Christopher Smowton
Senior Software Engineer - CodeQL Language Analysis at GitHub
Greater Cambridge Area United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolChristopher Smowton is a senior software engineer with 14 years' experience specializing in compilers, static analysis and developer tooling, currently driving CodeQL language analysis at GitHub from Oxford. He has deep hands-on expertise in C/C++ and Java, contributing to prominent formal-tools projects such as the CBMC family (including work on Java bytecode conversion and scope handling) and building fuzzing and test-generation tooling at Diffblue. His background spans high-performance scientific computing and security-focused model checking, combining research-grade rigor (PhD, Cambridge) with production-quality engineering. Known for improving correctness and reliability in core analysis engines, he pairs textbook analyses with bleeding-edge techniques to ship practical, auditable tools. An uncommon thread through his career is translating research prototypes into maintainable, scalable tooling used by large teams and open-source communities.
14 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
BA, Computer Science, BA, Computer Science at University of Cambridge
Stackoverflow
2,440reputation
94kreached
4answers
2questions
ios
top-5%
Github Skills (19)
java10
javas10
automated-tests10
ios9
cprogramming-language8
c-language8
algorithm7
algorithms7
debugging7
debug7
data-structure7
data-structures7
corebluetooth6
maven6
optimization6
Programming languages (15)
Github contributions (5)
diffblue/cbmc
Jun 2016 - May 2021
C Bounded Model Checker
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Test Automation Engineer
Back-end Developer & Test Automation EngineerContributions:8 reviews, 1208 commits, 805 PRs in 4 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Christopher contributed to the Java-based project "C Bounded Model Checker," primarily focused on improving the codebase by implementing enhancements and bug fixes related to the Java bytecode conversion process. They implemented functionality for discovering and handling lexical scopes for anonymous variables, adding tests to demonstrate the correct handling of these new features. They also fixed existing issues, such as an address space size limit test and array boundary checks, thereby improving the correctness and reliability of the project. The user demonstrated proficiency in code quality by contributing towards improvements in the removal of virtual functions.
model-checkermodel-checkingcppcheckertla
smowton/codeql
Feb 2021 - Dec 2022
CodeQL: the libraries and queries that power security researchers around the world, as well as code scanning in GitHub Advanced Security (code scanning), LGTM.com, and LGTM Enterprise
Contributions:2 reviews, 247 commits, 4 PRs in 1 year 10 months
enterprisegithub-advanced-securitysecurity-toolslgtmsecurity-researchers
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