Kai Z
Security Engineer at Compass
United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolKai Z is a Security Engineer with 13 years of hands-on experience securing web applications and back-end systems, currently driving security efforts at Compass after a long tenure at Etsy. He combines a strong academic foundation (MS and BS from NYU Tandon) with practical expertise in vulnerability remediation, privilege escalation fixes, and query optimization to improve performance and resilience. His open-source contributions include hardening an alert management web app used at scale (etsy/411) and enhancing an unofficial Google Keep client by improving authentication, media access, and API compatibility. Known for pragmatic, code-first security work, he regularly bridges dev and security teams to ship secure features without sacrificing usability. An understated problem-solver, he focuses on subtle fixes—like state-handling and search updates—that materially improve reliability in production.
13 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science - MS, Computer and Information Systems Security/Information Assurance, Master of Science - MS, Computer and Information Systems Security/Information Assurance at NYU Tandon School of Engineering
English
Github Skills (17)
back-end-development10
python10
apidoc10
amazon-elasticsearch10
elasticsearchquery10
php10
api10
aws-elasticsearch10
elasticsearch10
backend10
elasticsearch-api10
javascript9
authentication9
security9
user-authentication9
Programming languages (19)
Github contributions (5)
etsy/411
Aug 2016 - Jun 2019
An Alert Management Web Application
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:12 releases, 392 commits, 22 PRs in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Kai primarily focused on fixing bugs related to security vulnerabilities and improving the functionality of the alert management web application. They corrected a privilege escalation issue by restricting admin flag changes and ensured proper updating of search states. Additionally, the user optimized database queries to improve dashboard performance and added support for SSL. The user also made enhancements to the application's functionality and performance.
alertweb-applicationdashboardnon-sox
kiwiz/gkeepapi
Oct 2017 - Nov 2022
An unofficial client for the Google Keep API.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:216 commits, 29 PRs, 200 pushes in 5 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Kai primarily focused on improving the Google Keep API client. Their contributions involved fixing typos and type issues in the documentation. They also addressed bugs related to list items and sharing functionality. Furthermore, they improved the authentication flow, implemented support for accessing media, and made adjustments to the code to handle API changes, specifically focusing on node and reminder handling.
google-apiapipythongoogle-keep-apikeep
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