Colm Maccárthaigh
VP Distinguished Engineer at Apache Software Foundation
Seattle, Washington, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolColm Maccárthaigh is a VP and Distinguished Engineer at AWS with 20+ years building high-scale infrastructure, identity, cryptography, and edge services across EC2, IAM, SSO, Cognito and load-balancing systems. He combines deep systems and security expertise—authoring cryptographic code (including TLS work in the open-source s2n project) and leading incident response and call leadership—with hands-on delivery of network platforms like Hyperplane and Nitro Enclaves. Colm’s career spans founding roles in startups and significant open-source contributions to Apache HTTPD and APR, reflecting a long habit of improving core internet plumbing. He splits time between architecture, customer engagement, and mentoring distributed teams across Seattle, Virginia, Dublin, Bucharest, Cape Town and more. Unusually for a senior exec, he still writes cryptography code himself and has embraced Rust as his preferred implementation language.
20 years of coding experience
20 years of employment as a software developer
Coláiste ChilliainBSc (Hons) Computer Science, BSc (Hons) Computer Science at Trinity College Dublin
English, Irish, German, Dutch
Stackoverflow
781reputation
194kreached
2answers
0questions
algorithm
top-5%
Github Skills (37)
ss10
caching10
ssl10
multiplatform10
it-security10
http10
sslv310
apr10
cross-platform10
c-programming10
c1110
security10
c1710
fileio10
cryptography10
Programming languages (13)
Github contributions (5)
aws/s2n-tls
Jun 2014 - May 2020
An implementation of the TLS/SSL protocols
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Security Engineer
Back-end Developer & Security EngineerContributions:15 reviews, 521 commits, 225 PRs in 5 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Colm implemented and maintained the core features of the TLS/SSL implementation, including the TLS1.3 HKDF-Label-Expand function, designed to enhance security. Their contributions included enhancements to existing components, such as CBC padding checks, and the implementation of a new DRBG (Deterministic Random Bit Generator) for security. They also refactored memory allocation for improved alignment and integrated the latest codebases.
cryptographysslc99tlscrypto
apache/httpd
Aug 2005 - Jan 2010
Mirror of Apache HTTP Server. Issues: http://issues.apache.org
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:284 commits in 4 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Colm primarily worked on improving the Apache HTTP Server's caching capabilities, particularly in the area of the mod_cache module. Their contributions involved modifying cache-related code, improving cache hit/miss ratios, and enhancing the configuration options for caching on a per-protocol, per-host, and per-path basis. They also refactored code by renaming and removing unused variables to optimize performance.
apache-httpapacheapache-http-serverhttpdhtaccess
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