Ian Kavanagh

PhD | Dublin, Ireland | IanKavanaghIE@gmail.com

I am an ambitious, high achieving Director, Manager and Software Engineer with a diverse range of skills. In 2018, I graduated with a PhD in Electronic Engineering after winning several awards and achieving an impressive publication record. In the recent past, I have finished studying for a Diploma in Business Finance to take a more active role as a senior manager. I'm a problem solver with an analytical mindset, always looking to improve processes with a proven track record for implementing efficient changes. I have strong technical skills and am comfortable designing and developing high quality features. I've excellent interpersonal and management skills, which has produced improvements in employee retention and satisfaction. My time management and organisation skills have enabled me to accomplish a lot in my career to date.

During my PhD, I contributed a lot to Stack Overflow and built a reputation of over 5000+. I enjoy learning and tinkering with things as a hobby which has helped me build up an impressive list of technologies I've experience with. Recently, I've learned and developed a Firefox add-in to enable Bing Chat in Firefox. Last year, I developed an application using .NET MAUI which was only released a few months beforehand. During the Covid-19 pandemic, I built an unsnoozeable alarm clock with Python, a Raspberry Pi, LCD display, keypad, and a speaker. My next project is to build an infinity table.

When I'm not working or learning new things, I can usually be found with my 11 year old puppy like Labrador Toby. At the weekends, you can often find me travelling to a GAA match or watching another sporting event. I also like building Lego Star Wars spaceships and playing games on the Nintendo Switch.

Experience

Technical Director

Azyra Systems

Oct 2021 - Present

Promoted to Technical Director after serving as Senior Software Engineer for 3 years and simultaneously as Technical Recruitment Manager for 2 years.

Achievements
  • Architected, designed, and developed Azyra Companion, a message queue file transfer application with C# 10 and .NET 6 using Microsoft Graph, Azure Service Bus, and Azure Blob Storage, which improved response times by 60x and produced a near-instant feeling response
  • Top GitHub code contributor for commits made, lines of code added, and lines of code deleted for all time
Additional Tasks
  • Created specification and designed architecture for next-generation web portal application and manage agile development
  • Implemented code reviews as a development path for junior team members and participate by providing regular feedback
  • Lead recruitment of all technical employees
  • Manage and develop onboarding plan for full-stack and data developers
  • Create and implement software development practices and standards
  • Determine architecture and best technologies for projects
  • Investigate new technologies and propose enhancements and new processes to improve efficiency
  • Supervise and perform framework upgrades and obsolete system removal

Technical Recruitment Manager

Azyra

Oct 2019 - Sep 2021

Promoted to Technical Recruitment Manager alongside role of Full Stack Senior Software Engineer after 1 year.

Achievements
  • Doubled full-stack development team size
  • Built new data development team
  • Improved retention rate of developers after 6 months from 50% to 90%
Additional Tasks
  • Developed onboarding plan and training for all new developers
  • Onboard and manage Graduate and Junior Developers

Full Stack Senior Software Engineer

Azyra

Oct 2018 - Sep 2021

Achievements
  • Designed and developed implementation of HMRC Making Tax Digital for VAT with C#, X#, .NET Framework 4.8, WPF and SQL Server which received first time approval and praise for ease of use and closeness to HMRC guidelines
  • Top GitHub code contributor for lines of code added and lines of code deleted
  • Project managed development and migration of new modern website, the first major update in 20 years
  • Implemented new continuous integration workflow with Git and GitHub to improve productivity, trained new and old developers
Additional Tasks
  • Developed scripts to build initial continuous deployment infrastructure
  • Mentored Junior Software Developers

Consultant Web Developer

W39 Services

Jun 2011 - Jul 2018

  • Consulted on IT issues and solutions including website and business processes to improve the efficiency of management and employees
  • Continuously managed and developed company website using HTML and CSS

Consultant Electronic Engineer

BlueBridge Technologies

Oct 2014 - Jun 2015

  • Produced feasibility studies on practical technologies for new prototypes
  • Developed embedded system and IoT prototypes for client proposals

Support Engineer

SAP Ireland

Apr 2013 - Sep 2013

  • Perform SAP services for customers to proactively diagnose potential issues, also supplied real-time analysis of customer issues
  • Develop automated solutions for manipulating data using ABAP and SQL

Software Engineer

Electric Ireland

Jun 2012 - Sep 2012

  • Increased debtors reporting efficiency by 90% through proactive development of a custom VBA tool with input from relevant team
  • Built a graphing and monitoring tool to manage complaint resolutions

Credit Control Team member

Electric Ireland

Jun 2011 - Sep 2011

  • Communicate with customers who had overdue accounts by phone, email and post as well as help agencies acting on their behalf e.g. SVP
  • Process debtor queries and complaint resolutions

Education

PGDip. in Business Finance

UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School

Nov 2022 - Jul 2023

  • Expected: Distinction

PhD in, Electronic Engineering

Dublin City University

Sep 2014 - Sep 2018

Thesis: Accurate and efficient full-wave modelling for indoor radio wave propagation

  • Researching accurate and efficient methods to model the propagation of wireless communication systems indoors
  • Developing algorithms and combining solutions from related fields to speedup solutions of complex equations
  • Writing highly parallelised programs for GPUs and supercomputers
Awards
  • 1st in Student Paper Contest at Royal Irish Academy 18th URSI Research Colloquium, Dublin, Ireland, 2017
  • 1st in Student Paper Contest at LAPC 2017, Loughborough, United Kingdom, 2017
  • 2nd in IEEE Region 8 Student Paper Contest, Salamanca, Spain, 2015
  • Government of Ireland fully funded 48 month postgraduate scholarship
  • DCU Faculty of Engineering and Computing Postgraduate Accommodation Scholarship, 2017 - 2018

Impressive publication record with 2 peer-reviewed journal papers and 12 conference papers

B.Eng in, Electronic Engineering

Dublin City University

2010 - 2014

  • 1st in class with 1.1, First Class Honours

Final Year Thesis: Indoor Propagation Modelling for Wireless Systems

Skills

Problem Solving
Software Engineering
Engineering Management
Team Leadership
Project Management
Interpersonal Communication
Business Process Improvement
Teamwork
Mentoring

Programming Languages and Tools

Currently use

  • C#
  • X#
  • .NET
  • .NET Core
  • Microsoft SQL Server
  • git
  • PowerShell
  • Visual Studio
  • VS Code
  • Azure
  • GitHub
  • .NET MAUI

Previously used

  • C
  • C++
  • Java
  • Matlab
  • HTML5
  • CSS3
  • JavaScript
  • Typescript
  • Bootstrap
  • Python
  • PHP
  • mySQL
  • markdown
  • LaTeX
  • Vim
  • OpenMP
  • MPI
  • Bash
  • Android
  • Raspberry Pi
  • Arduino

This website is built with

  • HTML5
  • CSS3
  • JavaScript
  • Bootstrap

    • Interests

    • Hurling and Gaelic Football, referee with Dublin GAA for 10 years, played for 15+ years with Raheny GAA, including hurling on Dublin GAA development squads
    • Building Lego, especially Star Wars ships
    • Running, cycling and swimming

    Projects

    Bing Chat in Firefox

    Firefox JavaScript add-in to enable Bing Chat and display it in a sidebar, like the native Microsoft Edge experience

    Christmas Party

    .NET MAUI Android and iOS application to show the conference schedule

    World's Most Effective Alarm Clock

    An unsnoozeable alarm clock built with Python, a Raspberry Pi, LCD display, keypad, and a speaker

    Publications

    Thesis

    I. Kavanagh, “Accurate and efficient full-wave modelling for indoor radio wave propagation,” Dublin City University, August 2018.

    Journal Papers

    I. Kavanagh and C. Brennan, “Validation of a volume integral equation method for indoor propagation modelling,” IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation, vol. 13, pp. 705-713, May 2019. I. Kavanagh and C. Brennan, “Full wave indoor propagation modelling using the volume integral equation,” Progress In Electromagnetics Research B, vol. 84, pp. 171-187, July 2019.

    Conference Papers

    I. Kavanagh, S. Hussain, and C. Brennan, “A full wave propagation model for indoor wireless communications,” in The 17th Research Colloquium on Communications and Radio Science into the 21st Century, pp. 1-4, 2014. V. Pham-Xuan, I. Kavanagh, M. Condon, and C. Brennan, “On comparison of integral equation approaches for indoor wave propagation,” in 2014 IEEE-APS Topical Conference on Antennas and Prop- agation in Wireless Communications (APWC), pp. 796-799, 2014. I. Kavanagh, V. Pham-Xuan, M. Condon, and C. Brennan, “A method of moments based indoor propagation model,” in 2015 9th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP), pp. 1- 5, 2015. I. Kavanagh and C. Brennan, “Computationally efficient extension of a 2d integral equation propagation model to 3d,” in 2015 International Conference on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications (ICEAA), pp. 187-190, 2015. I. Kavanagh, “Developing a method of moments based indoor propagation model,” in IEEE EUROCON 2015 - International Conference on Computer as a Tool (EUROCON), pp. 1-6, 2015. I. Kavanagh and C. Brennan, “Preliminary comparison of 3d integral equation based indoor propagation model and ray tracing,” in 2015 International Conference on Advanced Technologies for Communications (ATC), pp. 350-354, 2015. I. Kavanagh and C. Brennan, “A hybrid 2d to 3d full wave indoor propagation model,” in 2016 International Conference on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications (ICEAA), pp. 748-751, 2016. I. Kavanagh, S. Hussain, and C. Brennan, “Comparison of 3d volume integral equation and ray tracing for indoor propagation modelling,” in 2016 10th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP), pp. 1-4, 2016. I. Kavanagh and C. Brennan, “Analysis of full wave 2d to 3d propagation models and ray tracing for indoor environments,” in Communications and Radio Science for a Smarter World, Royal Irish Academy Research Colloquium, pp. 53-56, 2017. I. Kavanagh and C. Brennan, “Preliminary investigation of power delay profile computation from full wave frequency domain indoor propagation model,” in 2017 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP), pp. 2242-2245, 2017. I. Kavanagh and C. Brennan, “Validation of a volume integral equation method for indoor propagation modelling,” in Loughborough Antennas Propagation Conference (LAPC 2017), pp. 1-5, 2017. I. Kavanagh and C. Brennan, “Volume integral equation based modelling of in building propagation,” in 2017 International Conference on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications (ICEAA), pp. 1498-1501, 2017.