid or sponsored for some of my work. I operate my own equipment and sometimes provide voice-overs for other people's videos.
Video |
Nikon/Canon cameras, Indoor, Greenscreen, Interviews, Talking-head, Low-speed sports, Live presentations, Lighting, Composition, Editing, Live-streaming | Premiere Pro, Camtasia, custom software, Nikon and Canon cameras, FocusRite 2i2 & 18i20, BlackMagic ATEM Mini Extreme, dbx 286s, Teleprompter (reading from and control for others) |
Audio |
Explainers, Interviews, Live recording (presentations, sports venues, ambient sound), Editing, Acoustic treatment | Adobe Audition, Audacity, Blue Yeti, SM57, SM58, Rhode Video mics, Rhode Lapel mics, Focusrite 2i2 |
Other |
Script writing, Voice overs, Simple photoshop edits, Social media campaigns |
A concurrent, zero-blocking, hardware garbage collector suitable for real-time and embedded systems and scalable to larger systems. Subject of my undergraduate and PhD dissertations.
My colleagues and I attempted to spin-out the IHGC design into a startup: BeyondRISC. I lead this effort, writing business plans, financial plans and pitching to investors. Unfortunately, Covid-19 has caused significant problems raising investment and for our team, so while we are always on the lookout for an opportunity to pursue this business, we will be pausing our efforts for the moment.
Video series teaching computer architecture through the design and build of an 8-bit computer in Minecraft. Based upon the same teaching architecture used at the University of Bristol (Hex8). Check out the design videos and build livestreams on YouTube.