David Imolai
DevSecOps · Linux, CI/CD and reproducible infrastructure
I build and operate Linux services, automate software delivery and work on authentication and verified updates. My project work combines NixOS and Podman deployments with Kubernetes, application testing and observability.
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.
- Designed and optimised the Docker attackbox setup, including tool installation, container lifecycle management and connectivity to challenge environments.
- Developed and validated the PicoCTF and OverTheWire benchmark integrations for HackSynth's 200-challenge evaluation suite: 120 PicoCTF and 80 OverTheWire tasks.
- Implemented substantial parts of HackSynth in Python, connecting command planning, tool execution and observation summarisation into an autonomous penetration-testing loop.
Projects
A cooking assistant with a Kotlin/Spring backend, Python AI services, and a deployment and observability stack built for a TUM DevOps course.
- Built container and CI/CD workflows and declarative Kubernetes deployment manifests.
- Added Prometheus metrics, Grafana dashboards, Alloy/Loki logs and Tempo tracing across services.
- Implemented the Kotlin/Spring API, user authentication, recipe storage and endpoint tests.
A Fabric mod connecting our Wynncraft guild to Discord, with account verification, guild-management tools, verified updates and a NixOS-hosted backend.
- 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.
- Implemented JAR attestation verification and maintained automated GitHub/Modrinth releases and JUnit tests.
- Added WebAuthn passkey login and PKCE support to the guild's Next.js web application.
A Godot game built with two teammates for the Software Technology course, accepted into its Hall of Fame.
- Built GitLab CI/CD for automated tests, coverage, documentation and Linux/Windows releases.
Leadership
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.
Competitions
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 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'.
Conferences and research awards
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.
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.
- Erasmus+ exchange at the Technical University of Munich, April–September 2026, studying in an international environment and using German in everyday university life.
Skills
- Linux System Administration
- NixOS
- Nix Flakes and Reproducible Environments
- Infrastructure as Code
- Docker and Docker Compose
- Kubernetes
- CI/CD Pipeline Design
- Release Signing and Attestation Verification
- Authentication and Session Management
- Database Backups and Recovery
- Automated Testing
- Static Analysis and Type Checking
- Observability
- Prometheus
- Grafana Dashboards and Alerting
- Loki and Log Collection
- Distributed Tracing and Grafana Tempo
Programming and markup
- Python
- Bash and Shell Scripting
- Nix
- Kotlin
- Java
- SQL
Languages
- Hungarian (Native)
- English (C2)
- German (C1)