David Imolai
Software engineer, Researcher · Cybersecurity, DevOps, and AI
All my work, education, projects, competitions, awards, publications and skills.
Work experience
Research Fellow
Building LLM-based agents for autonomous penetration testing at ELTE's AI Research Group, with a focus on Python agent infrastructure, CTF benchmarks and containerised tool execution.
- Implemented substantial parts of HackSynth in Python, connecting command planning, tool execution and observation summarisation into an autonomous penetration-testing loop.
- Developed and validated the PicoCTF and OverTheWire benchmark integrations for HackSynth's 200-challenge evaluation suite: 120 PicoCTF and 80 OverTheWire tasks.
- Designed and optimised the Docker attackbox setup, including tool installation, container lifecycle management and connectivity to challenge environments.
- Presented research at student conferences and, with my research partner, at the LLAIS workshop within ECAI 2025 in Bologna, explaining the systems and findings to an international audience.
Education
BSc in Computer Science
- Member of the John von Neumann Honors Program, a selective program for high-achieving students in computer science and mathematics.
- Member of Eötvös József College for Advanced Studies, participating in its academic community and student research conferences.
- Studied algorithms and data structures, discrete mathematics, mathematical analysis, operating systems and computer networks.
- Developed an understanding of functional and object-oriented programming, alongside low-level systems concepts and practical software development.
- Built Safarimacik, a Godot/C# game with an automated testing and release pipeline; the project was accepted into the Software Technology course's Hall of Fame.
- Erasmus+ exchange at the Technical University of Munich, April–September 2026, studying in an international environment and using German in everyday university life.
- Built the Kotlin/Spring backend for a three-person DevOps course project at TUM, with API contracts, PostgreSQL integration, Kubernetes deployment and monitoring. Finished the course with a grade of 1.7 (1.0 is best).
- Extended my security studies at TUM with rootkits and hardware security, alongside DevOps and scientific writing.
Publications
- Worked on crypto benchmark preparation and validation, and LLM infrastructure design and implementation.
- Presented the work to an international audience at the LLAIS workshop within ECAI 2025.
- Designed and implemented large parts of the autonomous penetration-testing agent in python.
- Worked on the PicoCTF and OverTheWire benchmark implementations, after solving many of the challenges by hand.
- Designed, implemented, and optimized the Docker attackbox setup.
Leadership
Project owner for HackSynth in HSUP 2024/25: led technical direction and coordination, developed the business plan with a multidisciplinary team, and pitched at Demo Day.
Captain of the Hungarian CyberSecurity Team, coordinating communication and cooperation among players, coordinating with coaches and watchdogs, while continuing to solve challenges, manage infrastructure, etc. Representing Hungary at ECSC every year since 2022, and captaining the team since 2024.
Projects
A cooking assistant with a Kotlin/Spring backend, Python AI services, and a deployment and observability stack built for a TUM DevOps course.
- Implemented the Kotlin/Spring API, user authentication, recipe storage and endpoint tests.
- Built container and CI/CD workflows and declarative Kubernetes deployment manifests.
- Added Prometheus metrics, Grafana dashboards, Alloy/Loki logs and Tempo tracing across services.
A Fabric mod connecting our Wynncraft guild to Discord, with account verification, guild-management tools, verified updates and a NixOS-hosted backend.
- Developed authentication, guild-log synchronisation and reward reconciliation for a Java Minecraft mod.
- Implemented JAR attestation verification and maintained automated GitHub/Modrinth releases and JUnit tests.
- Maintained a NixOS deployment with Podman services, PostgreSQL, reverse proxying, encrypted secrets and scheduled database backups.
- Act as the community's primary contact for infrastructure failures, diagnosing problems and restoring services when something breaks.
- Added WebAuthn passkey login and PKCE support to the guild's Next.js web application.
Modernising a LaTeX package for drawing UML diagrams with TikZ, because I would rather draw them inside LaTeX than in an external tool.
- Extended TikZ-UML with object diagrams, enumerations, operation modifiers and rendering fixes.
- Rebuilt the English manual and worked examples, with reproducible release builds; published version 1.0.0 on CTAN.
A Godot game built with two teammates for the Software Technology course, accepted into its Hall of Fame.
- Developed a Godot/C# safari-management game with two teammates.
- Built GitLab CI/CD for automated tests, coverage, documentation and Linux/Windows releases.
Honours and awards
Awarded for outstanding academic and professional achievement, for the third consecutive academic year (2024/25, 2025/26 and 2026/27).
Faculty distinction for academic and scientific work, received for the second consecutive year.
Erasmus+ scholarship for a study semester at the Technical University of Munich, April–September 2026.
Recognition for outstanding student innovation in the Hungarian Startup University Program. Awarded to the HackSynth team at ELTE's Innovation Days.
Awarded for outstanding academic and professional achievement. The second of three consecutive academic-year awards, following 2024/25 and preceding 2026/27.
Faculty distinction for outstanding academic and scientific work.
Awarded for outstanding academic and professional achievement.
Certificates
English C2 Proficiency, Grade A, with an overall Cambridge English Scale score of 223.
German B2 certificate, graded Gut (good), with 278.5 of 330 points.
Conferences and research awards
Third place in the Informatics section for "Improving LLM Agents with Reinforcement Learning on Cryptographic CTF Challenges".
Presented "Improving LLM Agents with Reinforcement Learning on Cryptographic CTF Challenges", co-authored with Lajos Muzsai and András Lukács. Accepted as a full presentation at the LLAIS workshop, held within ECAI.
Spoke about IT security competitions alongside two other panelists, discussing what participants gain from them and where the competition ecosystem could improve.
First place in the Cybersecurity session of the Informatics section, jointly with Lajos Muzsai, for HackSynth. Supervised by András Lukács; presented at BME during the 23–25 April conference.
Lajos Muzsai and I presented HackSynth at the college's 4–5 April student conference, explaining the planner–summariser loop and its evaluation framework.
Presented HackSynth to the jury together with my research partner; first place for our research.
Competitions
Represented Hungary as team captain for the third consecutive year. We finished 15th among the competing countries excluding guest teams, and 17th overall out of 42 teams. The competition combined jeopardy challenges with an attack/defence round, where teams had to keep their own services running while exploiting the others'.
4th of 54 competitors in the senior category; 13th of 172 overall. The individual competition ran on 23–26 April.
Represented Hungary as team captain, coordinating cooperation and communication between players while also solving challenges. We placed 13th in the jeopardy round and 21st of 34 countries in the official final standings.
8th in the senior category and 12th overall in the individual competition, held on 24–27 April.
Team result with the Hungarian Cyber Security Team, out of 8,130 teams. We solved all 77 challenges and scored 57,025 points during the 21–26 March competition.
My first ECSC as captain of the Hungarian team, combining team coordination with solving challenges. Hungary finished 26th of 31 countries in the official final standings.
Fourth place in the Junior category of this national CTF competition.
Team ELTE finished 42nd out of 955 teams, solving 12 of 22 challenges for 3,525 points during the 8–10 December competition.
My second year representing Hungary at ECSC as a team member. Hungary finished 24th of 28 countries in the official final standings.
Third place in the Junior category of this national CTF competition.
My first ECSC, representing Hungary after placing third in the junior category of the national qualifier. Hungary finished 21st of 28 countries in the official final standings.
Third place in the Junior category of this national CTF competition.
Skills
- Large Language Models
- Artificial Intelligence
- Research Methods
- Scientific Writing
- Cybersecurity
- Penetration Testing
- Capture The Flag (CTF)
- Rootkits
- Hardware Security
- Authentication and Session Management
- Release Signing and Attestation Verification
- Linux
- Linux System Administration
- NixOS
- Nix Flakes and Reproducible Environments
- DevOps
- Infrastructure as Code
- Docker and Docker Compose
- Kubernetes
- CI/CD Pipeline Design
- Git
- Network Engineering
- Database Backups and Recovery
- Observability
- Prometheus
- Grafana Dashboards and Alerting
- Loki and Log Collection
- Distributed Tracing and Grafana Tempo
- Backend Development
- REST API Design
- WebSocket Protocols and Reconnection Handling
- Asynchronous Programming
- PostgreSQL
- React and Next.js
- Astro and Static Site Generation
- Automated Testing
- JUnit
- pytest and Async Testing
- Static Analysis and Type Checking
- Test Coverage and CI Reporting
- Godot and Game Development
- UML and Software Modelling
- TikZ and PGF
- Operating Systems
- Functional Programming
- Object-Oriented Programming
- Low-Level Programming
- Small-Team Management
- Team Leadership
- Project Management
- Project Ownership
- Community Development
- Business Development
- Public Speaking
- Technical Presentations
- Intercultural Collaboration
- Prioritisation Under Time Pressure
- Analytical Problem Solving
Programming and markup
- LaTeX
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- Haskell
- Python
- C
- C++
- C#
- HTML
- CSS
- PHP
- Java
- Kotlin
- Nix
- Bash and Shell Scripting
- SQL
- YAML
- JSON
- Markdown
- SVG
- Make
Languages
- Hungarian (Native)
- English (C2)
- German (C1)