Simon Walker
Senior Software Engineer at LocalStack
United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolSimon Walker is a Senior Software Engineer with 16 years of experience blending backend development, QA, and test automation, currently contributing to LocalStack to improve local AWS Lambda and messaging behaviors. With a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Warwick, he brings strong analytical rigor and a researcher's discipline to engineering problems, from data quality and robotics-focused research roles to production cloud tooling. He has a track record of hardening test infrastructure—adding PyTest support to vim-test and refining Lambda env var limits and SQS fixtures in LocalStack—demonstrating an emphasis on reliability and end-to-end validation. Fast-learning and improvement-driven, he has taken on technical leadership and squad lead responsibilities while remaining hands-on in debugging, refactoring, and evolving developer-facing systems.
16 years of coding experience
5 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Astrophysics, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Astrophysics at University of Warwick
English
Github Skills (19)
pytest10
python10
amazon-sqs10
aws-ses10
testing10
aws-sqs-fifo10
test-runner10
lambdas10
aws10
lambda10
amazon-ses10
cloud-infrastructure9
vim9
cloud-services9
apidoc8
Programming languages (22)
Github contributions (5)
localstack/localstack
Sep 2022 - Jan 2023
💻 A fully functional local AWS cloud stack. Develop and test your cloud & Serverless apps offline
Role in this project:
Backend Developer & QA Engineer
Backend Developer & QA EngineerContributions:359 reviews, 21 commits, 324 PRs in 4 months
Contributions summary:Simon primarily focused on enhancing the AWS Lambda functionalities within the LocalStack framework. Their contributions include implementing size limits for Lambda environment variables and refactoring SQS message fixtures, indicating a focus on testing and validation of AWS services. Furthermore, the user fixed an issue related to the execution of Python init scripts and incorporated error handling, showcasing their dedication to improving service stability and reliability, while also working on ses related sns events to test end to end the correct message delivery.
serverless-cloudpythonaws-cloudtestingserverless
vim-test/vim-test
Dec 2014 - Dec 2014
Run your tests at the speed of thought
Role in this project:QA Engineer / Test Automation Engineer
QA Engineer / Test Automation EngineerContributions:6 commits in 3 days
Contributions summary:Simon primarily focused on implementing and improving the testing infrastructure for the `vim-test` repository. They added support for the PyTest testing framework, incorporating it as a runner option alongside Nose. The user modified existing test suites, adapting them to the PyTest calling conventions, and expanded the testing capabilities. Further refinements addressed handling of test execution and variable configuration.
speedvimtestingthoughttest-runner
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