About Me

I’m Richard Leyton, an enthusiastic technologist, runner, and cyclist living in the south-side of Glasgow, Scotland. You can mostly find me on twitter @rleyton and @rleyton@mastodon.me.uk

Work

My career has encompassed companies and organisations of all sizes, with a technology focus. Infrastructure, databases, the back-end stuff. I’ve done this at banks, hedge funds, mobile phone gaming companies, travel companies, and startups.

I’ve been a technologist for many years, a great many of them as a freelancer, and am open to enquiries and opportunities. Drop me a line via richard@leyton.org or linkedin.

Away from work

Away from work I’m an enthusiastic runner, cyclist, enjoy photography and interesting beer, and help with community groups and campaigning groups for issues I care about. I particularly enjoy helping support and apply technology to these groups and issues.

Combining the two

I’ve been mostly fortunate to combine my interests with work from time to time. I discovered parkrun in 2007 when there were just a couple of events, via friends in London, and was motivated to establish/found Scotland’s first parkrun in Pollok park, so I could enjoy a free 5k in my local park. That led on to helping other parkrun events get off the ground in Glasgow and Scotland, until 2012 or so. I started helping parkrun with technology matters as it grew – almost exponentially – from 2010-2016. That became a full time job in 2013. Helping this organisation grow from a very basic website/setup suitable for a few thousand runners, to a fully scalable infrastructure on AWS that copes with millions of registered runners.

I finished up in late 2015/early 2016. They’re still using a great deal of what I helped put in place during my time there, but what I find best to describe as differences of opinion around strategy, and some organisational/staffing decisions meant it wasn’t something I was enjoying any more. Whilst I’m sad it ended how it did, I’m still very pleased they’re using a lot of the foundations I helped put in place.

Previously…

Originally I’m from Priddy, on the Mendip Hills in Somerset. I studied Computing at Oxford Brookes University, graduating with a first class honours degree. I then lived and and worked in Düsseldorf, Germany for two years, before returning to the UK to live and work in London. I met my (now) wife there, and we moved to Glasgow in 2004.

Politics

I’m a member of the Scottish Green Party. Man-made climate change is the single biggest threat facing us, and I am actively campaigning to help bring about a politics that reflect that urgency.

Recently

In recent years I’ve worked at the BBC (on the Digital Archive project/service), and Arm, both companies I’ve long admired. I’m now at ClassForKids as the Technical Architect.

Since 2016 I decided to get more involved with local matters, specifically my running club since I took up the sport, Bellahouston Road Runners. I was Chair of the Board of Trustees from 2016 to 2022, helping it transition to charitable status, and seeing it win Scottish Athletics Impact and Innovation Club of the Year award in 2020.

I’m now leading the working group setting up the West District XC League.

I helped to get Friends of Pollok Country park off the ground in 2017, and acted as membership secretary until 2022.

In 2021 I started helping Govan Law Centre on an exciting project to make free advice and information about debt and tenancy issues more easily accessible, which will hopefully be launching in mid-2021.