Mr Amila Pitigala Liyanage
School of Science, Engineering & Environment
Current positions
Software Engineer
Biography
Amila Liyanage is a Software Engineer at the University of Salford’s ThinkLab, specializing in digital system architecture, large-scale software engineering, and applied research. He has led the design and implementation of numerous mission-critical platforms across domains including disaster management, energy efficiency, enterprise systems, and high-traffic B2B applications.
He has played a central technical role across a range of high-profile international projects, including the EU-funded KBE RenoZeb initiative and two World Bank-funded programs for the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Through these projects, he continues to collaborate closely with international organizations, government agencies, and meteorological services in both countries, advancing data-driven solutions for climate resilience and sustainable development. His expertise spans end-to-end system design, cloud-native architectures, data-driven platforms, and AI/ML-powered solutions for decision support and automation.
At ThinkLab, Amila has architected and developed several advanced research-driven platforms such as the Real-time Global Forecasting and Disaster Monitoring Dashboard and the Early Warning System. These platforms integrate global weather models (ECMWF, ICON, GFS), IoT sensor networks, and AI-driven event prediction models enabling multi-agency coordination, real-time visualization, and natural language-driven insights through Large Language Model (LLM) agents.
His research contributions also extend to sustainable infrastructure, particularly through the EU-funded RenoZeb KBE project, where he designed the knowledge-based engine supporting energy-efficient and near-zero energy building (nZEB) renovation decision-making frameworks across Europe.
Before joining ThinkLab, Amila worked at Rezgateway Inc. as a Senior Platform and R&D Engineer, where he optimized high-availability travel reservation systems handling over 170 million requests per day. His work included microservices data management, performance tuning, and cloud containerization using AWS ECS ensuring scalable, low-latency architectures in distributed environments.
Earlier in his career at Richard Pieris & Company PLC, he led the development of multiple enterprise-grade systems including ERP, Business Intelligence, Treasury Management, and Material Requirement Planning platforms, serving thousands of users across finance, manufacturing, and retail sectors. He also conducted applied R&D in computer vision and machine learning, developing object detection solutions using TensorFlow and CNNs for security automation.
Qualifications
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B.Sc.(Hons) in Information Technology and Management
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Professional Graduate Diploma by Examination, British Computer Society (BCS)