Nicholas Ward
Senior Software Engineer at Capital One
Columbus, Ohio, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolNicholas Ward is a senior software engineer with 11 years of experience building high-assurance systems, currently developing Rust-based infrastructure at Capital One after recent roles at ZipRecruiter and Polygon Labs. He specializes in cryptographic engineering and zero-knowledge proofs, contributing to prominent projects like Plonky2 where he implemented blinding gates and improved arithmetic and randomness integration for better security and performance. A Berkeley-trained researcher and former GSI with co-authored Eurocrypt publications, he blends theoretical cryptography with production-grade Rust and occasional assembly for blockchain-scale systems. His background includes internships at O(1) Labs and Google, giving him deep familiarity with both research-driven crypto and large-scale product engineering. Based in Columbus, Ohio, he brings a track record of shipping robust, auditable systems and quietly thrives on improving low-level correctness and performance in complex math-heavy codebases.
12 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science - MS Computer Science (Cryptography), Master of Science - MS Computer Science (Cryptography) at University of California, Berkeley
Korean, German, English
Github Skills (7)
proofs10
proof10
cryptography9
crypto9
rust9
crypt9
circuit8
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
0xPolygonZero/plonky2
Jun 2021 - Jan 2023
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:205 reviews, 930 commits, 149 PRs in 1 year 7 months
Contributions summary:Nicholas's commits focus on implementing features related to "blinding," a technique used in Plonky2 for zero-knowledge proofs. The user's work included the calculation of blinding gates, refactoring code, fixing arithmetic issues, and improving the overall design of the code for better security and performance. The user was also responsible for the inclusion of random values into the system.
npwardberkeley/plonky2-ci-tests
Jul 2023 - Oct 2023
Contributions:48 pushes, 1 branch in 2 months
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