Francis Irving's CV

British citizen · francis@flourish.org · https://www.flourish.org/cv/ · en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Irving

Programmer and activist, looking to build something as useful as mySociety, using AI-assisted coding in a way that increases quality.

Summary

Highlights

  • Civic technology pioneer, made the world-leading TheyWorkForYou — mySociety.org
  • Shipped LLM products since mid-2022, before ChatGPT existed — Memrise and Sagittal

Skills

  • Product engineer who builds things that millions of people use — TortoiseCVS
  • Engineering manager, making a team highly productive — Memrise
  • Entrepreneurial, running or helping found startups — ScraperWiki
  • Deep systems background, artificial life engines in C++ — Creature Labs

Career History

Staff Engineer, Sagittal (2024 – 2026)

First employee of startup building a safe, workflow-based product for AI to carry out tasks in software development teams. Built workflows in Python using multiple LLM vendors, interacting with users via 12+ developer tools (Linear, GitLab, Confluence etc).

Created algorithms to mix LLM outputs with deterministic gates, optimising hundreds of LLM calls to boost quality and lower cost. Partnered with pilot customers to integrate product with their systems, and improve management practices in a world of AI coding. Company closed in 2026, having not found product-market fit.

Engineering Manager / Principal Engineer, Memrise (2018 – 2023)

Created and managed a popular language learning app’s web product team. Took it from an abandoned part of Memrise, to being fully remade in React, and the team leading the company at improving the product. Introduced practices including continuous deployment, automated dependency update merging, and fast review processes.

Shipped the first LLM-based language roleplaying bot in mid-2022. Iteratively improved its quality and personality as a two person team, making it reliable and popular for millions of users. Coded in Python, React and using OpenAI’s API. Coached company to also use LLMs for marketing, localisation and backend linguistics APIs.

Fractional CTO, PiC (2017 – 2018)

Led data engineering and statistics for diversity in recruitment analytics startup. Built tooling and taught business analysts to use Python and Jupyter Notebook to do more powerful data cleaning and analysis.

Research Software Engineer, Bennett Institute (2017 – 2018)

Improved clinical medicine research transparency at Ben Goldacre’s lab at Oxford University (then called the EBM DataLab). Built EU Trials Tracker and Retractobot. Co-author on the resulting BMJ paper.

Chief Executive Officer, ScraperWiki (2010 – 2016)

Led data science startup (now Cantabular) from raw initial product to break even. Built and maintained team of 12 people. Active role in development of multiple products and platforms. Fundraising from grants and venture capital. Sales to corporations, government and international organisations such as AutoTrader, the Office for National Statistics and UN OCHA.

Founding Developer, mySociety.org (2003 – 2010)

Started charity which makes digital products that engage people with democracy and improve the community aspects of our lives. Led the world in creating the civic technology sector.

Built and launched sites such as TheyWorkForYou which lets you find out what your Member of Parliament has been up to, and WhatDoTheyKnow which helps you make Freedom of Information requests from government. Years later, both sites still have millions of yearly users.

Grew mySociety’s organisation as a non-profit, creating volunteer communities. Combined skills at coding, product management and customer support to make a high quality user experience using Perl, PHP and PostgreSQL. Media work, such as speaking live about mySociety on national radio.

Senior Programmer, Creature Labs (1999 – 2002)

Developer on artificial life computer game Creatures 3 and networked expansion Docking Station, in C++ (Windows) and Perl. Designed an innovative automated build process as detailed in Gamasutra article Automating the Build Process.

Ported both games to Linux using SDL, secured a publishing contract, ran public beta and released as Creatures Internet Edition for Linux. Led programming of the engine simulating genetically specified articulated creatures for BBC’s Bamzooki, using MathEngine and Lua.

Software Developer, NC Graphics (1997 – 1999)

Developed high-performance CAM software with complex 3D algorithms using C++ and OpenGL.

Software Engineer, VEGA Group (1996 – 1997)

Developed multimedia training software for the Royal Navy using Borland Delphi.

Voluntary Work

Founder and Cohost, Land Talks (2025 – )

Organising evenings of lightning talks about radical land policy, emphasising a critical, under-discussed issue in a way that brings together people from across the political spectrum. Finding and curating speakers, maintaining high quality of event. The event sells out, and keeps to time.

Founder and Cohost, Imagine an apple (2024 – 2026)

Presenting podcast about how everyone’s inner mental experience varies – what we see when we imagine, the personality of our inner voice, how we feel emotion. Found interviewees, edited audio, marketing.

Founder and Dean, Awesome Liverpool (2013 – 2018)

Started and ran the Liverpool chapter of the Awesome Foundation, giving micro-grants of £500 to innovative projects every month. Recruited over 25 trustees and attracted applicants with sales, marketing and event organising. Chapter continued to run for 12 years.

Campaigns Director, Save Parliament (2006)

Ran grassroots campaign against the Legislative And Regulatory Reform Bill. Turned legal advice into accessible briefings, worked with public relations to increase exposure in newspapers, coordinated thousands of supporters to write to their MPs and Lords. Made the government back down and extensively amend the Bill.

Founder, Public Whip website (2003 – 2010)

Initiated and led development of Public Whip, a popular democracy website which makes it easy to find out how your MP has voted in the UK House of Commons. Publicised with charities and the media, acted as contact with parliament staff, MPs and Lords. Winner in the New Statesman New Media Awards in 2004.

Founder, TortoiseCVS (2000 – 2002)

Created TortoiseCVS, an easy-to-use version control client integrated into Windows Explorer. It has been downloaded millions of times, and was used extensively for 20 years in commercial and academic environments. Managed the open source project using collaborative development over the internet.

Coordinator, Cambridge Oxfam Group (1997 – 2002)

Leader of the group, setting the agenda to campaign and fundraise for international development charity Oxfam. Organised campaign stalls, appeared on TV, gave talks at bookshops and conferences, lobbied local MP and council.

Education

1st Class Degree in Mathematics, Oxford University (1992 – 1995)

Including advanced courses in Complexity and Cryptography, Lattice Theory, Relativity and Gödel’s Theorem. Lincoln College scholarship 1993–1995.

Contact

British citizen, francis@flourish.org. Email me for contact details of referees.