Richard Lawson
Distinguished Engineer at CoLinx IT
South Carolina, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolRichard Lawson is a Distinguished Engineer with 12 years of software experience designing and delivering robust on-premise and AWS cloud systems, currently leading technical strategy at CoLinx IT. He blends hands-on backend development (Java, Lua, LLM integrations) with architecture and people leadership, having moved from Senior Director and CTO roles to senior engineering leadership. A clear communicator across technical and executive audiences, he thrives both building teams and shipping code — notable open-source contributions include hardening SQL Explorer’s query security and improving WebGoat’s UX. Based in South Carolina, he brings a practical systems mindset rooted in engineering fundamentals (BS Chemical Engineering, MS Environmental Engineering) and an unexpected hobbyist streak in retrocomputing that feeds his curiosity for low-level and legacy behaviors.
12 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science (M.S.) Environmental Engineering, Master of Science (M.S.) Environmental Engineering at Clemson UniversityBachelor of Science (BS) Chemical Engineering, Bachelor of Science (BS) Chemical Engineering at University of South Carolina
English
Github Skills (28)
python10
django10
java10
javas10
sql10
reporting-services10
api-design9
javascript9
authentication9
analytics9
security9
user-authentication9
bootstra8
rest-api8
html8
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
WebGoat/WebGoat-Legacy
May 2014 - Sep 2014
Legacy WebGoat 6.0 - Deliberately insecure JavaEE application
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:29 commits, 1 push in 4 months
Contributions summary:Richard contributed to the front-end and back-end aspects of the "WebGoat" application. They added tooltips to navigation buttons and modified the logout menu to display user information, indicating work on UI and user authentication. Furthermore, the user fixed a mailto link and updated the login/logout page styles to align with a new design, showing a focus on improving the user interface and experience. Additionally, the user made changes to the lesson menu.
javaeewebgoat
explorerhq/sql-explorer
Oct 2022 - Jan 2023
SQL reporting that Just Works. Fast, simple, and confusion-free. Write and share queries in a delightful SQL editor, with AI assistance.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 review, 11 commits, 12 PRs in 3 months
Contributions summary:Richard's primary contributions focused on enhancing the security, functionality, and documentation of the SQL Explorer application. This included fixing a security vulnerability in the SQL blacklist related to the 'INSERT' keyword and addressing a documentation issue. The user also implemented a feature to prevent the execution of parameterized queries when viewing the query and made significant improvements to the codebase by changing the SQL blacklist functionality from regex to sqlparse. Further contributions included adding support for favorite queries and implementing more S3 providers.
aisqlanalyticsdjango-applicationreporting
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