Life at Fuzzy Labs: Jon Carlton

We do a lot of great engineering work on our customer projects, and each project has a full team of engineers behind it. In this blog series we’re peeling back the curtain so you can get to know more about our engineers, and find out what a typical day looks like for a Fuzzician.

Jon Carlton: Senior MLOps Engineer

6:00 AM

I’m (honestly) a morning person and prefer to be up earlier, giving myself plenty of time to wake up and get the ball rolling. With the change in seasons, it’s porridge time. For me, that means lots of peanut butter, fruit, and honey. We have a hybrid working policy so on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I’m out of the door by 7:15 AM and on my way into Manchester. Otherwise, it’s a slower morning, with time to try and meditate - something that I’m still learning and getting to grips with!

8:00 AM

My commute is usually about 25 minutes so I’m in the office by 8 AM (unless I’ve run in). I usually start my day by planning out what I’m going to do, which often is carrying on from the day before! I also tend to focus more on admin-type tasks, e.g., code reviews and Slack, first thing in the morning.

We’re experimenting with stand-up and team catch-up cadences at the moment (switching from daily to every other day and a little longer), but these happen between 9 AM - 10 AM. After that, much like a Hobbit, it’s time for second breakfast! I run quite a lot, spending a lot of my free time out in the hills, so I tend to always be fueling throughout the day. 

Before lunch, I’ll be working away on a ticket, pairing, or writing and publishing bits of content on to company LinkedIn. I find that I can’t focus for long periods of time (I get distracted easily), so I’m a big pomodoro user, breaking work efforts into 30 minute blocks with a 5-10 minute break in between.

12 PM

Lunch time, one of my favourite times of the day! More often than not, I’ll have food with me -- usually last night's leftovers – but if it’s a lunch and learn day, then it’ll be whatever the speaker has chosen. We usually eat together, so it’s a good opportunity to hear about what others are up to, or marvel at what others have brought to the table. 

1 PM

After lunch is focus time. This is where I tend to get cracking on bigger and longer tasks, e.g., picking up an implementation ticket, reading a paper, or writing (much like this blog!).

Recently, I’ve been working on a project exploring how AI assistants could be applied to policing. The aim is to try and make case processing more efficient. This has meant getting hands on with various types of data, text and audio, and using Large Language Models. One aspect of the project is converting audio data into text and addressing the shortcomings of the managed services that are out there. To do that, I’ve been taking a Masked Language Modelling approach and training a custom model to fix the problems in the text automatically. It’s good fun, and getting hands-on with the Ray ecosystem is great.

There’s also some form of snack consumed between all of this!

4 PM

Home time, or gym time! What I do immediately after work is usually dictated by whether I’m in a training block or not. 

Over the past 6 to 9 months, I’ve started working more strength and conditioning training into my weekly programme. This has helped massively, I’ve found that I’m able to move more efficiently uphill, downhill, and over rough terrain.

If I’m not heading off to the gym, then I’ll more than likely have a run planned. I live in the Peak District, so this involves being out for an hour or so getting muddy – the dream (honest).

7 PM 

After returning home in a muddy mess, it’s time to relax for the evening. This typically involves attempting to cook up a storm in the kitchen followed by some TV, usually something on one of the streaming platforms. My partner and I have been really enjoying Slow Horses and House of the Dragon, so at the moment, we alternate between those two.

Getting up earlier usually means that it’s an earlier bedtime, so after reading for a bit (Star Wars or Tolkien), I’m passed out asleep by half 10.

Then, we go again the next day!