Andrew Bolster Ph.D. MEng FRSS AdvDSP MBCS

Black Duck Software, Belfast

Senior R&D Manager [Black Duck Software] (2024 - Present)

Leading enterprise AI platform operations for 500+ internal R&D users, with platforms scaling to 30+ billion tokens monthly and £600k resource responsibility. Driving increasingly productionised AI workloads across the organisation, including contributing to and authoring Polaris Assist, Black Duck Assist, and Signal proof-of-concept and infrastructure work, and enabling cross-functional AI adoption across product, sales, renewal, and executive teams. Responsible for evaluating and collating measures of ROI of AI investments across both R&D and business support functions, translating platform costs and usage into measurable business outcomes. Regular strategic collaboration with CEO/CIO/CISO on data governance policy development directly shaping product contract terms and AI adoption frameworks.

• Proactively aligned organisation with NIST AI Framework, EU AI Act, and Cyber Resilience Act; worked directly with legal, strategic advisory, and customer-facing audit teams to ensure compliance and industry best practice.
• Led autonomous platform performance and team continuity through organisational transitions including the Black Duck divestment from Synopsys.
• Contributed to AI tools review board; oversaw data privacy, confidentiality, mobility, and cataloguing as organisational data governance lead.
• Delivered cross-functional AI enablement through systematic training programmes and AI maturity frameworks for 500+ internal R&D users spanning product, sales, renewal, and executive functions.
• Named Top R&D External Media Contributor; regular speaker at Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit and RSA Conference; multi-year guest lecturer at Ulster University; commentary in Forbes, InfoSecurity Magazine, and major security publications.

Senior R&D Manager [Synopsys] (2022 - 2024)

Expanded data science function across WhiteHat, Polaris, and Black Duck product lines within Synopsys’s Software Integrity Group. Drove GenAI strategy through hardware and software infrastructure investment decisions, establishing a production LLM Gateway and shared Databricks ecosystem serving multiple product teams, with accountability for tracking and demonstrating ROI of AI investments across R&D and business support activities. Led internal Knowledge Engineering initiatives and deployed production-grade LLM-based features. Served as primary organisation-wide stakeholder and approver for all GenAI projects. Authored Data Mobility Standard and Data Governance policies as a shared governance regime across formerly independent products. Managed international collaborations with subject matter experts across engineering, security research, and product domains. Contributed to due diligence and M&A activities at both ends of the Synopsys tenure: the acquisition of WhiteHat from NTT and the subsequent Black Duck divestment from Synopsys.

Data Science Team Lead / Engineering Manager [WhiteHat / NTT Application Security] (2019 - 2022)

Established and grew the data science capability within a mature Dynamic Application Security Testing organisation through the WhiteHat-to-NTT acquisition, maintaining delivery continuity and team performance throughout. Built a common data ontology and taxonomies for abstract AppSec workflows across a multi-tool environment, providing a unified analytical layer across disparate product data. Delivered production-grade ML pipelines for automated vulnerability triage, dynamic payload generation, churn modelling, security metric evaluation, and NLP-based customer feedback analysis, scaling to tens of millions of findings across more than a million monthly scan events. Established internal ML engineering and developer enablement best practices. Additionally served as UK Home Office Immigration Liaison, UK R&D Tax Credit submission coordinator, and sat on the UK Culture committee.

BSides Belfast CIC, Belfast, UK

Treasurer (Voluntary 2022 - Present)

BSides Belfast is a volunteer-run community conference for cybersecurity professionals, practitioners, and enthusiasts across Northern Ireland, typically held annually in September. As part of the globally recognised Security BSides framework, it connects the local information security community with a network of over 750 BSides chapters worldwide across 60 countries.

Led sponsorship relations and financial governance for the conference, managing annual budgeting, vendor relationships, and corporate partnership development. Coordinated multi-track conference logistics hosting 200+ attendees including security professionals, researchers, and students while maintaining the community-focused, non-commercial mission.

Collaborated with organizing committee to establish BSides Belfast as Northern Ireland’s premier community-driven information security event, attracting international speakers and fostering regional cybersecurity networking, upskilling, and education in an environment free from commercial incentives.

Farset Labs, Belfast, UK

Founder/Director/Treasurer (Voluntary 2011 - 2024)

Created the Farset Labs hackerspace in response to a demonstrated need for an independent, non-profit, charitable community of technology innovators, providing them a open space and shared resources to experiment, explore, and grow themselves, their projects, and relationships with local and global business.

Built Farset Labs as a hub for the technology community in Belfast and Northern Ireland as a whole, ensuring that the organisation remains agile and true to its core values.

Currently Farset Labs stands as a valued part of the technology, entrepreneurship, and STEM outreach communities, with collaborations with academia, government, and the private sector across Northern Ireland

Alert Logic, Belfast

Data Scientist (2018 - 2019)

Using advanced data mining and machine learning to analyse potential hacking and malware attacks on cloud infrastructure, improving coverage, value-assessment, and process control both internally and to customers.

Architected and built serverless TB-scale incident ETL and analysis platform, tracking both Research KPI’s, customer impacts for remediation, and overall operational monitoring.

Developed dynamic customer segmentation methodologies, and ML derived Content Signature validation/vectorisation techniques.

Generated internal software development, deployment, and scaling best practices in line with industry and academic state of art.

Sensum Co, Belfast

Data Scientist (2016 - 2018)

Sensum Co is a leading emotional analytics start-up engaged with global brands in the assessment of real-time audience/participant engagement and emotionality.

Primary responsibilities in data analysis and investigation, as well as the design, development and testing of of micro services based cloud API/SDK architecture for the real time collation and analysis of mixed modality biometric and context data.

Secondary responsibilities in the architecture of secure data services architecture, PII management, data visualisation, ingress, ETL, as well as on-site, cloud, and mobile data analysis and connectivity architecture.

TOM Ltd, Belfast / Liverpool, UK

Associate / SpriteGuard Product Manager / Director of Research and Development (PT 2012 - 2016)

Directed development and refinement of advanced wireless security systems for the public hotspot and payments services industries; product structure and marketing, including stakeholder discussion and trade show representation.

Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Portsdown West, UK

Analyst (2013)

Coordinated research between Information Management and Naval Systems departments to synthesize a coordinated, data driven approach towards maritime autonomy and its potential applications.

Culminated in significant contribution to a Five-Eyes Autonomy Exchange project.