OUR TEAM
The minds behind DarkSkope
Alan Gardner
Executive Chairman
Alan is Chairman of the Board at DarkSkope, providing strategic governance and oversight as the company helps organisations anticipate, withstand and adapt to disruption in an increasingly complex and hostile world.
He brings extensive experience across global high-pressure operations, crisis management, security, organisational resilience and board-level leadership.
His career includes senior roles with the UK Cabinet Office Emergency Planning College, the Emergency Planning Society and national resilience projects, alongside lecturing at Queen’s University Belfast and speaking at the Royal United Services Institute.
Neil McElhinney
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Neil leads the company’s mission to help organisations find the truth in data and make defensible decisions when the consequences are real.
A seasoned business leader with over 25 years’ experience across cyber security, data, intelligence and commercial delivery, Neil brings the commercial acumen, operational discipline and strategic focus needed to fuel DarkSkope’s growth.
He has led complex projects across global markets, working with security-sensitive clients to uncover hidden risk, strengthen resilience and turn fragmented information into trusted operational intelligence.
As CEO, Neil is focused on scaling DarkSkope as a trusted intelligence partner for organisations operating in complex, high-consequence environments.
Chris Hilton
Chief Product Officer (CPO)
At DarkSkope, Chris drives product strategy and innovation across the company’s portfolio. With 15 years of experience in national security and law enforcement, he has led the delivery of multiple intelligence-focused products and innovations designed to meet mission-critical needs.
Chris has a proven track record in building and scaling technology businesses. He previously co-founded a data platform for UK law enforcement and successfully grew an analytics solution to achieve significant revenue growth.
Jay Hawkins
Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Jay helps organisations make confident decisions in complex, data-intensive environments by turning fragmented information into clear, reliable intelligence.
As CTO at DarkSkope, he leads the design and delivery of systems that sit at the core of decision-making — from large-scale data platforms and entity intelligence to risk and screening solutions. His work focuses on unifying disparate data, improving signal quality, and ensuring systems perform under real-world conditions where accuracy, speed, and trust are critical.
He has deep hands-on experience building and scaling technology in high-stakes domains, working across data engineering, distributed systems, and intelligence platforms. His background spans environments where systems must operate at scale, handle ambiguity, and support decisions with real consequences.
Jay is particularly interested in how technical architecture and data design directly shape the quality of downstream decisions – and in building systems that surface meaningful signal early, rather than overwhelming users with noise.
Adi Kolnati
Head of Software Engineering
Aditya helps organisations turn ambiguous product ideas into dependable, production-grade systems that teams and customers can rely on day after day.
As Head of Engineering at DarkSkope, he leads the engineering organisation responsible for the design, delivery and ongoing operation of the platforms behind the company's intelligence and screening products. His focus is on translating product intent into clean architecture and well-engineered services -- ensuring the work that reaches users is fast, observable, and resilient under the conditions that matter.
He brings over a decade of hands-on engineering experience across high-stakes domains, including UK Government, law enforcement, and financial crime environments where the cost of a defect is measured in trust as much as in time. That background has shaped a delivery style that balances pace with rigour, and a strong belief that quality and momentum are not opposing forces.
Aditya is particularly interested in how engineering discipline, clear service boundaries, fast feedback loops, strong testing, and a healthy code-review culture directly shapes how quickly a product can be trusted in production. He cares less about which framework is fashionable and more about whether the team can ship change safely, repeatedly, and with the same confidence on day three hundred as on day one.
Mathew Jennings
Principle Engineer
An experienced IT Engineer and Data Specialist with many years working in UK Defence, including roles within highly secure environments and operational deployments.
Extensive experience in a Cyber Security Operations Centre (SOC), focusing on analysing large datasets and identifying patterns and unusual activity. Broad expertise across cloud platforms, data engineering, and multiple programming languages, spanning a wide range of modern technologies, with a strong personal drive to keep learning and developing new skills, and a focus on spending free time with family.
Jacob Potts
Head Investor Relations & Corporate Development
Jacob Potts is a British financial services professional with nearly 30 years’ experience across capital markets, equity sales, and investor relations, known for building high-trust relationships with institutional investors and corporate clients. Currently Head of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at DarkSkope Ltd, he drives capital strategy and market positioning for an advanced AI-driven intelligence platform.
Over his career, he has held senior roles at firms including Commerzbank, Macquarie, ING, and Dresdner Kleinwort, leading revenue growth, navigating major regulatory shifts like MiFID II, and advising on IPOs, M&A, and investor engagement. Equally comfortable on both sides of the market, his experience spans working with global asset managers, corporate IR teams, and early-stage companies, with a consistent focus on delivering candid advice, long-term value, and strong governance-led outcomes.
Jamie Burnham
Director, Govenment & Defence
Jamie has served in defence and national security for over 25 years. He brings an instinctive understanding of delivering real-world outcomes by leveraging latest generation technologies.
He has served across the Middle East and Africa, tackling challenges from terrorism to counter-proliferation. He is a former Rekanati-Kaplan Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. He has advised defence technology companies on market entry into UK and European markets.
He mentors specialist units of the British Army on capability development. He is an Associate of Creative Destruction Labs Estonia, advising the founders of new technology companies.