Résumé Photography

Viren R. Shah

Washington, DC • viren@viren.org • 703-338-2886 • viren.orglinkedin.com/in/shahvirenr
Engineering leader with experience spanning SaaS platform development, cloud infrastructure, and applied software security research. Currently leading R&D, security/compliance, and infrastructure for a production AI-driven SaaS platform, including ownership of SOC 2 Type II compliance and Data Protection Officer (DPO) responsibilities. Background includes Government-funded research and a track record of translating advanced research into production-ready systems.

Interested in senior leadership roles that leverage diverse expertise across security/compliance, infrastructure, product development, and applied research.

Role Mix Across Jobs

How time has been spent by role
A high-level view of roles across jobs.
Developer Researcher Technical Leadership Management

Domain Mix Across Jobs

How time has been spent by domain
A high-level view of subject-matter emphasis across jobs.
Security Program Analysis Cloud / Infrastructure / DevOps Distributed Simulation LegalTech/NLP/ML Compliance / Privacy / Governance

Core Expertise

SaaS Platform Development
Applied R&D
Cloud Infrastructure (AWS, Google Cloud)
Security & Compliance
Privacy / DPO
DevSecOps
Software Security
Static & Dynamic Analysis
Distributed Systems
Kubernetes

Career Timeline

BlackBoiler — Director of Engineering, Security and Infrastructure

Arlington, VA • 2019–Present
  • Partnered with CTO to define and execute the technical and product roadmap.
  • Current role spans product R&D, SOC 2 / DPO responsibilities, and AWS / Kubernetes platform ownership.

Leidos (formerly SAIC) — Senior Cyber Scientist

Arlington, VA • 2011–2019
  • Led applied research in software security, binary analysis, and large-scale program analysis.
  • Principal Investigator for DARPA MUSE Evaluation & Infrastructure and lead engineer on DARPA CASE.

Raytheon (formerly VTC Inc.) — Senior Technical Advisor / Principal Software Engineer

Alexandria, VA • 2005–2011
  • Corporate technology strategy, infrastructure modernization, and integration leadership.

Cigital, Inc. — Senior Research Associate / Program Manager

Dulles, VA • 1997–2005
  • Government-funded software security research, security analysis tools, and consulting.

Visix Software, Inc. — Software Engineer

Reston, VA • 1997
  • Cross-platform Java development tools, UI components, and networking libraries.

Key Accomplishments by Role

Developer

  • Built internal platforms and utilities to support experimentation, data processing, and rapid prototyping of new product capabilities.
  • Developed cloud-native tools and services for BlackBoiler's SaaS platform
  • Designed and implemented applications to help manage cloud infrastructure and allow fast deployment of client instances
  • Developed a tool to automatically generate large sets of test cases of vulnerable code to verify and validate research prototypes
  • Designed and developed mobile Android apps to display real-time data using the TENA (distributed simulation) protocol
  • Architected and implemented distributed infrastructure to store, analyze and automatically build ~22TB of "big software" code and features
  • Helped port TENA middleware to Android
  • Led development of a security vulnerability scanner for program executables by reusing source-based pattern-detection engines
  • Designed and developed an Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) framework for security vulnerabilities in C
  • Researched and developed one of the first static and dynamic analysis tools suites for Java Bytecode

Researcher

  • Principal Investigator on multiple government-funded (DARPA, IARPA, etc) research projects
  • Developed techniques combining static analysis, dynamic analysis, and concolic execution for vulnerability discovery in large-scale systems.
  • Designed and built systems for automated analysis of binaries and source code across large corpora.
  • Created infrastructure and tooling to generate and validate large datasets of vulnerable software for research evaluation.
  • Authored publications and contributed to patented technologies in software vulnerability detection and analysis.
  • Researched and developed software for automatic blind building of unknown software applications (C, C++, Android, Java)
  • Researched and developed a new constraint-optimization technique for whole path-based software analysis of C programs
  • Researched a new Aspect-Oriented Programming language and aspects for C security vulnerability prevention
  • Developed new static analysis techniques to extract behavior profiles from Android apps for use in malware analysis tool
  • Led efforts looking into language-based security issues with resource-constrained wireless devices resulting in a suite of tools to help expose security vulnerabilities with the J2ME reference implementation

Management

  • Led engineering across R&D, infrastructure, and security/compliance functions as Director of Engineering.
  • Defined and executed engineering roadmap in partnership with CTO and executive team.
  • Built operational practices that maintained >99.95% uptime over five years.
  • Successfully led several research, development and infrastructure teams
  • Managed and mentored junior developers and researchers as well as co-managed a small research division
  • Led infrastructure IT team in improving reliability of servers (> 99.9%), rearchitecting backup and restore solutions for corporate data and establishing a solid security posture during acquisition of company
  • Led multi-company and multi-division collaboration efforts to ratify processes, plans and roadmaps for technical efforts

Technical Leadership

  • Defined system architecture and technical strategy for a production SaaS platform infrastructure, balancing scalability, security, and cost.
  • Led SOC 2 Type II certification and ongoing compliance efforts; served as Data Protection Officer (DPO).
  • Designed and operated Kubernetes-based infrastructure across multiple AWS regions.
  • Drove adoption of DevSecOps practices including automated security scanning, container security, and compliance automation.
  • Acted as senior technical advisor, guiding architecture, infrastructure, and security decisions across teams and initiatives.
  • Advocated for and moved sales team to customized Salesforce platform from disparate Excel spreadsheets
  • Designed and implemented a corporate-wide developer infrastructure including issue tracker, wiki, continuous integration and version control
  • Developed product roadmap for commercial products with feedback from management, product team and clients

Selected Publications and Patents

Education