March 2024 - Present
DirectDeals/U2Connect
Software Engineer | Backend Systems, APIs & Application Security
- Investigated and remediated a live production compromise on a self-managed Linux VPS, identifying an active cryptominer process and a PHP web shell, then contained and hardened the environment (scoped disable_functions, fail2ban jails, filesystem integrity checks) while maintaining application uptime for existing clients.
- Hardened production Linux infrastructure (nginx, PHP-FPM, Redis, fail2ban) across multiple client-facing Laravel deployments, resolving misconfigurations that exposed attack surface, including nginx location-block precedence issues and overly permissive Redis access.
- Integrated security scanning tools into the development lifecycle, covering static analysis, dependency/composition analysis, and dynamic testing, with findings centralized through a vulnerability management platform to support triage and remediation tracking.
- Developed reusable authentication services, fraud prevention integrations, and shared platform components used across 10+ production deployments, applying secure authentication patterns, input validation, and maintainable architecture to improve platform resilience.
- Designed and maintained containerized application deployments with Docker and automated CI/CD pipelines, implementing consistent build, testing, and deployment workflows that improved release reliability and supported secure software delivery practices.
- Integrated AI-assisted development workflows into daily engineering practice, leveraging coding copilots, prompt-driven debugging, test generation, refactoring assistance, and architectural exploration to accelerate iteration, improve code quality, and reduce turnaround time on complex systems.