About Me
This is the personal website of Ismail Ahmed. I am a Cybersecurity Specialist, a Full-Stack/Systems Software Engineer, and a Data Analyst specializing in distributed cloud infrastructure, low-level CPU optimization, and secure data architecture. Holding an M.S. and B.S. in Computer Science & Engineering alongside a B.A. in Economics from UC Santa Cruz, I bridge complex full-stack distributed systems architecture with business-critical security, legal regulatory compliance, and economic risk modeling.
Education
Master of Science in Computer Science & Engineering
September 2024 - June 2025 · UC Santa Cruz
Thesis: Locker 2.0 - Oblivious Computation for the ectd Key-Value Datastore.
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science & Engineering
September 2020 - August 2024 · UC Santa Cruz
Bachelor of Arts in Economics
September 2020 - August 2024 · UC Santa Cruz
Experiences
Full-Stack Software Developer (Volunteer)
Feburary 2026 - April 2026 · Open Sacramento
- Spearheaded architectural modernization of a legacy enterprise financial application from JavaScript to TypeScript, implementing modern full-stack patterns and rigorous Agile SDLC standards.
- Engineered a robust CI/CD pipeline achieving 85% E2E testing coverage while enforcing strict automated UI accessibility and internationalization compliance
Commercial Real Estate Analyst (Finance Internship)
September 2024 - October 2024 · Project Destined
- Executed quantitative financial modeling and regulatory risk assessments for institutional commercial real estate financial assets, managing large datasets to ensure GAAP compliance.
- Synthesized complex statistical insights into clear executive dashboards and presentations for non-technical leadership and institutional stakeholders.
Cybersecurity Researcher (Research Internship)
June 2022 - August 2022 · Silicon Valley Cybersecurity Institute
- Analyzed large-scale simulation datasets using Pandas and NumPy to detect statistical anomalies in complex brute-force attack vectors.
- Applied advanced hardware security protocols and cryptography theory to remediate critical system vulnerabilities and optimize data workflows.
Projects
Master Capstone Project - Locker 2.0 Oblivious Computation (Graduate Student Researcher)
UC Santa Cruz (CSE 247B, Projects in Computer Science) - Created the first ever secure oblivious computation client-server protocol for the Etcd key-value cloud distributed data storage solution for Kubernetes as a solo project supervised by Professor Jose Renau and Professor Owen Arden.
Intel Sunny Cove CPU Optimization
UC Santa Cruz (CSE 220, Computer Architecture) - Improved the Intel Sunny Cove CPU’s performance by ~4-7% by using the SWQUE fetching method for the instruction cache in the Scarab CPU simulator in 3 weeks. It was a 2-person group project with Ismail Ahmed and Joseph Perrello.