Wade Simmons
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Security at Slack
West Tisbury, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolWade Simmons is a Senior Staff Software Engineer specializing in security with 17 years of experience building scalable, production-grade systems across startups and large teams. Currently at Slack, he blends backend engineering and DevOps expertise to harden distributed services and automate reliable build/release workflows. His open-source contributions include work on Slack’s Nebula and go-audit—improving cross-platform networking tooling, container-aware audit enrichment, and CI smoke tests that catch runtime failures early. Wade’s background spans geospatial indexing, distributed tracing, and high-throughput APIs, demonstrating a consistent focus on observability and resilience. Based in West Tisbury, MA, he pairs deep systems knowledge (Go, Java, Cassandra, Kafka) with practical security craftsmanship that reduces operational blast radius. An uncommon strength is his track record of shipping both low-level network fixes and higher-level DevOps automation that measurably improve platform reliability.
17 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
BS, Math and Computer Science, BS, Math and Computer Science at Colorado School of Mines
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
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Github Skills (27)
api-rest10
github-ci10
docker10
api-design10
restful-api10
testing10
containerization10
dockers10
cicd10
go10
audit-logging10
rest-api10
githubaction-workflow10
command-line-interface9
apidoc9
Programming languages (13)
Github contributions (5)
slackhq/nebula
Dec 2019 - Jan 2023
A scalable overlay networking tool with a focus on performance, simplicity and security
Role in this project:
Backend & DevOps Engineer
Backend & DevOps EngineerContributions:330 reviews, 142 commits, 360 PRs in 3 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Wade primarily focused on testing and improving the `nebula-cert` command-line tool and the overall Nebula network. They addressed platform-specific issues by implementing fixes for Darwin and Windows, including handling errors and disabling specific tests. The user also updated project dependencies, including `water`, which may resolve Windows-specific issues. Additionally, the user implemented a GitHub Actions smoke test that tests for runtime failures in three docker containers.
scalablesecuritynetworkingoverlayperformance
rcrowley/go-tigertonic
Oct 2013 - Apr 2017
A Go framework for building JSON web services inspired by Dropwizard
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:17 commits, 5 PRs, 7 pushes in 3 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Wade contributed to the `go-tigertonic` framework by implementing new features, addressing bugs, and improving the overall structure of the code. Their work included adding the ability to customize request ID generation within the logging system and modifying error handling. The user also fixed a mocking issue, improved error messages, and added initial support for Travis CI. These changes indicate a focus on enhancing the framework's core functionality and maintainability.
golanggo-frameworkdropwizardweb-servicesjson
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