James Houlahan
Software Engineer at Proton AG
Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Summary
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RockstarJames Houlahan is a software engineer based in Zurich with six years of hands-on experience building secure, reliable backend systems. At ProtonMail he contributes to proton-bridge, where he's focused on refactoring core components, dependency upgrades, and adding robustness features like per-host connection limits, caching, SMTP setup, and safer logout/unlock flows. He combines practical security-awareness with production-focused engineering, improving cryptographic dependencies and implementing defensive checks before sensitive operations. Colleagues can rely on him for maintenance-heavy, high-trust codepaths that require careful change management and backwards compatibility. Quietly detail-oriented, he tends to surface subtle issues (like pre-unlock key checks) that prevent real-world failures in encrypted email workflows.
6 years of coding experience
Github Skills (9)
dependency-management10
go10
caching8
apidoc7
cryptography7
api7
smtpd6
smtps6
smtp6
Programming languages (2)
Github contributions (5)
ProtonMail/proton-bridge
Jul 2021 - Dec 2022
Proton Mail Bridge application
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:275 commits, 12 PRs, 5 pushes in 1 year 4 months
Contributions summary:James primarily contributed to the Proton Mail Bridge application by modifying and refactoring core components. Their work included bumping dependencies such as gopenpgp and go-crypto, implementing connection limits per host, and integrating features related to caching and proper logout functionality. Furthermore, the user implemented several improvements across different areas, including, a key check before unlocking and setting up SMTP.
bridgemailproton
ProtonMail/go-proton-api
Nov 2022 - Mar 2023
Proton API library used by Go-based clients and tools
Contributions:48 reviews, 68 commits, 66 PRs in 3 months
gogolangprotonprotonmailrest-api
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