Alex Walker

I became conscious, in 1996 (I was not born then…) when I saw the web for the first time. I remember vividly thinking, ‘What. Is. That.’. Before then, I don’t really have full memories. That one is a whole story in my mind. Since then anything technology has fascinated me.

I reckon I was part of the last generation who typed computer games out from a magazine and had absolutely no idea why it didn’t work. Give an 8 year old a break. I blame those sticky keys of the BBC Micro.

If it’s relevant. I love cooking and I am slowly building up my repertoire of recipes here. Git is an excellent way to manage recipes it turns out.

I struggle to keep my Linked In up to date, but if you would like to connect with me you can do so here LinkedIn

Open source work I’m particularly proud of

Greenfinch
- Greenfinch is a decentralised file storage application. Think Dropbox on the blockchain. It is built on the Neo blockchain. In 2022 Greenfinch won first place in the Neo Polaris Hackathon for “Best Middlware” project.
Pickle It
- Pickle It was inspired by the classic issue of people creating files and documents and naming them v1, v2, v3 etc… or emailing near identical spreadsheets all named slightly differently. I wanted to build something that managed the naming conventions and handled the differences between versions for you. This project required to be able to take binary differences between files and be able to patch them together depending on what had changed and what needed updating.
PDF-Editor
- This was for an engineering company that needed to use image recognition to work out whether some engineering drawings met the standards required by the industry. Instead of humans doing the checks the goal was to have machines do it. The issue was the PDFs were tricky to get an a neural network to be able to process so this application converts each page of a PDF to PNGs. Not only that once the images are in PNG format they can be edited to create a training data set so that the neural network could learn what a correct and incorrect image looked like. The company was then able to feed engineering drawings into a neural network and spot errors in the drawings. The model used Keras and python to train the algoritm and then Golang to produce an application the company could feed with PDFs
WingIt
- Wingit was a PoC for sending and sharing files between any two users using end to end encryption. The goal was to create a Whatsapp level of user-knowledge-requirements and drag and drop so that a user can share with any contact a file and be sure that it will be encrypted, all the time not needing to know anything about what’s going on behind the scenes.
Got-Qt
- Got-Qt is a starter application for using Qt/Qml with Go. There is a lot of code out there but there is also a lot of boiler plate required to get started. This is in this list because of the number of people who have star’d and forked it :)

Career History

Human Security 2020 - present

Senior Engineer

Human Security works to rid the world of bots masquerading as humans, committing fraud and disrupting business and technology. My role is as a senior engineer in Research and Development. The role involves designing new integrations into our clients’ infrastructure and designing new ways to financially cripple bot nets. This means that my day to day work involves designing new architectures, writing code in multiple languages, crafting proof of concepts and demonstrations, liasing with sales and customer’s tech teams to support integrations, doing code reviews, keeping good tech discplines in place across the team, and managing developers.

Technologies used

Go
Python
Lua
AWS
pSQL
Redis
Javascript/Typescript
HTTP (REST)
HTTP2 (gRPC)
JSON/protobufs
NGINX/Traefik
Docker (microservices)

Blocksize Unlimited 2018 - 2023

Consultant (founder)

Founded BlockSizeUnlimited. alex@blocksizeunlimited.com
- Consultancy offering tecnical aid to companies of all sizes
- Consulting CTO role
- Software developer/lead developer
- Contracted work
Security consultant, helping businesses deal with a data breach
Tech consultancy supporting blockchain applications
Managing ICO fund raises
KYC and anti money laundering requirements
Designing and building prototypes for distributed applications
Business consultancy and education around blockchain business models
Working in an agile manner when your code is immutable
Developing microservices and architecture for a range of businesses
Consulting on tech builds for seed funded businesses
Developing data analytical prototypes for companies that wish to gain insights from their data

Hook.ee 2016 - 2019

CTO/founder

SAAS phishing platform to aid small businesses in testing their human security status
A spear phishing platform for SMEs to test their employee resistance to spear phishing attacks

Decoded Ltd 2014 - 2017

Head of security

Sys administrator
Dev ops
Product developer
Product designer (cyber security, software developer, data science)
Data analytics content creation
Business/technology overlap and spec design
As the company was growing it was necessary to formalise a lot of the technology that was being used to run the business so that the business and its clients could scale efficiently and economically, however my main focus was on the security of the data and products the company offered.
As part of this and working with their clients, it was necessary to understand business requirements and how technology could facilitate these.
In general business suffer as a result of not having data in a format that allows for large amounts of the business to query it. Therefore often a business will struggle to utilise data science techniques because the data just can’t be accessed. A lot of the work with clients at this stage was maturing their data pipeline.

BAE Systems 2011 - 2014

software developer/analyst in government defence.

Software developer
Data science/analyst
Web interface design
Penetration testing, internet security and encryption techniques
Security analysis and research
Automating tasks
General tasks involved processing large amounts of data coming from multiple sources, syncing the data up so that the final dataset was discreet. Data would arrive asyncronously therefore it was necessary to minimise manual interaction. The final data could then be queried for anomalies and this could then go through further processing. The tools to do this did not exist and so everything had to be designed and built for the task at hand.

Formal Education

2007-2011

Master’s in mechanical engineering from the University of Nottingham focussing on desiging internal combusition engine simulations for my dissertation(s) whilst specialising module choices in aerodynamics.

Case Studies 2016 - present

Internet security almost invariably relies on humans not making errors. On the one hand, this can be solved by automating as much of a task as possible but this can never be the sole solution. It is therefore necessary for employees to be educated in the ways in which cyber crime is committed.
The other side of the coin is to have confidence in the underlying resources (data) that an organisation relies on. If a breach is to occur (and it is a good mind set to assume it will) how can you be sure that data is trustworthy and hasn’t been tampered with. Blockchain solutions, amongst others can be utilised to protect against data corruption.
Supply chain financing is a beast like no other. Organisations in supply chains are not willing to give up who their clients are for fear of losing them. In some cases this means that some parts of a supply chain cannot gain credit notes against an order as the risk is to great. Blockchain can allow for supply chains to be verified without releasing information about other organisations in the chain. I consulted on a system to offer just this to an organisation that is currently using the solution in China.
Micro financing, together with connectivity offer many incredible opportunities such as real time education in a one-2-many format that could not be realised without blockchain. The state transfer capability of a blockchain allows for transactions to be passed around but not completed until both parties are ready. This allows for a continual ‘discussion’ about the value of a transaction. In a sense, this is a negotiation that once a party agrees, they can not back out, however the other party can counter the negotiation at any time.
Supply chain is often considered one of the most fraudulent economies around as it relies on multiple jurisdictions working together, that and the legacy systems of pen, paper and carbon copies. Blockchain allows for real time escrow to occur, between jurisdictions and in turn minimise the fraud and hold organisations accountable.

Hire me for

Software/App/Startup development

I love a new project, I love working out the design and detail. If you’ve got an idea, or need something worked on, let me know!

Security, Software, Technology, Blockchain consulting.

Are you worried about GDPR?
Are you wondering if your tech team are making your business’ interests the priority
Are you worried you are being sold down the river on yet another tech solution?
Do you want to design a more secure work environment?
Is security getting in the way of productivity?
Do you need someone to setup you up with a seamless tech stack?
Does blockchain seem like the answer but you can’t quite see how it fits in
Do you need to improve your blockchain vocabulary purely for your business needs?
Do you need software developed, from web apps, to cloud infrastructure configuraton to microservices
Do you need a CTO but don’t want to hire one full time?
Do you need data analytics and insights or proof of concepts built around what your data might be able to tell you? (insert buzzword AI/ML here)

Talks

I give talks on

Blockchain for business
Data and how your business can benefit from it
Technology and innovation. The two go hand in hand, but how to get it right
Building an internal tech innovation team
- Often culture can stifle innovation. I can guide you to building a team designed entirely to innovate
Security in a modern GDPR world and how it all fits in with data analytics

Ask me about:

Programming

Go, Python, R, Node(js), JS, HTML, CSS, Bash, Mongo, SQL, Docker, AWS, Solidity, QML, C
Probably best to see my github or ask me directly for more detail

Teaching/Talks

I’ve been teaching technical topics for 4 years now to anyone from the (ex)head of MI5 to the (ex)head of M&S. I assume no knowledge. If you want to understand the buzz words, or want to become a professional programmer.

Tech consultant

Tech should not rule your business. It should be a facilitator.
Every tech decision should be a business decision. Non technical companies, still need websites. That comes with technical decisions to make. I aim to setup companies so that tech makes your life easier, it does not give you a headache.

Blockchain

Develop blockchain DAPPS
Invest in blockchain applications.
Most importantly, when should you use blockchain?
Do you know if its the right choice? Putting Iced Tea on the Blockchain is not the correct use of it

Education

Fast forward 2011, I graduated with a master’s in mechanical engineering. However a major part of that degree was solving problems using computers, Matlab specifically. Running simulations of engineering problems without having to actually build the thing? Now that seemed like the money shot to me.

Embedded C Programming on arm devices
Embedded sensor control