Ahmed Masud
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Potomac, MD, United States
Toptal member since December 19, 2022
Ahmed is a senior systems architect with 33 years of experience in software engineering, applied computer science, and theoretical computer science, including algorithm design. He has been a number theory researcher, systems architect, technology team lead, and CTO. Ahmed's expertise ranges from designing software and software products from the ground up and taking them to market.
Portfolio
Experience
Availability
Preferred Environment
Linux, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Rust, Unix, C++, Assembler x86, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, C, MySQL, Docker, NumPy, Azure DevOps, Azure, DevOps, Visual FoxPro, Visual FoxPro 9, Visual Basic, Flutter, Roadmaps, Assembly, TypeScript, Blockchain, Ethereum, Smart Contracts, Solidity, Ethereum Smart Contracts, React, Framer, Boost, DDS, GNU Debugger (GDB), Azure IoT Hub, Azure IoT Suite, AWS IoT, AWS IoT Core, Tailwind CSS, CSS, Raspberry Pi, FastAPI, Leadership, Full-stack, WordPress, Dart, Laravel, Microservices, Contentful, Emotion API, Cloudflare, SEO Tools, Payment APIs, Mobile, C++Builder, Design, GitHub, Startups, JSON, Sorting Algorithms, Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), GPU Computing, GPUImage, Flask, Cybersecurity, Redux, Supabase, Scripting, React Native, Web Design, Microservices Architecture
The most amazing...
...thing I've developed is a cyber security system that protects the Harry Potter saga's books: "Order of the Phoenix,” “Half-Blood Prince,” and “Deathly Hallows.”
Work Experience
Design Engineer and Technical Project Lead
Hawaii Permanente Medical Group
- Developed a strategy to secure web applications during technology transformation.
- Created a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant cybersecurity strategy for PHI data post-application deployment.
- Oversaw that over 5,100 internal web-services would be able to certify for PHI safety and HIPAA compliance.
Distinguished Researcher and Chief Technology Officer
Trustifier Inc.
- Designed and developed Trustifier KSE, the world's first commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS)-distributed security reference monitor for Linux and Windows kernels. It was used by financial institutes and aerospace and defense sector clients worldwide.
- Designed and developed Trustifier Fahrenheit, a zero-trust web application firewall.
- Managed a professional organization of 35 software engineers and marketing and sales professionals that provided cyber security technology products to the defense sector in North American, European, and Australasian nations.
Lead Software Engineer and System Architect
Trustifier Inc.
- Designed and developed Trustifier, a defense-grade security system for commercial use, which protects information systems from the insider-threat.
- Built the company from $1 to $150 million valuation. Created revenue from $0 to $5 million monthly recurring revenue (MRR).
- Managed this system that is being used to protect sensitive data around the globe, from intellectual property in a company to financial data in a government department. Trustifier boasts the protection of Harry Potter® manuscripts.
Cybersecurity Consulting
F50 Corporation
- Provided multi-tier consulting to the C-Suite in a $100 million post-cyber-incident activity.
- Guided, advised, and supported the board of directors and C-level management on cyber security incident impact control, including public relations, customer relationship management, employee relationship management, and technology impact control.
- Developed a robust cyber-security post-incidence response program across the enterprise.
- Liaised between the cyber-audit team and C-level stakeholders. Educated and oversaw support for the board of directors.
- Saved the organization several million dollars by guiding cyber insurance.
Device Security Lead
Mobile Devices Manufacturer
- Provided engineering and compliance consulting to the engineering teams on building secure mobile devices to the specifications accepted by the USDoD.
- Developed a fully compliant semi-formal specification that withstood DIACAP MAC-1 compliance for hardware.
- Developed one of the fastest D2M ATO processes in a multi-tenancy mobile appliance.
Project Manager and Lead Software Engineer
Natural Resources Canada
- Deployed SnapLinux in a data-warehousing configuration to collect, coordinate, and record large quantities of real-time GPS correction data.
- Improved the system to be graded to back up over 1.2 billion GPS corrections per hour in real time.
- Oversaw design, development, and production of the entire system.
Software Design Engineer and Technical Project Lead
National Research Council Canada
- Designed, developed, implemented, deployed, and supported an extensive document generation system with underlying event management architecture.
- Created and oversaw the implementation of the entire system, including the protocol to control, guide, and coordinate the activities of over one hundred personnel.
- Increased the efficiency by decreasing processing time from two hours to a four-second response time with the new environment working over three hundred different task-specific workstations and twelve real-time servers.
- Increased revenue from a loss of $25,000 per week to a net profit of $150,000 per week.
Software Design Engineer and Technical Project Lead
Nortel Corporation, Canada
- Redesigned a complex CAD document transformation system from 500,000 to 10,000 lines of code.
- Saved the customer over $1 million per month in processing CAD information and reduced compute costs by a factor of 30.
- Redesigned and re-engineered legacy mainframe code in record time and guided the entire team to deliver the project one month before the deadline, saving the customer an additional $8 million in potential penalties.
Design Engineer and Technical Project Lead
Natural Resources Canada
- Developed a custom protocol gateway from X.25 over to IP over frame-relay.
- Oversaw design, development, testing, and production of a large real-time network upgrade.
- Managed to deliver the best ROI in the history of Canadian public sector projects with a 1,000x return over 15 years.
Project Manager and Lead Software Engineer
Natural Resources Canada
- Implemented the first generation of secure data delivery interfaces in MaxTran ELSI/BDL for GPS data correction information.
- Established standards for and deployed Canada's first Linux-based environments for the first time in Canadian Federal Government.
- Deployed the then-largest, real-time data collection and redistribution network with under 1-minute latency from the arctic circle down to the Gulf of Mexico.
Experience
Resiliate
Simplified security operations by providing data-centric CRUD authorization, context-sensitive integrity and confidentiality, as well as resilient data availability, all in one unified solution. It bridges the gap between legacy and modern computing by providing a path for legacy systems to transparently interconnect with any cloud-backed storage and support S3 and Azure blob API.
Resiliate provides deep forensics and audit trails for everything that touches the data. It provides software-defined, zero-trust security enclaves for critical systems and complex security policy requirements and enables controls from standards such as NIST 800-53R5. For example, Resiliate allows customers to comply with CMMC 1.0 up to IL5.
RYU by Trustifier
Trustifier Kernel Security Enforcer (KSE) | Advanced Security System for Linux
SnapLinux Secure Linux Distribution
Architecture for Real-time Devices
I acted as the lead engineer for this project.
Skills
Libraries/APIs
PyTorch, NumPy, Pandas, Node.js, React, REST APIs, RADIUS, GPUImage, WebRTC, Sockets, Sidekiq, Emotion API, Python Asyncio, TensorFlow, D3.js, React Query
Tools
Vim Text Editor, Fuse, GNU Make, Git, GNU Debugger (GDB), CMake, ChatGPT, GitHub, Windows Driver Kit (WDK), Time Synchronization, Microsoft Visual C++, Dell EMC, Siemens PLC, Azure IoT Hub, Azure IoT Suite, MQTT, C++Builder, Jira, Bitbucket, Microsoft Copilot, Squid Proxy Server, Android NDK, Java GUI, Terraform
Languages
C, Rust, C++, Python 3, Embedded C, Assembler x86, Assembler, Perl, Bash, GNU Guile, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Visual FoxPro, Visual FoxPro 9, Visual Basic, Assembly, PHP, HTML, Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET), TypeScript, Solidity, CSS, Embedded C++, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), VB.NET, Microsoft Assembly x86 (MASM), GPSS, IBM Basic Assembly Language, Java, Go, Scala, GraphQL, Ruby, C#, VRML, Dart
Frameworks
Flex, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Flutter, Boost, Next.js, Django, Material UI, Svelte, Flask, .NET, Tailwind CSS, Laravel, gRPC, Redux, React Native, Angular
Paradigms
OOO, Azure DevOps, DevOps, Continuous Integration (CI), HIPAA Compliance, Stress Testing, Microservices, B2C, Mobile Development, Continuous Delivery (CD), Automation, ETL, Microservices Architecture, Radio Frequency (RF) Protocol, Agile, DevSecOps, Key Performance Metrics, Software-defined Networking (SDN)
Platforms
Linux, Solaris, Unix, HP-UX, Windows Server 2000, Embedded Linux, Kernel, Docker, Kubernetes, Azure, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Windows, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft, Blockchain, Ethereum, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Raspberry Pi, Arduino, WordPress, MacOS, Oracle, OpenShift, Contentful, Mobile, IBM z/OS, IBM WebSphere, AWS IoT, AWS IoT Core, iOS
Storage
Windows File Systems, Ceph, Storage Area Networks (SAN), MySQL, PostgreSQL, Databases, Redis, JSON, IBM Mainframe, MongoDB, SQLite, Oracle 11i
Industry Expertise
Healthcare, Cybersecurity, Project Management, Web Design
Other
Linux Kernel, SELinux, Linux IPC, Linux System Calls, Linux Kernel Programming, Machine Learning, File Systems, C# Operators, Windows Kernel Drivers, Btrfs, Stochastic Modeling, Stochastic Differential Equations, Language Models, Yacc, Bison, PA-RISC, IPv4, Ethics, Device Drivers, Web Application Firewall (WAF), Full-stack Development, Front-end, APIs, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Hardware, Firewalls, IP Networks, F5 Networks, Risk Models, Risk, Public Policy, Public Relations (PR), Technology, DIACAP, FIPS 140-2, Common Criteria, Mobile GPS, GPS, ARM, Reverse Engineering, Department of Defense, Back-end, Job Schedulers, Exports, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Mobile Apps, Architecture, CTO, Software Architecture, Roadmaps, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Graphical User Interface (GUI), Smart Contracts, Ethereum Smart Contracts, DDS, PLC, Firmware, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), WebSockets, FastAPI, Web Applications, Leadership, Full-stack, Front-end Development, Back-end Development, Integration Testing, OpenAI, Embedded Systems, Embedded Hardware, Cloudflare, Payment APIs, Design, Startups, Technical Leadership, Solution Architecture, Data Scraping, API Integration, Chatbots, Data Structures, Sorting Algorithms, Algorithms, Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), GPU Computing, Third-party APIs, Containers, Serverless, Multithreading, Windows 11, GitHub Copilot Chat, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Microsoft Azure, Scripting, Web Scraping, Build Processes, Distributed Systems, Metrics, Scalability, App Infrastructure, Code Review, PCI, PCI DSS, Software Design, Mathematics, Accessibility, Network Protocols, Real-time Embedded Systems, Real-time Operating System (RTOS), TCP/IP, Low-level Programming, USB, Documentation, Technical Writing, ZFS, Network Data Storage, Multicast, Printer Drivers, Electronic Sensors, Motor Control, Cisco, IBM Storage, Global Banking, Online Banking, Radio, IoT Protocols, Modbus Protocol, SEO Tools, Fintech, Finance, Stock Trading, Large Language Models (LLMs), Web3, Windows 10, VoIP, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Peer-to-peer Networking, Azure Data Factory, Azure Databricks, Healthcare IT, Payment Gateways, OpenAI GPT-3 API, Static Analysis, PCI Compliance, Quality Assurance (QA), Post-quantum Cryptography (PQC), Cryptography, Distributed Software, Large Scale Distributed Systems, Ethernet, Industrial Automation, Jamf, Windows Kernel Debugging (WKD), Physics Simulations, Website Data Scraping, X.25, Engineering, OCR, Barcode Library, Proxies, HTTP/1.1, Bluetooth, Common Criteria Certified, Nordic nRF52, IoC, System-on-a-Chip (SoC), HTTP, Framer, React Hooks, Trading, LangChain, Supabase, VoIP Administration, Games, AI Ethics, Buffer Management, MDM, Mobile Device Management (MDM), QBlade
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