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Dr Maciej Cieslak

About me

Senior software engineer and technical lead with 10+ years of experience designing and shipping production-grade analysis software and engineering tooling in complex, high-integrity domains – spanning automotive, aerospace and energy. PhD in engineering with a specialisation in numerical modelling, machine learning, and signal processing.

Experience

Software Engineer · ZeBeyond, Leamington Spa, UK
Apr 2025 – May 2026
  • Co-architected ePOP Pro, a 1M+ line compiled MATLAB desktop application deployed as a standalone executable to 10 enterprise clients; responsible for overall system design, module architecture, and code quality across a team of 6.
  • Led development of core subsystems (Transmission Generator, Motor Generator) within a multi-domain physics engine covering mechanical, thermal, and electrical modelling – delivered to production and actively used by paying clients.
  • Contributed to an in-house Simulink-to-MATLAB transpiler, enabling standalone deployment of simulation models without a Simulink runtime dependency.
  • Formalised plugin architecture across a 1M+ line organically grown codebase: introduced clear module boundaries, dependency contracts, and a plugin registry – significantly reducing coupling and onboarding time for new engineers.
  • Introduced CI/CD from scratch: GitLab CI / GitHub Actions pipelines, automated unit testing frameworks, and structured code review processes across the team.
  • Pioneered adoption of AI-assisted development across the engineering team: rolled out Claude Code to engineers' local environments, integrated automated AI code review into the CI/CD pipeline, and built custom agentic workflows – delivering an estimated 5× increase in individual engineer output.
  • Led backend API development for ePOP Concept, a 500k line web-based simulation platform (Angular / TypeScript); designed and built a REST API integrating AWS DynamoDB with the front-end simulation environment, enabling real-time architecture composition from a live component database.
  • Designed combinatorial search algorithms evaluating up to 500,000 architecture permutations against multi-criteria customer requirements.
MATLABPythonSimulinkC#TypeScriptAngularREST APIsAWS DynamoDBGitHub ActionsJIRAConfluenceClaude Code
Lead Software Developer / Software Architect · JLR, Gaydon, UK
Oct 2023 – Mar 2025
  • Defined and owned the software engineering strategy for a team of 4–7 engineers: introduced Git branching workflows, coding standards, code review culture, CI/CD pipelines, and a structured mentoring programme – taking the team from ad hoc scripting to production-quality engineering practice.
  • Rearchitected a large inherited MATLAB/Python analysis codebase for vehicle dynamics tooling, rebuilding for testability, modularity, and long-term maintainability.
  • Delivered LHAS (Limited Handling and Stability), a production analysis tool used daily by 20 in-house vehicle dynamics engineers to process and analyse data from proving ground tests – translating raw test data into actionable engineering insight across the handling and stability discipline.
  • Contributed to ATOM (Application Toolbox for Objective Metrics), a vehicle build tracking platform with a SQL database backend and MATLAB UI frontend, used by 500 engineers across JLR – serving as version control for vehicle configurations across the full development programme.
  • Partnered with domain engineers to translate complex analytical requirements into well-specified, maintainable software; drove adoption of Agile/Scrum across the team.
MATLABPythonGitCI/CDAgile/ScrumJIRAConfluenceMicrosoft Copilot
Lead Data Scientist / Tech Lead · JLR, Gaydon, UK
Oct 2022 – Oct 2023
  • Tech Lead for a cross-functional team of 11 engineers spanning chassis, body, and powertrain disciplines – coordinating delivery across workstreams while maintaining hands-on technical contribution.
  • Built and led delivery of: Simulink-based analysis tools, desktop MATLAB applications, interactive web dashboards, and automated reporting pipelines – all shipped to internal stakeholders.
  • Designed and managed data pipelines from a 350-vehicle engineering fleet into GCP / BigQuery; reduced manual data processing across the organisation.
MATLABSimulinkPythonSQLGCP / BigQueryMicroservicesWeb Dashboards
Ride Capability Engineer – Vehicle Dynamics · JLR, Gaydon, UK
Feb 2020 – Oct 2022
  • Developed production MATLAB CAE applications within an Agile team; applied ML and numerical optimisation to automate vehicle tuning workflows previously done manually.
  • Designed and delivered FRM (Fast Ride Model), a reduced-order vertical dynamics simulation tool combining a Simulink 18-DOF vehicle model backend with a MATLAB UI frontend, adopted by 20 engineers across the vehicle dynamics simulation department. FRM reduced full simulation sweep time from 90 minutes to 90 seconds (a 60× speed-up) while maintaining accuracy within 90% of the original.
  • Designed fleet data pipeline architecture that became the foundation for the Data Science team.
  • Objective and subjective vehicle testing on public roads and proving ground; findings presented to senior engineering leadership.
MATLABPythonSimulinkSIMPACKJIRAConfluence
Research Fellow · Coventry University (IFTC), Coventry, UK
Sep 2019 – Jan 2020
  • Investigated image sensor degradation under real-world noise conditions for ADAS applications; trained DNN classifiers using MATLAB Automated Driving Toolbox.
MATLABPythonMATLAB Automated Driving Toolbox
Doctoral Researcher · HORIBA MIRA, Nuneaton, UK
Oct 2015 – Aug 2019
  • Built signal processing pipelines and trained ANNs (MATLAB and Python) to predict human ride comfort from biometric and vibration data – published in peer-reviewed journals and presented internationally.
  • Hands-on vehicle test programme design and execution in a professional automotive test environment.
MATLABPythonTensorFlowKeras

Skills & Tools

Languages
MATLABPythonC#TypeScriptJavaScriptSQL
Frameworks & Platforms
AngularREST APIsAWS (DynamoDB)GCP / BigQuery
Software Engineering
Modular architecturePlugin systemsCI/CD (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions)Automated testingCode reviewGit
Scientific Computing
Simulink / SimscapeSignal processingNumerical optimisationML (Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, Keras)
Multi-body Simulation
MSC AdamsSIMPACK
Practices & Tooling
Agile / ScrumJiraConfluence

Education

PhD, Automotive Engineering2015–2019

Coventry University

ANN-based predictive modelling of ride comfort from biometric and vibration data. Co-funded by HORIBA MIRA. Published in Neural Computing and Applications, Springer (2019).

MSc, Automotive Engineering2015–2016

Wroclaw University of Science & Technology

BEng, Mechanical Engineering2010–2015

Wroclaw University of Science & Technology

Languages

English – Fluent (Cambridge ESOL)

German – Working proficiency (Goethe Institut)

Polish – Native

© 2026 Dr Maciej Cieslak – built with Next.js & Tailwind