People leadership
Build high-performing multidisciplinary teams through purposeful recruitment, coaching, performance development, succession planning and trust.
LEADERSHIP
Engineering transformation through people, systems and technology.
Leadership grounded in technical depth, organisational capability and the conviction that exceptional products emerge from exceptional engineering cultures.
FOUNDER & R&D DIRECTOR
Dr Gunaratnam “Guna” Sooriyakumar, PhD
Engineering Transformation Leader · Technology Strategist · Engineering Thought Leader
Guna is an engineering executive with more than 25 years of international experience transforming complex ideas into products, platforms and lasting engineering capability. His career spans automotive, aerospace, industrial automation, robotics, renewable energy, distributed power and advanced electrification.
He combines first-principles technical judgement with the practical leadership required to build teams, govern risk, direct portfolios and align engineering decisions with customer and business outcomes. His experience extends from doctoral research and detailed design to R&D management, technology strategy, industrialisation and institution building.
25+ years20 engineers led£4.5m R&D responsibility12 concurrent programmes
EXECUTIVE CAPABILITY
Leadership at four connected levels.
Technology leadership becomes sustainable when people, business, engineering practice and knowledge develop together.
Technology leadership
Set technical direction, frame difficult trade-offs and translate emerging technologies into coherent roadmaps and product platforms.
Business leadership
Align engineering portfolios with customer value, commercial priorities and disciplined delivery across cost, performance, quality and schedule.
Knowledge leadership
Turn research and programme learning into reusable methods, software, standards and organisational capability through EDEPT, E-EBOK and EDDI.
LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE
Creating the conditions for engineering excellence.
Build capability
Recruit and develop engineers at different career stages—including graduates, experienced specialists, contractors and researchers—while coaching future technical leaders.
Direct complex portfolios
Balance multiple concurrent programmes, resources and technical priorities; intervene early when urgency, risk or changing business needs require teams to realign.
Establish governance
Create design-review, DFMEA, verification, validation, engineering-change and documentation practices that improve decision quality without suppressing innovation.
Connect engineering with value
Frame technical trade-offs clearly for executives, customers and cross-functional teams, integrating performance, cost, quality, manufacturability and schedule.
LEADERSHIP JOURNEY
From engineering depth to organisational transformation.
Foundations
Emerson Industrial Automation
Combined company-sponsored doctoral research with industrial product development, progressing from R&D engineer to engineering manager and establishing a lasting philosophy of rigorous, people-centred engineering.
Multidisciplinary leadership
Protean · Albright · Ricardo · JLR · ZF · Bladon
Expanded from specialist design into team leadership, NPD, manufacturing, customer programmes, technical governance and cross-functional delivery across complex electromechanical products.
Strategic technology direction
Bowman · AMETEK · Changan UK R&D Centre
Directed advanced R&D across ultra-high-speed generators, safety-critical aerospace actuation and next-generation electrified powertrains, connecting architecture, digital engineering and organisational investment.
Institution building
EDRIVE Design Limited · EDDI
Founded an engineering organisation designed to create capability beyond individual projects—uniting consultancy, research, software, education and open engineering knowledge.
FOUNDER’S VISION
Building capability that outlasts the programme.
EDRIVE Design Limited and EDDI express a long-term belief: the best engineering leaders do more than deliver products—they strengthen how engineering is understood and practised.
EDEPT captures how multidisciplinary engineering work is performed. E-EBOK structures what electrification engineers need to know. EDDI governs and evolves both, connecting industry, research, software, education and leadership.
Explore the EDDI architecture ↗My role as an engineering leader is to build organisations where talented engineers can innovate with confidence, transform ideas into commercially successful products and create lasting value.
ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP PHILOSOPHY
START A CONVERSATION
Bring us the challenge others call difficult.
Speak directly with a senior engineer about your electrification programme.
enquiries@eddesign.co.uk ↗