Kate Lau chats with Thomas Emment, Keen AI’s Software Developer, to discuss his journey from university projects to helping National Grid monitor their entire network.
“If you had told 17-year-old me what I’d be doing in ten years, I’d have said: that’s sci-fi.”
When Tom talks about joining Keen AI, he always starts with the Reddit ad.
“I was worried it was a scam,” Tom laughs now. “Wasn’t sure if there was actually going to be people working there.”
It was 2021, and Tom had just graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a degree in Data Science. That summer, he’d been busy building websites: one to showcase his girlfriend’s art (she also designed our mascot, the KAI Bear!) and another called Army Tactics, a 2D strategy game where players pit units against each other in turn-based battles. Now he was looking for his first proper job. The ad for Keen AI was vague, and there wasn’t much information online, thanks to a recent company name change. He applied anyway.
He showed up for his first day early, bright-eyed and eager. He was excited, he remembers, but also desperate for the bathroom. The Moseley Exchange, the office space we’re still based in today, hadn’t opened yet, but the disabled toilet was unlocked. “So I went in,” he says. “Innocently pulled the cord for the light, as you do…” Except it wasn’t the light. It was the emergency alarm, and everyone came running.
“Amjad was nice about it though,” he laughs. That early moment set the tone. Tom hadn’t planned on staying long: in the programmer world it’s common practice to switch jobs every year or two to stay current, get the right pay bumps, learn new tech stacks, and work on diverse projects.
“But Amjad’s been good to me,” Tom says. “I’m never bored. The projects are always fresh, like with the new solar storms app. Now I’ve been here for four and a half years and I’m still having a good time.”
Tom (right) with his mum on his graduation day.
Has the job been what he expected? “Not at all,” comes immediately. “I’ve changed a lot. I’ve learnt a lot. When I started I didn’t know how to code front end at all.” These days Tom is our go-to front-end guy, but it wasn’t always like that. During university he stubbornly refused to code with an IDE and would only use the IDLE shell.
In his early days at Keen AI, the team (much smaller then than it is now) was tasked with building an app to show National Grid substations. The initial plan had been to outsource it, but with the deadlines looming and no guarantee the quality would be there, the safer bet was to take the whole thing on internally. Tom decided otherwise. “I just said to Amjad, give me a week to learn Flutter,” he remembers. Tom had never done mobile app development before. A week later, he had built the app himself. For mock data, he set up a pretend substation at his parents’ allotment, and the initial test images were of the strawberry cage and the polytunnels, mapped onto assets.
Demo of the app Tom built for National Grid, with Mr and Mrs Emment’s allotment as a mock substation.
After that first venture in front end development, Tom quickly found himself working on projects that kept stretching both his creativity and his technical skills. One of the earliest was Keen AI’s work for Transgrid, the Australian transmission network operator. The team was tasked with creating a high-resolution asset inventory of their towers, identifying the individual components and the tower types. It was one of Keen AI’s first overseas projects. Tom remembers the project fondly, everything but… “those really early or really late calls, I’d happily never do them again.”
The project for Transgrid was also Tom’s first time building a full React and TypeScript app. “I’d never worked with React before, so it was a crash course,” he says. “But getting to play with the new mapping technologies and visualising massive datasets across Australia was amazing.” He credits a big part of his success on this project to Keen AI’s Technical Lead, Petar Gyurov, and his brother Alex. “They were the ones who really got me up to speed!”
One of the next milestones in Tom’s career at Keen AI was working on KAI Studio: an internal data labelling and management tool, a project that remains an ongoing responsibility. The tool started as a fork of Label Studio, and learning to navigate the code has been both a challenge and a joy for Tom. “You can really see the fingerprints of all the developers who’ve worked on it,” he explains. “Sometimes that means very confusing code, but figuring it out is part of the fun.” What excites him most, however, is the huge benefits it brings to the Keen AI team: all the labelling, models, and data in one place, easily accessible and ready for use.
Years on, Keen AI’s bespoke fork has grown into something quite different, with lots of “especially the fun, bespoke features built just for us.” As the years have gone on, Keen AI’s fork has developed into something quite distinct, complete with bespoke features tailored to the team’s needs. Tom likes that it has become a sort of code scrapbook, letting him trace everything the team has worked on.
KAI Studio in summary? “Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You just need to swap the tyres for something a bit more slick.” Tom even got the chance to collaborate directly with the Label Studio team, sharing ideas and hoping one day to give something back to the community. “If they’ll take my spaghetti code,” he adds with a laugh.
Does he think he’s grown through his time at Keen AI? “Definitely, I was twenty. Now I’m twenty-five. So that probably explains a lot.”
Four and a half years on, Keen AI has grown, projects have grown, and Tom has grown as a coder too. When asked what his day-to-day work looks like now, he deadpans, “I edit text files every day.” He’s not wrong, but it is much more than that.
These days, a lot of Tom’s time is spent squashing bugs and providing support for Keen AI’s National Grid platform, a system that allows NG to monitor all their towers. NG supplies the images, then Keen AI’s models detect corrosion and reports on the overall condition of the network in near real time. Tom built most of the platform and knows the code front to back. Any errors that happen, he says, he can pinpoint to the line of code without looking. That’s why it’s his favourite project. “It’s my baby. I also get a lot of agency on it, which is nice as a developer.”
Tom finds it strange looking back now, and marvels at how he gets to work on projects he considers impressively futuristic. “If you had told 17-year-old me what I’d be doing in ten years, I’d have said: that’s sci-fi.”
Tom, Alcester Academy’s Deputy Head Boy (right)
Image Credit: Redditch Advertiser
More recently, Tom has been working on an intelligent connections tool for SPEN, which helps the network automate connection evaluation and design. He’s been collaborating closely with Keen AI’s Geospatial Engineer, Cristian Silva-Perez, and he credits this project as his strongest front-end work to date. The deadlines were brutal. “I definitely lost some sleep and weekends running up to this one,” he recalls, “but Amjad repaid that effort tenfold.”
The pressure also forced him to grow quickly. “It was the first time I’d built full UI flows with validation, map layers – everything,” he explains. “Seeing our vision come to life and then being used in BAU [Business-as-Usual] was incredible.” Working alongside Cristian added another layer of excitement. “Watching his genius at work in the GIS space in action was amazing,” Tom says. He sees the same spark in his current project too, where he is working with PhD Researcher Ruby Pearce-Casey on building a platform for tracking and predicting the impact of solar weather. As someone who has been here since the early days, Tom is genuinely proud of how far Keen AI has come. “It makes me really proud of the company, and the incredible team Amjad has built.”
Tom built the front end for Keen AI’s new app, showing how solar storms hit the UK power grid, fueled by Ruby and Cristian’s brilliant research.
And if the Keen AI team were a squad in a sci-fi film, who would he be? Tom thinks he’d be the hacker, giving everyone support and a hand from behind the scenes. The main trait he prides himself on is being reliable. “Maybe I talk too much, but I’ll always get the job done. Even if it means smashing a few Monsters and staying up late. That’s it really.” Classically Tom, and classically understated.
Most of that reliability plays out quietly in the background. But every so often he ends up in situations that are the complete opposite of the behind-the-scenes role he prefers. A few years ago, someone needed to be in front of the camera to demo the web app for National Grid, and reliably, Tom stepped up. “Amjad made me go out and get a haircut for it. It’s literally just me doing an assessment.” He shakes his head, still amused. “Just me, on camera, pointing dramatically at the screen. That’s the video.” And did he like the haircut? He laughs. “It was great getting a haircut on company time.” Tom’s even the voice of the company. When a neighbouring marketing team produced a promo for Keen AI’s rapid prototyping service, it was his voice that ended up in the final cut.
Tom, starring in a demo video for the platform Keen AI built for National Grid’s condition assessment.
Maybe today’s Tom isn’t so different from 17-year-old Tom. Back then, he was Deputy Head Boy, dressed as Cupid to hand out roses, raised plenty of money for charity, and joined every club he could. That same energy carries into the office, where he’s the company’s unofficial morale booster: fun-loving, always up for a chat, obsessed with Christmas (he arranges the office Secret Santa every year), and the person who buys everyone presents anyway. He’s Keen AI’s Santa, essentially.
Tom (top left) enjoying the chaos and laughs of this year’s office Secret Santa.
To us at Keen AI, Tom is reliable, inventive, and understatedly brilliant. He’s our go-to for coding back-end systems, front-end interfaces, and data pipelines. He built the National Grid platform and knows the code inside out. He’s also the organiser of team fun, responsible for everything from go-karting to escape rooms and VR arcades over the years, not to mention the countless pizza trips (Tom’s favourite food). He’s not afraid to get stuck into anything. “Apart from roller coasters. My girlfriend loves them but I’m terrified.” Last but not least, he’s the beloved leader of Keen AI’s book club, even if he does recommend Brandon Sanderson every week.
The best team outing? “We went up to Eakring, National Grid’s test site, and flew drones around their test pylons.”
The Keen AI team showing off their climbing skills bouldering last year (Tom’s in the middle).
Finally, what does Tom mean to Hamzah Reta, our other Software Developer and, crucially, Tom’s fantasy football rival?
“I’m always grateful for Tom’s generosity. From the fresh veg he’d bring from his parents’ allotment to his (now famous) Christmas gifts for the team, his kindness is always apparent. He makes time to help with any problem, work-related or otherwise, including the countless nuggets of financial advice he’s shared over the years.
Tom wears his heart on his sleeve… or, in his case, literally all over his Lidl-branded shirt. His enthusiasm is infectious, and though we’ve had our disagreements (he genuinely argues that ‘oof’ didn’t exist before Roblox), I can’t imagine anyone better to chat fantasy football or geek out over Star Wars with.”
Tom and Hamzah, Spurs superfans!
