Last November, I was honoured to receive the Engineer of the Year award from the British Computing Society at the UK IT Industry Awards. This award recognised my commitment and ability in engineering processes within my company as well as through both the local and global tech community.

Being recognised in such a grand manner was overwhelming in the best possible sense, a recognition that left me humbled and deeply grateful. The award was not just a personal achievement, but a reflection of the efforts and growth that I’ve experienced within my technical career.

Looking back over the year since then, it’s been a whirlwind of learning, innovation, and sharing knowledge with the global tech community. From organising Belfast’s first-ever AWS Community Day to speaking at prestigious conferences, this journey has been challenging and rewarding. Here’s a glimpse into what this year has looked like.

A Journey of Sharing and Learning: Speaking at Global Tech Events

This year has been packed with opportunities to speak at some of the most prestigious tech conferences around the world. Right after receiving the award, I returned to Las Vegas for my second AWS re:Invent, where I had the privilege of sharing insights on utilising Generative AI (GenAI) to empower inclusivity in visitor attractions. I also had the chance to speak at the AWS re:cap at W5, diving into updates on Step Functions—an area I’m particularly passionate about.

I presented one of the projects I’ve been part of architecting and developing: a recruitment platform that has transformed processes for our clients at both the Google Women TechMakers Conference and the AWS London Summit. This talk showcased how we streamline our serverless architectures at Hamilton Robson, and I loved getting to share this real-world problem-solving use case at both conferences.

Locally, I was honoured to speak at Serverless Days Belfast, hosted in the historic Titanic Hotel. The theme, “Building Beyond Boundaries,” resonated deeply with me as I shared how my team at Hamilton Robson leveraged AWS Step Functions to streamline workflows and enhance our service capabilities.

Looking ahead for this year, I’m excited to speak at AI Con Belfast, NDC Porto, and DevFest Pescara. These events will allow me to continue sharing my knowledge while learning from the brightest minds in tech.

Since winning the award, I’ve had the privilege of speaking at 15 events—each one a chance to inspire, learn, and connect with the global tech community!

AWS Community Day Belfast: Building Community, Celebrating Diversity

This year I became an AWS User Group leader for Belfast, which allowed me to work with the other leaders on organising regular meet-ups, creating an inclusive and collaborative space where we could dive deep into AWS technology and innovations.

One of my proudest moments this year was co-organizing Belfast’s first-ever AWS Community Day. We sold out 300 free tickets, featured 36 speakers from 10 different countries, and hosted a diverse range of sessions across three tracks. It was inspiring to see how our local AWS community came together to connect, learn, and grow. Our commitment to inclusivity shone through with 43% of our speakers being female—an achievement I’m especially proud of. Creating a space where all voices are heard was a core goal for this event, and it was amazing to see that vision come to life.

This year I was also renewed for my 5th year as an AWS Community Builder. As part of this program this year, I became AWS Machine Learning Certified, I got to mentor a global group of individuals as part of the New Voices program, where I helped people prepare for their first-ever conference talk. I got to look at previews of new products and services and, most importantly, I got to meet some incredible individuals and learn from them.

Technical Achievements and Project Highlights

While community engagement has been a significant part of my year, I’ve also been deeply involved in cutting-edge technical projects within my role at Hamilton Robson. I architected and developed an IoT solution that has now scaled to handle 50 million monthly IoT requests. Having never worked in the IoT space before, I loved getting stuck into a completely new problem set, working with not only software but with physical sensors, gateways, and also working with networking, global frequencies, and regional legal requirements. This project, named BeaconIQ, is our room occupancy product that processes over 1.6 million data requests per day. This achievement spans 4 continents and over 7 time zones, showcasing the global impact of our work.

From building this project, we got the opportunity to work with customers on building out more IoT systems, including an environmental monitoring system, which includes working with CO2 sensors and weather stations.

Another fun project I have been involved in and have spoken about in conferences is our award-winning Marvel Product. Having been working with a number of visitor attractions globally at Hamilton Robson, we saw a growing demand for solutions that could make attractions more inclusive, ensuring that every visitor, regardless of language or ability, can have an equally enriching experience. As part of this project, I got to enter the world of GenAI and the importance of benchmarking AI services for quality and reliability. I loved getting to work in this space, knowing that these services were going to enable these world-class attractions to be accessible to people both in the blind and deaf community and also enhance language support for international guests. Since the introduction of this service, one of our customers has seen a 4x increase in their international guests!

This year I contributed to enhancing our organisation’s standards and quality. I have led our ISO meetings and reviews to ensure that our services maintain the highest quality standards. I have also had the opportunity to workshop and create new processes for incident response handling within the company. This really reinforces Hamilton Robson’s commitment to delivering best-in-class technology solutions, both internally and for our clients.

Throughout the year our engineering team has continued to grow and one of the most rewarding aspects of my role has been onboarding and mentoring new team members. Watching our team grow and develop has been truly inspiring.

Looking Ahead

As I look back on this incredible year since being named Engineer of the Year, I’m filled with gratitude for the opportunities to learn, share, and grow. The projects I’ve worked on, the communities I’ve engaged with, and the people I’ve met along the way have all contributed to an unforgettable journey. I’m particularly proud of our achievements in serverless architecture, our work in Generative AI for language translations and text-to-speech applications, and our efforts to promote diversity and inclusivity in tech.

Here’s to another year of pushing boundaries, fostering community, and driving innovation in the world of technology! Being the UKIT Engineer of the Year has been a fabulous cherry on the cake of an incredible year and the recognition definitely gave me a boost. I can’t wait to see who takes the award for 2024, and wish all of the nominees the best of luck for the year ahead!