James Harrison is a Senior Data Engineer with 9 years' experience applying high-performance computing and software engineering to real-world humanitarian problems, currently leading data engineering at the Flowminder Foundation in Dublin. He designs and optimises pipelines that process terabyte-scale, sensitive geospatial mobility data on modest hardware, enabling crisis response, vaccination planning and national statistics across low- and middle-income countries. His PhD in computational particle physics underpins a rigorous approach to algorithm optimisation, parallelisation, and reproducible data modelling, which he pairs with practical skills in Airflow, Python, PostgreSQL and Parquet storage. He has a track record of reducing storage footprints and speeding crisis analyses from weeks to days, while training partners to adopt robust, privacy-conscious methods. Comfortable juggling varied roles in resource-constrained environments, he mentors teams, improves UX for analysts, and contributes to open-source FlowKit used for mobility analysis. Outside work he channels his curiosity into music, cooking and travel, reflecting a collaborative and inquisitive mindset that drives impactful technical solutions.
9 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
A level Mathematics (A*) Further Mathematics (A*) Physics (A) Psychology (B), A level Mathematics (A*) Further Mathematics (A*) Physics (A) Psychology (B) at Winterbourne International Academy
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Computational Particle Physics, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Computational Particle Physics at University of Southampton
Contributions:7 PRs, 1011 pushes, 10 branches in 1 year 3 months
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