Hi, I’m Sam - a security consultant at Pentest Partners, based in North West England. I hack anything that moves, blinks or makes a noise: OT, embedded and hardware. AKA Weird stuff.

Career Timeline (a not-CV)

Education · [anon-2014]

I studied Physics at Leeds, I liked solving problems and the breadth of the course, and gravitated towards astrophysics, solid state and quantum in particular. My masters year included some very interesting biophysics research and a PhD was appealing, but the prospect of building things and having tangible results led me to Engineering and I joined the industry in 2014.

BAE Systems - Security Engineer · [2014-2020]

Where I really got started. I joined on the graduate scheme and, after flirting with some of the mechanical engineering work, settled into an electrical team that felt like a small business inside a large company, full of excellent people.

I started in engineering and fell fairly quickly into security, which I had to self-teach with the help of my experienced team lead. I learnt to assess and manage risk, threat model, design systems with security in mind, and build and administer IT and OT systems. I picked up forensics and incident response, testing and system hardening along the way, and later added formal SANS certifications as the team took on more. I also picked up the habit of pulling things apart, and occasionally putting them back together.

Eventually I wanted broader exposure across industries, which pulled me towards consulting.

Jacobs - OT Cyber Consultant · [2020-2021]

This was my move into consulting, still focused on OT, across rail, utilities, manufacturing, automotive and aerospace. Being surrounded by highly technical and experienced consultants taught me a lot!

Fast-paced asset discovery work taught me a new level of patience with technical documentation, and bespoke threat modelling projects showed me how different industries handle secure-by-design and security early in a project’s life.

This was also my first exposure to large-scale cloud in critical infrastructure, which let me revisit security architecture and see how early decisions make things cheaper and easier to secure later.

Thales - ICS Security Engineer · [2021-2022]

After a great start to consulting, I wanted more hands-on technical work, which fit Thales and their OT security assessment practice nicely.

The team was a great spread of highly technical people from defence, CNI, testing and research backgrounds. I led technical OT assessments, built up my OT monitoring skills, and worked more against IEC 62443 and its NIST and NIS relatives.

I carried my threat modelling into automotive (my first run-in with ISO 21434), took more of a role in business development, and eventually got into building and delivering security training for a very technical and critical audience… engineers.

Pen Test Partners - Managing Hardware Security Consultant · [2022-present]

The hardware team at PTP has been, and still is, fantastic. I’ve tested consumer and industrial IoT end to end, EV chargers, telemetry and measurement kit, medical devices, access control systems and plenty of other odd hardware. All the while surrounded by the most obscure and brilliant hackers.

I’ve also spent a lot of time on OT: manufacturing, critical national infrastructure, transport and maritime among them. Blending our OT and hardware practice let me get into bench testing the kit itself, which I think is genuinely valuable for everyone involved (some vendors may disagree, but we all have to eat our vegetables).

I’ve hacked field devices and sensors, outstations, RTUs and gateways, soft PLCs, SCADA, signalling kit, building management systems, aircraft EFBs. If it moves, blinks or makes a noise on a plant floor, we’ve probably had it open on a bench. I’ve found vulnerabilities and run coordinated disclosure alongside clients.

Alongside that I’ve kept a base skillset in IT, web and cloud testing, both through standard engagements and OT-adjacent work. I’ve turned up interesting issues in Active Directory environments, financial applications (compiled apps are a personal favourite), retail apps, ordinary office estates and wireless environments.

I’ve used my OT monitoring background to build our assessment offering for highly sensitive environments, and my threat modelling experience to support a set of service lines: threat modelling products, helping businesses threat model their own products, and training clients to do it themselves.

In 2026, I got to travel to DEFCON 34 to present some research into OPTO22 Programmable Automation Controllers, demonstrating our discovery script and techniques to bridge separate OT security zones. We also presented the PTP Industrial Cocktail Systems (ICS-es), which were lovingly built by me and the inimitable Adam Bromiley. It was great to be involved in the ICS Village, what a great group of people! You can read more here.

Find me elsewhere

Writing at Pen Test Partners

A lot of my current writing lives off-site - I keep a curated list here: Writing elsewhere »

Everything here is my own - my views, my mistakes - and doesn’t represent the views of my employer or anyone else.