Osama Ashaikh

Versatile engineer and founder with 8+ years' experience across software, electronics and technical operations, fluent in both English and Arabic. Founder of OJ Labs Ltd, where I built an AI-driven software delivery platform that plans, codes, tests and reviews changes with autonomous agents, and a browser-based robotics simulation tool used to design and test robots before any hardware exists. Prior to that I spent six years writing firmware in C for connected devices, including wireless mesh lighting networks and smart thermostats, and built automated test systems that cut multi-hour manual testing to minutes.

I have also led operations for a technical equipment business, managing a team, repairing high-value electronics and building internal web tools to streamline workflows. Equally comfortable designing circuit boards, writing production software, automating processes, or leading a small technical team, and able to pick up unfamiliar systems quickly and make them work reliably.

Founder & Lead Engineer at OJ Labs Ltd (2026-04 – Present)

Founder and lead engineer for an AI-directed software delivery platform: client tickets are planned, implemented, validated through real CI gates, reviewed and merged by autonomous agents, with a human approving only the plan and the final merge.

• Architected the company's core product: a control plane that takes in client tickets, dispatches AI coding agents into isolated per-ticket environments, and pushes every change through automated CI validation, code review and merge gates, with a human approving only the plan and the final merge. Link:
• Built Robostudio, a browser-based robotics simulation tool: design a robot and its world, drive and test it against simulated sensors, and export the resulting URDF and ROS maps straight to real hardware, removing the need for a physical robot during early development. Link:
• Built and delivered ongoing feature and bug-fix work for an external client entirely through the platform, shipped as reviewed, tested pull requests with no manual coding.

Head of Operations at TechPlant Ltd t/a TT Instruments (2025-03 – 2026-04)

Stepped into a commercial leadership role at a test-and-measurement reseller while seeking the right embedded engineering opportunity. Maintained hands-on technical work throughout.

• Tested, fault-found and repaired high-value test and measurement equipment prior to resale, keeping electronics-hardware skills sharp.
• Designed and built an internal web app to streamline listing and photography workflows for the auctions branch.
• Launched the rentals branch from scratch and established its operating procedures; managed a team of three.

Embedded Software Engineer at Switchee (2024-04 – 2025-03)

Smart-thermostat manufacturer for the social-housing sector.

• Designed an end-to-end QA automation framework (Node-RED, Pytest, Playwright) for embedded thermostats and cloud services, reducing a critical multi-hour regression test to under 45 minutes and cutting other manual tests from ~60 minutes to under 5 minutes.
• Built the on-site automated test farm that ran the full regression suite against every software release before public deployment, exercising 48 devices in parallel via Raspberry Pi controllers running Node-RED and connected through AWS MQTT endpoints.
• Implemented secure remote access via Twingate enabling real-time touch simulation and display regeneration, accelerating root-cause analysis of complex firmware issues.
• Contributed firmware bug-fixes in legacy embedded C within agile two-week sprints; tracked work in Jira and managed code in Git, including peer code reviews.

Embedded Software Engineer at Pulse Systems Ltd (2023-07 – 2024-04)

• Led firmware development for a smart outdoor lighting product on Nordic NRF52 series chipsets, scaling deployment from 50 to 200 carpark luminaires using Wirepas Bluetooth mesh networking.
• Delivered a 200-node IoT smart-plug system spanning mains-powered and battery-operated devices, integrated with motion detectors for intelligent energy management.
• Achieved 100% success rate on OTA firmware deployments across the entire 200-device fleet, eliminating the need for any physical intervention.
• Integrated light sensors and the Wirepas mesh stack to enable remote monitoring and control, reducing site-visit overhead for the customer.
• Built ThingsBoard dashboards and custom widgets over MQTT (Mosquitto) for remote device management; wrote helper libraries in C and Python to streamline development and embedded debugging.

Electrical Engineer (Consultant & Senior Lab Technician) at Liverpool John Moores University (2018-06 – 2023-07)

Split role: industry consultancy for the Liverpool City Region and senior technician for the Electrical Engineering Department.

• Tested low-carbon innovations on-site for SME clients (infrared heating, central heating water treatment, sustainable thermal blinds, atmospheric water generators, solar dryers), verifying functionality, efficiency and carbon-footprint claims.
• Designed and progressively extended an automated test rig now used across all consultancy projects: Arduino nodes communicating via RF to a master node serially linked to a Raspberry Pi, accessible remotely over a secure tunnel, with configurable thresholds for over-temperature email alerts and automatic test suspension, and live CSV export of sensor data.
• Extended the rig with computer vision (TensorFlow CNN) to recognise smoke and flames as a safety mitigation.
• Designed and fabricated PCBs in Proteus Professional and KiCad for staff research, including motor drivers, buck/boost converters, 3-phase monitoring boards, Arduino shields and adapter boards.
• Authored C and Python lab tutorials, designed reference circuits in Multisim and Proteus, and built example boards to bridge theory and practice for engineering students.
• Mentored Level 6 students through final-year embedded projects, improving their technical reasoning, report writing and presentation skills.
• Secured £15k funding for additive-manufacturing PCB-fabrication equipment and trained two apprentices and three new staff members; became the department’s go-to technical reference.

Systems Engineer at GE Aviation Systems (2017-07 – 2018-06)

• Designed and implemented an automated PCB commissioning system for turbine-engine monitoring boards: a custom C#.NET GUI communicating with the PCB via an RX3i PAC over a custom Profinet bus, with serial control of bench equipment to simulate input/output voltages and currents, rotation frequencies, 4–20mA loops and RTDs. Reduced commissioning time from 6 weeks to under 1 week (~83% reduction).
• Wrote, updated and verified acceptance tests for aircraft standby displays.
• Determined IMU mean-time-before-failure post-HTOL reliability testing using linear-regression modelling on thousands of historic data points.
• Worked with industrial communication protocols including Profinet and CANopen.

Private Tutor at Self-employed (2017-01 – Present)

• Tutor Level 4–7 university students in digital electronics, embedded systems (Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Linux), DSP, control systems, and programming in C, Python and MATLAB.

MSc in Energy and Power Systems – University of Liverpool (2015 – 2016)

BEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering – University of Liverpool (2012 – 2015)

Level 3 in Manufacturing Engineering – Our Lady & St John Sixth Form (2010 – 2012)