Software Engineer — Home Energy Accountability System

Before I was formally trading as a contract Mechatronics Engineer, I spent from January 2018 to August 2019 developing a system aimed at giving home energy consumers better accountability over their own consumption.

It was a self-directed research and development effort, and the biggest part of the job was upskilling — rapidly learning software development, cloud computing and the business side of building a product, on top of the engineering background I already had. The core work involved:

• Communicating energy consumption habits back to users in a way that was actually useful, not just a wall of numbers
• Iterating the system design so it could scale and expand rather than being a one-off build
• Working out the business direction alongside the technical one

By the end of the engagement I’d shipped a functional product on the Amazon Web Services platform, integrated new technology through an API, and tested it directly with clients — which surfaced real opportunities for reducing their energy consumption rather than theoretical ones.

This project is really where the “energy” thread that runs through my later roles — IoT engineering, energy monitoring, service management — started.