Seth Vargo
Distinguished Software Engineer at LinkedIn
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolSeth Vargo is a Distinguished Software Engineer with 15+ years building secure, developer-facing infrastructure and cloud tooling, currently focused on enabling Alphabet’s use of public cloud. He combines deep hands-on experience across DevOps, backend, and CI/CD—contributing to high-profile open source projects at Google, HashiCorp, Chef, and numerous GoogleCloudPlatform samples around Secret Manager, KMS, and secret management. Seth has led product and platform efforts (designing Secret Manager, KMS features, and deployment tooling) while also driving quality through testing and automation across many Chef cookbooks and CI pipelines. He’s known for bridging developer experience, security, and operational reliability, with a track record of refactoring core libraries and improving deployment and documentation for widely used projects like Terraform, Vault, and Vagrant. Outside code, he writes books, speaks at conferences, and deliberately works to reduce inequality in technology—often literally while living on planes. Practical, security-minded, and community-oriented, he pairs thoughtful advocacy with prolific open-source maintenance.
15 years of coding experience
19 years of employment as a software developer
High School Diploma High School/Secondary Diplomas and Certificates, High School Diploma High School/Secondary Diplomas and Certificates at Windber Area High SchoolBS Information Systems, BS Information Systems at Carnegie Mellon UniversityN/A High School Special Program, N/A High School Special Program at University of Pittsburgh
English
Stackoverflow
26,877reputation
1.9mreached
496answers
49questions
rubygems
top-5%
ruby
top-1%
authentication
top-5%
chef-infra
top-1%
security
top-5%
google-cloud-functions
top-5%
Github Skills (186)
yum10
test-kitchen10
rubocop10
google-cloud-platform10
postgresql10
website-development10
bump10
gitlab-omnibus10
python10
identity10
testing10
command-line-interface10
sample-size10
authentication10
bash10
Programming languages (26)
Github contributions (5)
GoogleCloudPlatform/berglas
Apr 2019 - Aug 2022
A tool for managing secrets on Google Cloud
Role in this project:
Back-end & Cloud Engineer
Back-end & Cloud EngineerContributions:11 releases, 27 reviews, 241 commits in 3 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Seth primarily contributed to backend functionality, particularly around secret management within Google Cloud. They added support for fetching project and region information, and updated the codebase to use the instance metadata server for querying required information. The user also implemented features related to granting and revoking secret access, demonstrating knowledge of IAM policies and security best practices. Additionally, the user was involved in setting up and bootstrapping Berglas environments, providing a smoother setup experience for users.
gcpgoogle-cloud-kmssecret-managementgooglegoogle-cloud-platform
hashicorp/envconsul
Nov 2014 - Aug 2017
Launch a subprocess with environment variables using data from @HashiCorp Consul and Vault.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:3 releases, 196 commits, 53 PRs in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Seth refactored the `envconsul` codebase to leverage Consul Template libraries, a significant undertaking that involved extensive code modifications. These changes included updating the CLI, updating the Runner and related tests. The user also addressed several Go vet issues and made updates to use new Consul Template APIs. This work demonstrates a focus on improving the core functionality and maintainability of the project.
golangenvironment-variableshashicorp-consulhashicorp-vaultvault
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