Steve Lawrence
Technical Principal at Owl Cyber Defense
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolSteve Lawrence is a Technical Principal with 17 years of experience building secure, backend systems and tooling from the kernel boundary to enterprise deployments, currently leading security engineering at Owl Cyber Defense in Washington, D.C. A long-time maintainer of the SELinux userspace, he has deep expertise in access control, policy tooling and security hardening—work visible in high-impact open-source projects like upstream SELinux and the RPM package manager. His background includes creating robust processors for data-streaming platforms (Apache StreamPipes) and extending package management with collection and plugin mechanisms, showing a blend of systems-level rigor and practical DevOps sensibility. Known for addressing low-level memory and reliability issues as well as integrating SELinux into build systems, he brings an unusual combination of kernel-adjacent security knowledge and production-focused engineering.
17 years of coding experience
Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science, Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science at University of Virginia
Github Skills (33)
security-hardening10
group-policy10
package-management10
plugin-development10
it-security10
c-programming10
policies10
analytics10
java10
security10
data-transformation10
javas10
selinux10
rpm10
access-control10
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
SELinuxProject/selinux
Jun 2010 - Jun 2017
This is the upstream repository for the Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) userland libraries and tools. The software provided by this project complements the SELinux features integrated into the Linux kernel and is used by Linux distributions. All bugs and patches should be submitted to selinux@vger.kernel.org
Role in this project:
Back-end & Security Engineer
Back-end & Security EngineerContributions:120 commits, 29 pushes, 3 branches in 7 years
Contributions summary:Steve's contributions primarily involve enhancing the Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) userland libraries and tools, focusing on policy management and access control. Their work includes adding new methods to the Python bindings for libselinux, specifically for changing file contexts, and updating the sandbox patch for security improvements, highlighting a strong focus on security hardening. The user also addressed code quality by handling memory allocation failures and improving code structure for maintainability. Furthermore, they modified parts of the low-level policy tools, indicating their expertise in the underlying security mechanisms of the project.
kerneldistributionsvgerintegratedlinux-distribution
apache/streampipes
Mar 2021 - Apr 2021
Apache StreamPipes - A self-service (Industrial) IoT toolbox to enable non-technical users to connect, analyze and explore IoT data streams.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:22 commits in 9 days
Contributions summary:Steve's primary contribution involved implementing a boolean logical operator processor within the Apache StreamPipes framework. They added new features, including operators like AND, OR, XOR, NOT, X-NOR, and NOR. The user addressed review comments, refactored code, and ensured the processor was integrated correctly. This involved working with Java, and the StreamPipes SDK to create a new data processor for data transformation.
iot-datastreamsindustrial-iotopcuatoolbox
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.