March 2024 - Present
DirectDeals/U2Connect
Application Security Engineer | Backend Systems & Infrastructure
- Led incident response on a live production compromise on a self-managed Linux VPS: identified an active cryptominer process and a PHP web shell, performed root-cause analysis, then contained and remediated the environment (scoped disable_functions, fail2ban jails, filesystem integrity checks) while maintaining uptime for existing clients, producing a full PICERL-based incident writeup.
- Set up automated security scanning (SAST, SCA, DAST) as part of the CI pipeline, then aggregated the output into a single view so the team could see what needed fixing without chasing down reports across multiple dashboards.
- Identified and remediated infrastructure-level attack surface across multiple client-facing Laravel deployments (nginx, PHP-FPM, fail2ban), including nginx location-block precedence flaws and overly permissive Redis access that exposed unauthenticated data paths.
- Designed and built RESTful APIs and scheduled backend workers that processed incoming data reliably, with a focus on speed, clean code, and adaptability to shifting client requirements.
- Built internal and customer-facing administrative platforms (Firebase-integrated user management, operational dashboards) with role-based access control and audit logging embedded at the data layer.
- Applied AI-assisted workflows to accelerate vulnerability triage, code review, and secure-refactor work, using prompt-driven analysis to surface risk faster across complex legacy codebases.