Jurnell Cockhren
President at Civic Hacker
Nashville Metropolitan Area United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJurnell Cockhren is a civic-minded technology leader and founder with 13 years of experience building open-source software and production infrastructure across neuroscience, optics, and astronomy domains. As President of Civic Hacker and founder of Sophicware, he blends DevOps, security, and data accessibility to make OpenData more useful for communities and partners. He has led cloud architecture and security programs for SaaS and healthcare platforms, driving HIPAA/HITRUST-aligned practices and scalable GCP/AWS deployments. A prolific collaborator, his open-source contributions include back-end work on widely used tools like Vagrant and StackStorm, where he improved provisioning and SaltStack integrations. He also teaches practical engineering topics and has research-grade experience building experiments and instrumentation from his time at Vanderbilt, bringing a rare mix of academic rigor and product-focused execution. Based in Nashville, he describes himself as a polymath who leverages code to advance equity and civic engagement.
13 years of coding experience
20 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Physics, Mathematics, Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Physics, Mathematics at The University of the South
Github Skills (17)
python10
apidoc10
ruby10
automation10
api10
python-requests10
http-request10
automations10
vagrant10
api-design9
restful-api9
api-rest9
json9
virtualization9
rest-api9
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
StackStorm/st2contrib
Mar 2015 - Apr 2016
MOVED! See StackStorm Exchange
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:72 commits, 8 PRs, 15 comments in 1 year
Contributions summary:Jurnell primarily focused on developing SaltStack API actions, creating a Salt runner and Salt local action. The user refactored existing code into a base class and implemented functions for generating and sending requests to the Salt API. The user added support for explicit and granular targeting of Salt execution modules, refining the interaction with the SaltStack API. The work included modularizing the codebase with the introduction of helper functions.
nodejsexchangestackstorm
hashicorp/vagrant
Sep 2013 - Oct 2015
Vagrant is a tool for building and distributing development environments.
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:5 commits, 1 PR, 3 comments in 2 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Jurnell primarily contributed to the Salt provisioner within the Vagrant project. Their work involved modifying and reverting changes related to the `install_type` and `install_command` configuration options. The commits indicate a focus on refining the Salt provisioner's functionality, debugging related issues, and adjusting the user interface. These changes aim to improve the flexibility and usability of the Salt provisioning process.
vagrantansiblerubydockervirtualization
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