Samuel Balco
Senior Software Engineer at Category Labs
Leicester, England, United Kingdom
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolSamuel Balco is a Senior Software Engineer with a PhD in Computer Science and 11 years of experience blending research-grade formal methods with production-grade DevOps and automation. Based in Leicester, he has applied his expertise in functional programming, logic and proof theory to real-world projects—most recently improving reproducible builds and Nix-based automation for the widely used K Framework and EVM semantics. He has held Haskell-focused engineering roles and research software positions, bridging academic toolchains (Isabelle, proof calculi) with scalable build and deployment workflows. Samuel is skilled at shrinking build artifacts, introducing package tooling (kup) and integrating CI-driven tests, demonstrating a knack for developer experience as well as correctness. Colleagues rely on him for rigorous problem solving and for turning formal verification ideas into maintainable infrastructure.
11 years of coding experience
5 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science (M.Sc.), Computer Science, Master of Science (M.Sc.), Computer Science at University of OxfordDoctor of Philosophy (PhD), Computer Science, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Computer Science at University of Leicester
English, Slovak, Czech, German
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
0questions
Github Skills (24)
github-ci10
gnu-make10
nix10
scripting10
flake10
makefile10
cicd10
script10
build-automation10
sh10
shell10
githubaction-workflow10
code-profiling8
performance-analysis8
profiling8
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
runtimeverification/evm-semantics
May 2022 - Nov 2022
K Semantics of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)
Role in this project:
DevOps Engineer & Automation Engineer
DevOps Engineer & Automation EngineerContributions:23 reviews, 12 commits, 36 PRs in 6 months
Contributions summary:Samuel's contributions primarily focused on enhancing the repository's build and deployment processes. They introduced a Nix flake for dependency management and build automation, significantly improving the project's build reproducibility and portability. Further work involved adding and refining profiling scripts within the Nix environment, allowing for performance analysis. The user also fixed and adapted the build scripts to changes in the Makefile.
ethereumevmvirtual-machine
runtimeverification/k
May 2022 - Dec 2022
K Framework Tools 7.0
Role in this project:DevOps Engineer & Automation Engineer
DevOps Engineer & Automation EngineerContributions:90 reviews, 46 commits, 75 PRs in 7 months
Contributions summary:Samuel primarily focused on improving the Nix infrastructure and build processes for the K Framework. Their contributions include adding Nix flake derivations, creating a new GitHub workflow, and integrating tests into the build process. They streamlined the build artifact size and enhanced the automation by implementing submodule checks and update workflows using rv-nix-tools. Furthermore, the user introduced the `kup` tool to install and manage K framework packages, enhancing the overall developer experience.
edaframeworkdataflow-programmingtlaplus
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