Joshua Fields — Software Engineer & Creative Technologist

Leonardo — Software Engineer (Aug 2022 – Jun 2025)

Leonardo is a major aerospace, defence, and security company building high-reliability systems for complex, regulated environments. Joshua began his professional software engineering career there, working on data-heavy engineering systems where reliability, traceability, and technical discipline were essential.

As a Software Engineer, Joshua contributed to high-reliability data pipelines, automation systems, and backend tooling used to process and manage large-scale RF and engineering data. The work required careful handling of complex datasets, strong attention to system behaviour, and an ability to build software that could operate within strict engineering and security standards.

A key part of Joshua's work involved developing Python ETL pipelines and Spark workflows for large-scale RF data processing. These pipelines helped ingest, transform, and structure technical data so it could be stored, queried, analysed, and used by downstream engineering teams. This gave him practical experience with distributed data processing and the challenges of moving from raw technical signals to usable structured datasets.

Joshua also designed and maintained database systems using PostgreSQL and MongoDB, supporting distributed workflows and internal tooling. His work covered data modelling, pipeline reliability, schema design, automation, and the operational concerns that come with maintaining systems in a regulated engineering environment.

Beyond implementation, Joshua contributed to engineering standards and internal documentation, helping improve consistency across development practices. He also mentored junior engineers, reviewed work, and helped establish clearer approaches to building and maintaining reliable software.

Leonardo gave Joshua a strong engineering foundation: writing production-grade Python, working with large-scale data, understanding cloud and distributed systems, and developing the discipline needed to build software in environments where correctness, maintainability, and reliability matter.