Samuel Littley Passionate about programming and theatre

Curriculum Vitae

I am an experienced Software Engineer and ex-SRE with a passion for building reliable, scalable, and maintainable software. I also have a strong interest in helping others to develop their skills by providing mentoring and training in a variety of contexts.

PDF CV

Personal Details

  • Name: Samuel Littley
  • Email: samuel <at> samuellittley.me
  • Phone: By request, please email.
  • Address: By request, please email.

Employment and Experience

Google (18 July 2016 to 28 July 2023, Dublin and London)

  • Senior Software Engineer, Google for Clinicians (G4C) Data Platform Onboarding (April 2022 to present)
    • I built a replacement UI (using a Java/TypeScript internal framework) to manage sources of Change Data Capture (CDC) data used by the G4C pipelines, reducing the overhead of onboarding new partners. I also researched and developed (using Golang) capabilities for ingesting data via standardised APIs instead of CDC, including managing a relationship with a third party provider.
  • Senior Software Engineer, Ads Frontend SRE (June 2020 to April 2022)
    • I led the frontend and backend implementation (Golang, Angular, Typescript) of “the one dashboard to rule them all” providing an overview of system health and hygiene across Ads, Commerce, and Payments, based on associating data points with a knowledge graph and performing templated aggregation operations across the structure of the graph to support a variety of visualisations. This was used to drive efforts to improve ACP systems and reduce incidents. I was also an active member of the oncall rotation for the Google Ads frontends used by advertisers and publishers.
  • Senior Software Engineer, Reliability Analysis (SRE, January 2019 to June 2020)
    • I worked on an agile software development team embedded within SRE to build tooling for analysing reliability indicators (Golang, Angular, Typescript), and determining correlation between automated indicators (such as SLIs) and human-labelled incidents. This was used to pinpoint areas where monitoring needed improvement. As a team, we also built tooling for calculating a severity for an incident based on known features of the incident’s impact, to improve consistency of responses and external communications. While on this team, I was also an active member of the oncall rotation for a system used to probe the health of GCP services from Kubernetes clusters running on both GCP and AWS.
  • Software Engineer, Mobile Infrastructure SRE (July 2016 to January 2019)
    • I was the service owner/lead for SRE’s relationship with the Android Google Search App, and led the introduction of various process improvements to improve the safety and reliability of feature changes through binary releases and flag-controlled experiments. I also drove the development of a simple script for evaluating release metrics into a managed service (Golang) used across the company for evaluating mobile app releases.
  • Community contributions (throughout)
    • I support the Software Engineering apprenticeships program in London, currently providing Computer Science education, and previously acting as a cohort coordinator. I am also an active TypeScript readability reviewer, a makerspace coordinator, and a facilitator of code retreat and legacy code retreat classes.

Performance Feedback

  • Jan 2023: “Samuel is highly productive and can be relied upon to fix issues or quickly develop new features. [He] is a very dependable team mate, helping others and delivering quickly on his commitments. [He] is keen to ensure that everyone feels included and will speak plainly if he observes non-inclusive behavior.”
  • Mar 2022: “Samuel is consistently delivering work that makes a difference, both to his main projects such as Hydrogen, and Google as a whole through his work with the Makerspaces and the SWE Apprenticeships. He is a leader on his team and manages relationships across Google on behalf of Hydrogen.”
  • Sep 2021: “Samuel is an excellent educator and mentor, and consistently finds opportunities to lead others and advocates for his colleagues to do the same. This is demonstrated by his work with apprentices, his support for interns hosted by his team, and his hosting of team training and lightning talk sessions. Imparting knowledge and training is a key part of leadership, and it is something Samuel does very well.”

Previous roles

  • Semmle Ltd (29th June - 2nd October 2015)
    • I built a Sublime Text plugin to integrate Semmle’s core software analysis products with the text editor, using a common codebase that ran under both Python 2.6 and Python 3.3 (for Sublime Text versions 2 and 3). I also prototyped a web-based interface to Semmle’s analysis querying platform on GCP (using Java).
  • Google UK Ltd (internship, 6th July - 3rd October 2014)
    • I worked on a project using Python and pandas automating analysis of historical production date to determine relationships between demand and resources used, to aid with future capacity planning.
  • Fatsoma Ltd (June - September 2013, July - September 2012)
    • I developed and managed multiple Wordpress multisite networks, with multiple custom plugins for system management and interaction with other services such as Facebook, Twitter and the Fatsoma ticketing system. I also developed Wordpress themes from provided graphical designs, and did some some server administration and feature development.

Education and Qualifications

  • University of Oxford, Keble College (2012 - 2016)
    • MCompSci Computer Science, 1st Class
    • Thesis: “Interpolation of 3D slice volume data for 3D printing” - processing low-resolution (e.g. 10mm/slice) segmented MRI data to provide smoother 3D models. Supervisor: Dr. Irina Voiculescu. Presented at SPIE Medical Imaging 2017: doi.org/10.1117/12.2254616

Skills

  • Languages
    • Proficient: Go, TypeScript, Python, Java
    • Basic: C++
  • Technologies
    • Proficient: Angular, Bazel, Git
    • Basic: Google Cloud Platform, Terraform
  • Principles
    • Reliable Software Design, Code Health, Automation, Incident Management, Monitoring, Infrastructure as Code

Interests and Activities

Community Theatre (Lighting Design), Wood turning, Cooking

Theatre Experience

  • hang, Lighting Designer, Tower Theatre, March 2023
  • Our Country’s Good, Lighting Designer, Tower Theatre, February 2023
  • Coram Boy, Lighting Operator, Minack Theatre, August 2022
  • Coram Boy, Lighting Designer, Tower Theatre, July 2022
  • Bouncers and Shakers, Lighting Designer, Tower Theatre, March 2022
  • Kensuke’s Kingdom, Lighting Designer, Tower Theatre, October 2021
  • Love [and Survival] in a Time of Covid (festival), Lighting Designer and Operator, Tower Theatre and Arcola Outside, June 2021
  • Breaking the Code, Lighting Designer, Tower Theatre, October 2019
  • The Canterbury Tales, Lighting Designer, Tower Theatre, July 2019
  • Deposit, Lighting Operator, Tower Theatre, April 2019
  • Talk Radio, Lighting Operator, Tower Theatre, March 2019
  • The Seagull, Lighting Operator, Tower Theatre, November 2018
  • To Kill A Mockingbird, Get-In, Tower Theatre, October 2018
  • Wolf Hall, Get-In, Brideswell Theatre (a Tower Theatre production), July 2018
  • Blue/Orange, Lighting Operator, Upstairs at the Gatehouse (a Tower Theatre production), July 2018
  • Antigone, Sound Operator, Theatro Technis (a Tower Theatre production), June 2018
  • TEDx Oxford 2016, co-Technical Director/Deputy Stage Manager, New Theatre Oxford, February 2016
  • The Three Musketeers, Production Manager, Keble O’Reilly Theatre, November 2015
  • Hamlet, Production Manager, Keble O’Reilly Theatre, November 2015
  • Singin’ In The Rain, Production Electrician, October 2015
  • Passion, Production Manager, Keble O’Reilly Theatre, May 2015
  • Jekyll & Hyde, Production Electrics, Pembroke Pichette Auditorium, May 2015
  • King Lear, Production Manager, Keble O’Reilly Theatre, February 2015
  • The Effect, Production Manager, Keble O’Reilly Theatre, February 2015
  • TEDx Oxford 2015, Lighting Designer, New Theatre Oxford, January 2015
  • Too Much, Too Young, Lighting Operator, Burton Taylor Studio, January 2015
  • Assassins, Production Manager, Keble O’Reilly Theatre, November 2014
  • Drama Cuppers Festival 2014, Production Manager, Burton Taylor Studio, November 2014
  • Bouncers, Lighting Designer, Burton Taylor Studio, October 2014
  • The Furies, Lighting Operator, Oxford Playhouse, October 2014
  • Why Does The Queen Die, Rigger/Casual Crew, Keble O’Reilly Theatre, October 2014
  • A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Lighting Designer, Queen’s College Gardens, May 2014
  • Lord of the Flies, Lighting Designer, Keble O’Reilly Theatre, May 2014
  • The History Boys, Lighting Designer, Oxford Playhouse, April 2014
  • New Writing Festival 2014, Lighting Designer, Burton Taylor Studio, March 2014
  • Sweeney Todd, Production Electrics, Keble O’Reilly Theatre, February 2014
  • In Her Eyes, Lighting Designer, Burton Taylor Studio, January 2014
  • TEDx Oxford 2014, Lighting Designer, New Theatre Oxford, January 2014
  • 100, Lighting Designer, Burton Taylor Studio, November 2013
  • Drama Cuppers Festival 2013, Lighting Designer, Burton Taylor Studio, November 2013
  • Producers, Lighting Designer, Oxford Playhouse, October 2013
  • Spoonface Steinberg, Lighting Designer, Burton Taylor Studio, October 2013
  • Arcadia, Production Electrics/Lighting Operator, Oxford Playhouse, October 2013
  • Midnight at the Rue Morgue, Lighting Designer, Burton Taylor Studio, May 2013; CLF Art Cafe London, June 2013; TheSpaceUK Cabaret, Edinburgh Fringe, August 2013
  • The Merchant of Venice, Assistant Stage Manager, Worcester College Gardens and Lake, June 2013
  • Some Funny, Co-Lighting Designer, Burton Taylor Studio, May 2013
  • Frost/Nixon, Lighting Operator, Oxford Union Debating Chamber, May 2013
  • Comic Mysteries, Lighting Designer, Burton Taylor Studio, May 2013
  • La Vida Es Sueno, Production Electrics/Lighting Operator, Oxford Playhouse, April 2013
  • Keble Arts Festival, Technical Director, Keble O’Reilly Theatre, April 2013,
  • New Writing Festival 2013, Assistant Lighting Designer, Burton Taylor Studio, February 2013
  • Another Country, Production Electrics/Lighting Operator, Oxford Playhouse, Feburary 2013
  • Bluebeard, Lighting Designer, Burton Taylor Studio, February 2013
  • Angels in America, Production Electrics/Lighting Operator, Oxford Playhouse, January 2013
  • O Human Child, Lighting Designer, Wadham Moser Theatre, November 2012
  • Isobel, Production Electrics/Lighting Operator, Burton Taylor Studio, October 2012