Silas Davis

cv@silasdavis.net silasdavis LinkedIn

Summary

VP of Engineering at Inco Network and former lead maintainer of Hyperledger Burrow. Software engineer and technical architect with a strong mathematical background, extensive Go experience, and particular expertise in blockchain, confidential computing, and smart contract systems.

Earlier work included language modelling and neural network training pipelines at SwiftKey, and health informatics at Concentra.

Able to talk to people. Experience in managing small, nimble engineering teams.

Experience

VP of Engineering - Inco

April 2025 - Present

  • Co-designed the confidential computing architecture behind Inco Lightning and Inco Shield, using Intel TDX/SGX and on-chain remote attestation
  • Co-architected Inco Lightning, a production Go service handling real funds on mainnet, and wrote roughly 30% of its core Go code
  • Lead architect of Inco Shield, our shielded pool; built the first version of its enclave-based coprocessor in TypeScript and Effect
  • Led the design of a walk-away escape hatch, allowing users to retrieve funds without relying on Inco’s continued operation
  • Designed an account abstraction layer to enable private trading features and accommodate future account abstraction standards
  • Migrated services from individual AWS servers and SSH-based deployments to Kubernetes on GKE, with IAM integration and infrastructure as code in Pulumi
  • Hiring, managing and mentoring engineers; team diplomacy and off-sites to improve cohesion, enjoyment and effectiveness
  • Edited and maintained protocol documentation, including taking it through audit

Protocol Engineer - Inco

May 2024 - April 2025

  • Worked on a confidential computing protocol using fully homomorphic encryption and trusted execution environments

Chief Technology Officer - Monax

March 2016 - April 2024

  • Led a team of up to 14 engineers and product managers, while remaining hands-on in architecture and implementation
  • Increased engineering team velocity by resolving architectural bottlenecks, speeding up tests, and using code generation to prevent drift between systems
  • Re-architected Hyperledger Burrow, an open-source blockchain written in Go, and served as lead maintainer
  • Launched and operated Agreements Network through multiple testnets and an early mainnet, including hands-on production incident response
  • Designed and implemented Hoard, an encrypted, content-addressed object store in Go with a gRPC API and pluggable storage backends
  • Set up and operated our Kubernetes infrastructure on GKE
  • Supported our pivot to a SaaS product by combining a decentralised core with a proprietary API and front end
  • Initiated commercial engagements in crowdfunding, supply chain and cryptocurrency, including several paying pilots
  • Performed and supervised original applied research in blockchain and smart contracts
  • Sat on the industry advisory board for the academic research project on blockchain-based voting

Software Engineer - SwiftKey

February 2013 - March 2016

  • Built and shipped Go services for data pipelines, central authentication and high-volume telemetry as part of SwiftKey’s platform team, supporting a product that grew to 100M users
  • Devised a binary language-model exchange format and implemented neural network training pipelines

Lead Healthcare Developer - Concentra Consulting

April 2012 - February 2013

  • Combined software development with client-facing technical consulting
  • Researched open standards and new legislation
  • Tendered for NHS and private contracts

Developer - Concentra Consulting

October 2010 - April 2012

  • Joined as a graduate and was given responsibility for our flagship cancer ward simulation software

Education

University of Cambridge

2009 - 2010

Part II in Pure Mathematics (non-degree study)

University of Edinburgh

2004 - 2009

Master of Physics in Mathematical Physics (MPhys) (1st Class)

Interests and skills

Technologies

  • Languages: Go, TypeScript, C#, Java, Scala, Clojure, Solidity, Ruby, Python, Haskell, RDFS, F#, Rust (in descending order of competence)
  • Frameworks and tools: Kubernetes, React, Node, Containers (OCI), WASM, Linux, gRPC/Protobuf
  • Long-time Linux user and tinkerer, currently on NixOS; operated Kubernetes on GKE and self-managed k3s

Distributed systems

  • Studied and implemented classic algorithms for consensus, reliable transport, and crash detection
  • Practical experience of building a blockchain with Tendermint in the form of Burrow
  • Extensive experience with cloud orchestration systems (Kubernetes, Mesos)

Open source

  • Successfully proposed Hyperledger Burrow into Hyperledger incubation
  • Hyperledger Technical Steering Committee member (September 2018 - August 2019), elected by an annual popular vote of the Hyperledger membership
  • Oversaw technical decision making and voted on proposals
  • Stood up for smaller projects and contributors

Speaking

  • Spoke at various Hyperledger conferences and ran workshops
  • Sat as a panellist at a UCLA blockchain event and Turing fest in Edinburgh
  • Appeared on the ‘Babbling Blockchain’ podcast

Blockchain and smart contracts

  • Active interest in crypto-systems and consensus research participating in various groups and reading papers
  • Interest in constrained languages for smart contracts (domain-specific, functional, non-Turing-complete)

Mathematics and cryptography

  • Particular interest in mathematical logic, graph theory, algorithms, and topology
  • Knowledge of languages, grammars, and logic

Machine learning

  • Built topic models using ‘classical’ methods (e.g. LDA, Bayesian) for data insights work

Recreation

  • Swimming, running, cycling
  • Wrestling, Judo, BJJ
  • Learning Spanish
  • Free-form interpretative dance, crochet, PADI-qualified diver

Languages

  • English - native
  • Spanish - B1/B2