Brendan O'Connor is a Staff Security Engineer with 17 years of experience who specializes in marrying technical security with compliance to protect data while enabling business growth. He has led and built security programs across startups and large organizations—most recently as a founding engineer on GitLab’s Data Security team—and has guided cross-functional remediation of complex legal/technical compliance issues. Brendan combines hands-on engineering (languages from Ruby and Python to AWS and Spark) with policy and legal fluency, holding both an MSE in Computer Science and a J.D., which helps him translate regulatory constraints into pragmatic engineering solutions. He’s shipped security architectures for healthcare and cloud platforms, driven first-time SOC 2 and ISO efforts, and won DARPA Cyber Fast Track funding for research that evolved into production R&D. Known for treating security as an enabler rather than an obstacle, he also runs a consulting/R&D outfit (Malice Afterthought) that produces open and commercial software.
17 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
Juris Doctor (J.D.) Law, Juris Doctor (J.D.) Law at University of Wisconsin-Madison
Johns Hopkins University
International Baccalaureate, International Baccalaureate at United World College of the American West
Contributions:44 commits, 4 pushes in 7 years 4 months
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Brendan O'connor - Staff Security Engineer, Data Security