Oliver Paynter-Jones
SDE 5 at Amazon
I’m a software engineer with a background in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Bath. I find the intersection of abstract logic and working code more interesting than either on its own.
I care about building systems that are simple to reason about and resilient at scale, and I like to understand how a technology works by building something with it.
Option 1 · Pull quote, folded text
Cognitive surrender is not the same as saying AI is bad or that using AI is irrational; in many settings, AI can improve judgment. The key issue is calibration: knowing when AI is helping you think and when it is quietly doing the thinking for you.
Why this stays with me
Between the end of my internship and the start of my full-time role at Amazon, the way software gets written changed a great deal. AI has not lowered my bar for quality; if anything, it lets me iterate towards that bar faster than I could before. The cost is that it becomes easy to forget how to do the work yourself. Some see that as no more worrying than no longer writing assembly, but I want to keep the skill, because it deepens my understanding of the field, so each week I spend time on a task that does not affect delivery and do it the old-fashioned way. When I work with agents, I set them up so that I drive the work and nothing moves on without me. Autonomous development has its place, but for systems that customers rely on and that carry my name, I read and verify the code and the claims an agent makes before I stand behind them.
Option 3 · Margin note
Between the end of my internship and the start of my full-time role at Amazon, the way software gets written changed a great deal. AI has not lowered my bar for quality; if anything, it lets me iterate towards that bar faster than I could before. The cost is that it becomes easy to forget how to do the work yourself. Some see that as no more worrying than no longer writing assembly, but I want to keep the skill, because it deepens my understanding of the field, so each week I spend time on a task that does not affect delivery and do it the old-fashioned way. When I work with agents, I set them up so that I drive the work and nothing moves on without me. Autonomous development has its place, but for systems that customers rely on and that carry my name, I read and verify the code and the claims an agent makes before I stand behind them.
Something you read or heard that stays with you.
Where it came from
A sentence or two on why it matters to you day to day.
Something you read or heard that stays with you.
Where it came from
A sentence or two on why it matters to you day to day.
My Journey and Experiences
Amazon
Edinburgh, UK · Aug 2026 – Present
SDE 5
From Apr 2027
Leading the design of the next generation of creative ingestion across multiple marketplaces.
Multi-region ingestion
Designed and led the rollout of ingestion to three new regions, cutting feed latency for European advertisers.
- Wrote the high-level design and secured sign-off from four partner teams.
- Mentored two engineers through their first production launches.
Ingestion observability
Built per-feed dashboards and alarms so that a failed upload is detected in minutes rather than hours.
SDE 4
From Aug 2026
Working on the ingestion systems that power Amazon's pilots of dynamic creatives across the world.
Feed validation service
Built a validation step that rejects malformed advertiser feeds before processing, with clear error reports for each row.
- Reduced failed ingestion runs by 40% in the first month.
- Added load tests covering feeds of up to a million rows.
ICRTouch
Isle of Wight, UK · Nov 2025 – Jun 2026
Software Developer
Maintained the legacy systems used by thousands of businesses across the UK, spanning ICRTouch's wide range of interconnected software.
- Delivered bespoke work for customers on request.
- Fixed bugs across the product range.
Travelling
Netherlands and France · Sep 2025 – Oct 2025
Took time off after university and my internship to travel through the Netherlands and France.
Sunset on the way into Paris, October 2025. Amazon
Edinburgh Development Centre, UK · Jun 2025 – Aug 2025
Software Development Engineer Intern
Built a TypeScript browser tool that automated product intake and delivery tracking, replacing an error-prone manual workflow.
- Gathered requirements from non-technical stakeholders and wrote the design documents recommending the chosen approach.
- Led design reviews with peers and senior engineers to agree the approach.
- Added unit tests and CI/CD pipelines, and delivered a final presentation and live demo to engineers and managers.
University of Bath
Bath, UK · Sep 2022 – May 2025
BSc (Hons) Computer Science and Mathematics
Graduated with a strong First Class Honours, specialising in machine learning.
Dissertation: machine-learning anti-cheat
Researched a novel anti-cheat for video games that runs locally, is non-invasive and performs well, using machine learning to detect anomalies in players' mouse movements.
Read the dissertation →
Placeholder: a few sentences on what you learnt at Bath beyond the degree itself.
Placeholder: the experiences, people and moments that shaped your time there.
The Royal Crescent, a short walk from campus. Graduation week, summer 2025. Home
Isle of Wight, UK
Placeholder: what you love about the Isle of Wight and what makes it special.
Placeholder: how growing up there made you who you are today.
The Needles from the cliffs above Alum Bay. Evening on the West Wight coast.
Blog
Posts marked “Made without AI” were thought through, written and built by me alone. I think the effort and thinking behind a piece of work is part of its value, so it is worth saying when it is entirely mine.
Advanced computer graphics
Building the foundations of graphics in C++, from the matrix maths of projection to the optimisations behind ray tracing and photon mapping.
C++ · GraphicsMade without AIRead the postThe perfect keyboard: a genetic algorithm experiment
Evolving keyboard layouts for typing speed and comfort with a bespoke genetic algorithm, using frequency data from a 246,000-word corpus.
Python · OptimisationMade without AIRead the postSociety Matchmaker
Leading an eight-person team to tackle low student engagement with university societies, from stakeholder interviews to a deployed React and Flask app.
React · Flask · TeamworkMade without AIRead the post