Josh Aas
Executive Director at Internet Security Research Group
New York, New York, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJosh Aas is an executive technology leader with 11+ years building critical Internet infrastructure, best known for co-founding the Internet Security Research Group and leading the creation of Let’s Encrypt, which now issues certificates for hundreds of millions of websites. He blends hands-on systems and security engineering with executive responsibilities—overseeing technical strategy, partnerships, compliance, hiring, and finance—to scale public-benefit services. A former Mozilla networking lead and long-time platform engineer, Josh brings deep protocol, TLS, and systems expertise and contributes to open-source projects such as the rustls TLS library. He also directs ISRG projects beyond certificates, including privacy-respecting metrics (Divvi Up) and memory-safety initiatives for core Internet software (Prossimo). Based in New York and active in academia and public policy circles, he combines pragmatic engineering with a mission-driven focus on making the Internet safer and easier to manage. An English literature background gives him an unusual fluency in communicating complex technical and policy trade-offs to diverse audiences.
11 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
BA English Literature Computer Science, BA English Literature Computer Science at Macalester College
Github Skills (9)
mtls10
rust10
ssl10
tls1210
tls1310
cryptography10
libtls10
api-design9
documentation8
Programming languages (14)
Github contributions (5)
rustls/rustls
Aug 2022 - Sep 2022
A modern TLS library in Rust
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 review, 7 commits, 12 PRs in 6 days
Contributions summary:Josh primarily focused on updating and refactoring the `rustls` library, particularly regarding the `read_buf` API. Their work included adapting existing code to the updated API, modifying server and connection logic, and updating example programs. The user also addressed documentation issues, clarifying limitations on self-signed certificates and fixing documentation errors. These changes demonstrate their ability to maintain and improve the core functionality of the TLS library.
rusttlscryptographyssl
abetterinternet/website
Jul 2018 - Jan 2023
Internet Security Research Group's website
Contributions:4 reviews, 296 commits, 60 PRs in 4 years 6 months
security
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