Cooper Pierce
Software Engineer II at Semgrep
New York, New York, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolCooper Pierce is a Software Engineer II based in New York with eight years of engineering experience and a strong focus on program analysis and security. He joined Semgrep after progressing from intern to engineer and now contributes to the core static-analysis engine, improving parsing, AST translation, and pattern-matching across languages like Python, PHP, Rust, and Scala. A former CMU instructor and long-time teaching assistant for foundational CS courses, he blends deep technical skill with clear communication and mentorship. His open-source work on the well-known semgrep project showcases pragmatic fixes and new pattern operators that materially strengthen static analysis capabilities. Cooper’s academic background in computer science is complemented by a minor in history and a personal passion for conservation, having traveled internationally to pursue environmental causes. That mix of security-focused tooling, teaching experience, and conservation-minded curiosity makes him a pragmatic engineer who cares about both code quality and broader impact.
8 years of coding experience
1 year of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science - BS Computer Science, Bachelor of Science - BS Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon UniversityIndian Hill High School
Github Skills (17)
static-analysis10
python10
parsing10
rust10
text-parsing10
php9
javas8
scala8
java8
yaml7
go7
c176
c116
typescripts5
typescript-types5
Programming languages (18)
Github contributions (5)
semgrep/semgrep
May 2022 - Sep 2022
Lightweight static analysis for many languages. Find bug variants with patterns that look like source code.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Security Engineer
Back-end Developer & Security EngineerContributions:350 reviews, 56 commits, 116 PRs in 3 months
Contributions summary:Cooper primarily contributed to the project by addressing parsing-related issues, specifically focusing on context expressions in Python and handling PHP `use` imports. They improved the code's functionality by supporting method chain patterns in Rust and correcting the generic AST translation for Scala. The user also introduced enhancements by adding new pattern operators and fixing lookup errors for generated files. These improvements align with the project's static analysis focus.
looklinterpythonr2cjavascript
kopecs/c0bf
Sep 2019 - Apr 2021
A brainfuck interperter in C0
Contributions:3 reviews, 1 PR, 4 pushes in 1 year 7 months
brainfuck
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