Second-year BSc Computer Science student at The University of Sheffield, focused on Rust, Nix, and distributed systems. Co-founded and ran Swift News 2018–2022, writing a Python/FastAPI CMS that handled invoicing and scheduling for 70 customers.
Education
BSc Computer Science with a Year Abroad
10/2024 – 06/2028
Currently achieving first-class honours
Relevant Courses
Foundations of Computer Science
Score: 94/100
Engineering - You're Hired
Score: 83/100
Introduction to Software Engineering
Score: 79/100
Machines and Intelligence
Score: 79/100
Work
Sheffield Students' Union
Senior Stage Manager
01/2025 – Present
Responsible for a team of people running live events for gigs and club nights.
- Manage a team of up to 7 staff during live events, ensuring tasks are completed on time.
- Coordinate sound, video, and lighting teams.
- Resolve live technical faults invisibly to attendees.
Swift News
Co-Founder
08/2018 – 06/2022
Co-founded a paper-delivery business during secondary school. Designed, built, and operated the software used to run the business.
- FastAPI (Python) CMS for 70 customers, automating invoicing via SMTP email or post and centralising customer data.
- Automated scheduling for 5 employees, eliminating manual daily planning and improving operational reliability.
- Maintained production systems, ensuring daily schedule delivery, monthly invoicing, and regular customer data backups.
Projects
06/2024 – Present
Developed an open-source Rust library that automates SQLx database migrations at application startup.
- Engineered a custom Rocket fairing utilising
rocket_db_pools for safe, asynchronous launch-time execution. - Optimised developer workflow by eliminating boilerplate, reducing migration setup to a single-line API call.
- Published and maintained the crate on crates.io, achieving 1,500+ downloads and adoption by external dev teams.
02/2024 – Present
Distributed system written in Rust to calculate and verify large quantities of prime numbers across multiple (web) clients.
- Implemented work validation system to prevent duplicate or malicious submissions.
- Container-based deployment using Podman/Docker and Docker Compose.
- CI/CD pipelines for automated build-and-test on every push.
2023 – Present
Wrote a declarative system configuration managing multiple machines. Hosting my Prime Number Miner, a multi-user Nextcloud server, and my CV website (rubenward.com).
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Nix Flakes and Home Manager.
- Automated deployment of development environments.
- Centralised and synchronised configuration and secrets to deploy personal projects.
Robotics Navigation System
02/2026 – Present
Autonomous maze-exploration and target-tracking system developed for a TurtleBot3 utilising SLAM, A* pathfinding, and OpenCV.
- Architected a modular ROS 2 system with decoupled nodes for vision, navigation, and hardware control.
- Implemented collision-free autonomous exploration utilising LiDAR and odometry for real-time map generation.
- Engineered an OpenCV image-processing pipeline to identify visual targets and dynamically route the robot to them.
Software Hut
02/2026 – Present
Contributed to Team Management Tool for a real client. It is a full-stack university administration platform centralising team management, purchasing approvals, supplier workflows, donations, role-based permissions, and notifications.
- Built Rails 8 workflows for finance approvals, suppliers, and donations with robust state and edit controls.
- Added request version history and accurate balance modelling (pending vs confirmed) using integer currency handling.
- Implemented role-based access (Devise/CanCanCan) and CSV admin imports for suppliers, teams, memberships, and roles.
12/2025 – Present
A custom-built CV generation engine that transforms JSON data into professional PDF and web formats. This very CV was generated by it.
- Built using Astro and declaratively deployed via Nix.
- Supports dynamic schema-based content selection tailored to specific job roles.
- Developed utilising AI generation with human review to maximise iteration speed and deployment velocity.
Skills
Programming Languages
RustJavaPythonHaskellRubyNixJavaScript
Systems & Infrastructure
NixOSLinux/UnixGitLab CI/CDDocker/PodmanInfrastructure as CodeDistributed Systems
Leadership & Management
Team LeadershipOperations Scheduling
Web & Data
HTML/CSSSQLitePostgreSQL
Tooling
VSCodeZedgitjjzshcodex
Languages
| English | Fluent |
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| German | Fluent |
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