Jim Carty

Senior Software Engineer

UGRacing•  October 2019 - Present

The Formula Student society at Glasgow University, UGRacing, recently became interested in taking part in the Driverless category of the Formula Student racing event. The goal is to write software that can autonomously drive a car around a track as quickly as possible. I joined the driverless team to gain more experience working in a team and to learn about new exciting technologies. Over the last year, I have trained several AI models that I have used to extract cones from images. This has given me experience in working with darknet convolutional neural networks through the OpenCV library. Additionally, I am currently working on implementing a neuro-evolutionary algorithm to train using the CUDA library to allow us to compute the racing line after we have mapped the track. No other team in Formula Student is looking to use such an approach, which should allow us to gain a competitive edge over other teams. Also, I have implemented a full agile workflow with a CI pipeline with GoogleTest and GitLab, allowing the team to work more efficiently. Additionally, I am continuing to develop and test the software in Python and C++ with the OpenCV and GoogleTest libraries. I have also written the majority of the teams onboarding guides using MarkDown. These required me to be able to describe the software to people who have little experience with the software. We also meet once a week as a full team to exchange updates, and issues, and to discuss features and how to best implement them.

Software Engineer

NCR•  June 2021 - September 2021

During the summer of 2021, I worked in an intern position as a Software Engineer on NCR Corporation's APTRA Vision migration team. The team's work was on migrating the Vision software from a private data centre to the public cloud and Docker containers. Specifically, I was working on creating the Docker images for each of the software's services. I also integrated my implementation into Microsoft Azure to build, store, and run the software on the public cloud. These experiences helped give me an idea of how to use cloud service providers and how best to utilise their products to deliver an effective and future-proofed product. In the final month of my internship, I moved to work on the product's microservices by creating health check endpoints in Java using the Spring Framework. While adding the checks, I worked with senior engineers to contribute reusable classes to the platform SDK, making future additions of health checks easier. My internship at NCR Corporation helped to further my experience with agile practices and gave me new experience with pair-programming practices. In addition to these, I was also able to experience working within a large-scale software development environment and how to do so effectively.

Software Engineer

Replicade Ltd.•  June 2019 - September 2019

Over three summer holidays, I worked as an intern to learn how to write code. In the first summer, I was tasked with helping to develop their CAD/CAM software for designing foam inlays. I implemented features including a descending order packing algorithm. This gave me experience with professional C++ and OpenGL application development. In the second summer, I was tasked with working on their Wilderness Sensors branch's progressive web app, where I implemented animated, geographic heatmaps based on GPS data from Internet of Things devices. This gave me experience in using React to create frontend components using a Dockerized, scalable, containerised Flask and MongoDB backend to return data from a database securely. I was given work on building a web app to be their in-house quoting system, to standardise their quotes. This project used the same stack design as the Wilderness Sensors' progressive web app and helped to further my experience with React. These tasks allowed me to build apps in a customer-facing way, giving me the ability to build more intuitive applications. In addition, they gave me experience working in an agile environment using Jira, Stash, and git. This helped to give me an insight into professional software development and how I can better work within it.

University of Glasgow, Glasgow

Computer Science, BS•  September 2019 - Present

As part of my degree, some of the courses I have studied include Python; Computing Fundamentals; Computer Systems; Java Programming; Algorithmic Foundations; Algorithms and Data Structures; Object-Oriented Software Engineering; Web Application Development; Statistical Analysis and Design; and Archaeology of Scotland.