Mike Tigas
Software Engineer at Self-employed
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Summary
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RockstarMike Tigas is a seasoned software engineer with 17 years of experience blending web infrastructure, digital security, and investigative journalism to build practical tools that protect sources and liberate data. He has led DevOps and security efforts at ProPublica, served as Senior Technology Advisor at the FTC supporting investigations and policy work, and now works independently on product and mapping projects. A prolific open-source contributor, he’s the original developer of Onion Browser for iOS, a lead on Tabula for extracting tables from PDFs, and an occasional Tor Project contributor—demonstrating a rare mix of mobile, backend, and security expertise. His work repeatedly focuses on privacy-preserving architectures and operationalizing researcher-friendly tooling, from SecureDrop deployments to containerized news infrastructure. Based in Chicago, he combines newsroom instincts with technical rigor, having shipped award-winning journalism tools and advised on high-profile digital investigations.
17 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
Stackoverflow
199reputation
31kreached
3answers
0questions
Github Skills (46)
formula10
ios10
resque10
python10
geocoder10
apidoc10
package-management10
testing10
it-security10
ui-design10
flask-ask10
ruby10
security10
homebrew10
uid10
Programming languages (15)
Github contributions (5)
tabulapdf/tabula
Mar 2013 - May 2018
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:6 releases, 1 review, 303 commits in 5 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Mike contributed to the Tabula project by implementing asynchronous upload functionality and improving the user interface for processing PDF files. They integrated Resque for background job processing of PDF uploads, incorporating thumbnail generation and text analysis tasks. Furthermore, they made the upload status updates ajaxy and enhanced the UI with a progress spinner, refining the user experience for file uploads and processing. The user refactored code to ensure the correct display of space characters in merged text elements, and added file type checking to improve data integrity.
csvpdfpdfiumdata-tablespdf-generation
OnionBrowser/OnionBrowser
Feb 2012 - Jan 2020
An open-source, privacy-enhancing web browser for iOS, utilizing the Tor anonymity network
Role in this project:Mobile Developer (iOS)
Mobile Developer (iOS)Contributions:15 releases, 664 commits, 5 PRs in 8 years
Contributions summary:Mike primarily worked on the iOS application, focusing on features related to the Tor anonymity network. Their contributions included modifying the app's name and resources, integrating Tor-related functionalities like TorProxyURLProtocol, and updating the application's credits and licenses. They also worked on the user interface and the initial setup of the app, including initial page display and menu options. They also integrated the open-source Endless Browser to be the base of this Onion Browser.
objective-cmplbrowserprivacysecurity
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