Alexander Collins

OneTrust Backend Software Engineer Mar 2022 - Aug 2022
The Market-Defining Leader for Trust Intelligence.

As part of the acquisition, we integrated AppSecTests technology as a 'OneTrust cloud' SaaS. This required learning their ecosystem (Kafka, Azure, Spring, Angular) and delivering within 5 months.

• Sped up integration by helping identify the core value of AppSecTest's technology (archiving the rest).
• Proactively looked for different OneTrust offerings our product could integrate with and provide value to.
• Contributed a rough technical design for OneTrust's envisioned cloud service model.
• Provided immediate value to the service by developing system to translate results into a 'Google Play Data Safety' document, which users could use to submit their apps for Play Store approval.

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AppSecTest Full-Stack Software Engineer Nov 2017 - Mar 2022
Analysing of third-party data collection behaviours.

One of two developers for 4-5 years in a 5-man startup. We created a product to disassemble & analyse Android apps (APKs) for security, legal and privacy compliance issues and successfully made an exit, selling the technology & team to OneTrust.

• One of the key decision makers driving the direction of the product, transparent communication was key to this.
• Worked on tight deadlines (and budgets). This experience really taught me the impact, cost and value of how I use my time, quick & assertive decision making was often paramount to success.
• As one of the co-developers of the core static analysis engine, it was my responsibility to translate the technical value of the technology into a digestible sales pitch for our business.
• Enabled cloud deployments by developing a network I/O layer to the solution, which was a key value to the its success.
• Responsible for showcasing the value of data the product could collect by developing & maintaining the frontend and backend server/services of our webapp sales demo.
  • This was used to pitch our technology for our acquisition.
  • I stepped up to own this responsibility after our team struggled to get resource for a full-stack developer.
• I started working for the company during my final student year and still achieved a First-Class Honours.

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Intel Technical Marketing Engineer Jul 2016 - Aug 2017

A 14-month internship in the Internet of Things (IoT) team.

• Led a project researching & showcasing LoRa(WAN). This research went on to form my dissertation.
• Successfully handed over my role to the successor intern. Managed & trained them for 2 months and was able to teach them a lot in a short space of time. Really enjoyed sharing knowledge like this.
• Given sole responsibility for the IoT RFID demo in Intel's front-door booth at 2017 HPE Discover London
• Developed & maintained fullstack IoT demos & prototypes. Became an internal go-to contact for my team.
• Learnt & developed fullstack IoT solutions: MCUs & SoC's, data science, backend, frontend.
• Educated groups of school children, demonstrated prototypes to academic groups, plugged Intel's solution value-add to business leaders in both the London and Swindon Intel offices.
• Collaborated with teams outside of development (e.g. Marketing), provided better insight for solutions.

University of the West of England (UWE) BSc (Hons), Computer Science 2014 - 2018

A 4-year sandwich course (includes a year of internship). Achieved a First-Class Honours.

• Awarded the Dean Award for Academic Excellence in my first and final years.
  • For achieving an overall average mark of 75%+ across all modules.
• Final year dissertation produced a LoRaWAN C library and extensible C++ framework to write drivers for seeedstudio Grove sensor devices in a couple of lines. This was demonstrated on a custom ARM board.
  • Research on the LoRa technology went down to the PHY layer. Really enjoyed the research.
  • Bundled as a wireless sensor MCU SDK, with intention to build a LoRaWAN IoT network across campus.
• Developed a RFC4330-compliant SNTP server & client when learning TCP/IP in a networking & OS course.
• Designed a single-wire communication protocol and implemented it on a BBC microbit MCU.
• Learning & developing a genetic (natural selection) algorithm to find data patterns.