John Downey
Chief Information Security Officer
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJohn Downey is a seasoned information security leader with 16 years of experience helping fast-growing technology companies mature their security programs, currently serving as CISO at GoFundMe out of Chicago. He combines deep operational security leadership across startups and large acquisitions—having led security integrations for PayPal, Braintree, Venmo and others—with hands-on engineering roots from early developer roles. His background in cryptography and distributed systems informs pragmatic risk management, secure product design, and encryption migrations he executed at Braintree. An active open-source contributor to the Ruby ecosystem (notably ruby/spec and Rubinius), he brings test-driven rigor and a developer’s eye to security controls and automation. Collectedly, he blends technical craftsmanship with strategic program building to scale security for complex, rapidly changing businesses.
16 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
BS, Computer Science, Physics, BS, Computer Science, Physics at Purdue University
English
Stackoverflow
13,944reputation
2.4mreached
55answers
1question
sql
top-5%
syntax
top-1%
theory
top-1%
xml
top-1%
printf
top-1%
php
top-5%
Github Skills (28)
programming-language10
theory10
printf10
ruby10
syntax10
mspec10
rubyspec10
xml10
test-automation10
oop9
spec9
indexing9
virtual-machine9
asp-net-mvc9
enumerable9
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
rubinius/rubinius
Oct 2011 - Oct 2011
The Rubinius Language Platform
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:24 commits, 1 comment in 15 days
Contributions summary:John contributed to the Rubinius Language Platform by patching core Ruby methods. They primarily focused on implementing and adjusting the behavior of methods like `each_with_index`, `instance_variables`, `loop`, `min`, `max`, and `next` for different Ruby versions, ensuring compatibility. Their work involved modifying kernel and enumerator files, as well as adding and clarifying specs for the `Struct#instance_variables` method.
esoteric-languageprogramming-languagesvirtual-machinerubiniusprogramming-language
ruby/spec
Oct 2011 - Oct 2011
The Ruby Spec Suite aka ruby/spec
Role in this project:QA Engineer / Test Automation Engineer
QA Engineer / Test Automation EngineerContributions:5 commits in 5 days
Contributions summary:John contributed significantly to the Ruby spec suite, primarily focused on adding and clarifying test specifications. Their work included adding specs for Struct and Enumerator methods, specifically targeting Ruby 1.8 behavior. The commits demonstrate a focus on ensuring the correctness and completeness of the Ruby language specifications by adding and modifying existing test cases.
ruby-gemmspecrailsrubyspec
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