ALEX LAYTON

Software engineer · Connected products, systems architecture and technical leadership

Profile

Software engineer with over twelve years of experience across mobile, cloud and embedded systems. I take new connected product features from proof of concept through architecture and reusable components to adoption by delivery teams. I combine hands-on engineering with cross-team technical leadership and mentoring.

Experience

Dyson

2017 — Present

Associate Principal Software Engineer · previously Lead, Senior and Software Engineer

Software engineering and technical leadership in a cross-disciplinary innovation team, bringing mobile, embedded and cloud engineering together to explore new connected product features and help delivery teams ship them.

  • Defined the architecture for smart-home device setup, now used in production products, and delivered reusable mobile libraries for app teams.
  • Co-developed a reusable 3D product-visualisation framework that ships in the customer app, and built map interaction concepts with robotics teams.
  • Led a small app team on an air-quality monitoring project, with reliable background data sync between sensors, app and cloud.
  • Built an internal app distribution platform and moved the team’s build and release automation to a managed CI/CD service.
  • Built shared Swift libraries that let engineers prototype on production protocols and services, and mentored undergraduate engineers.

Mobile Developer

2014 — 2016

Ventutec

Developed commercial iOS and Android apps for clients, and prototyped a Bluetooth-based IoT app and cloud platform.

Graduate Analyst Programmer

2013 — 2014

Graffica

Developed airspace-planning software used across Europe and automated the software release process.

Education

BSc Computer Science, First Class Honours

2010 — 2013

University of Birmingham

Skills

Focus: Systems architecture, Technical leadership, Prototyping, Mentoring
Languages: Swift, Python, Rust, TypeScript, Go, Kotlin, C++
Connected systems: Bluetooth LE, Matter, HomeKit, MQTT, AWS IoT
Platforms: AWS, Docker, CI/CD, GitOps, SwiftUI, React

Projects

Harness

An open-source coding agent written in Rust. It works with several LLM providers, runs tools and subagents, and runs in the terminal, in headless mode or from an editor.