ASE TEAM
Welcome to the ASE management team
Michael Darby
Managing Director
Mike has an honours degree in Software Engineering from Imperial College, London, is a Chartered Engineer and the Managing Director of Applied Software Engineering Ltd. Mike has 21 years of experience of design, development, test, integration and installation of safety critical SCADA systems on sites distributed throughout the world, and has developed digital control PCBs for use in medical equipment under the now obsolete safety standard IEC 60601 part 4.
Mike has 20 years' experience with digital video and seven years' experience in rail transportation. He has provided consultancy advice to Bombardier for three years on subjects such as systems engineering, BS EN 50128 compliance and automated testing systems. He has project managed and developed a number of SIL-1 rated projects, mostly train-borne CCTV systems, and has also acted as the Verifier and Validator on a previously successful BS EN 50128 SIL-1 project for a Driver Only
Operation CCTV system on Bombardier's Class 379 fleet. He is experienced with a wide variety of programming languages: C, C++, Assemblers, Pascal, Modula 2, VB, PHP, and VHDL and is widely recognised as an excellent problem-solver.
Peter Marshall
IT Director
Peter has a 1st Class MEng Hons degree in Microelectronic Systems Engineering from UMIST (Manchester). He has 20 years' continuous experience of development within digital video broadcasting systems and is one of the founding directors of ASE. Despite his role as a director, Pete still operates primarily as an engineer; he has an in-depth understanding of relevant standards and protocols and is highly respected by clients. Pete is often requested directly by Pico Digital when they need
to deal with issues or new critical developments. Although Pete works mainly as a development and trouble-shooting engineer, he also has team lead and project management experience, which enables him to apply an in-depth understanding of issues that are wider than technical matters.
Peter also manages the support and internal IT work for ASE, so has much knowledge and understanding of server-side design and implementation, together with the associated relevant technologies.
Chris Staniuszko
Quality Manager
Chris has a 1st Class Hons. degree in Software Engineering and has worked in a number of roles and organizations, developing both embedded systems and application software. Chris has worked as a software engineer for BT Research, Ascom AG and Pace Microtechnology plc, where, as a senior software engineer, he developed a common module that was reused on many subsequent projects. He became the Software Engineering and Process Manager for Pace (essentially head of software).
Chris has managed transport software development projects for Serco with HMRC as the client and led the development of a UTMC system.
Chris joined ASE in 2016 and is now a largely "hands-off" manager. He has managed safety-related projects for ASE at both SIL-1 and SIL-2, and takes care of some of the less glamorous admin work.
Andrew Hare
Senior Engineer
Andrew is a hugely experienced senior embedded engineer with much management, marketing/sales, and, most to his liking, hands-on development experience. He dealt directly with customers and suppliers for many years, supporting both hardware and software, as well as creating specifications for new products.
Andrew has a Master's Degree in Advanced Microelectronics and has developed a wide range of embedded monitoring and control systems, including remote monitoring of sensitive assets. He has worked with a wide variety of processors and is familiar with many operating systems. Andrew has especially in-depth expertise with embedded Linux, in which he has rebuilt cores and drivers for particular processors.
He also considerable experience with serial communications, having both written and (legally!) reverse-engineered multiple protocols, as well as having implemented industry standard protocols across many embedded projects. Andrew has personally designed many of the embedded systems that he has programmed, liaising with production companies to oversee the manufacturing of his designs.
Andrew is an excellent all-round hardware and embedded software engineer, who enjoys working closely with clients to develop the systems that the need.
We have an extensive range of both employees and external partners to call on. We always use the best people we can find and manage a skills matrix of all the expert designers we know, so we can find the right people for each separate project.
Contact us to talk to one of the team.