user@austinconn:~$ resume --role defense

Austin Tyler Conn

user@austinconn:~$ resume --role defense

Cyber Software Engineer · Reverse Engineer / Vulnerability Researcher · Embedded Engineer · Software Engineer

Active TS/SCI clearance.

◆ Tailored view — Defense / Cleared view full resume →
$ resume --pdf

Summary

TS/SCI-cleared cyber software engineer with 5+ years at Northrop Grumman supporting multiple classified defense programs and 25+ customer deliveries. Experience across software development, reverse engineering, and test automation (internal test frameworks and GitLab CI), plus security research. Recognized with a BRAVO award for a rapid, quick-turnaround customer delivery that fulfilled urgent warfighter needs. Background also spans IT management and extensive open-source reverse-engineering tooling.

Work History

Northrop Grumman Corporation — Cincinnati, Ohio

Program names and mission specifics omitted; descriptions generalized to releasable technology and skills only.

Cyber Software Engineer 02/2023 – Present

  • Serve as a software engineer across multiple classified defense programs, with a focus on reverse engineering and low-level/embedded development.
  • Designed and implemented a software emulator for a software-defined radio (SDR) payload, implementing TCP/UDP and serial communication protocols using object-oriented design (inheritance and polymorphism).
  • Delivered design and implementation of new product features; contributed to 25+ major customer deliveries across programs over tenure.
  • Collaborated within program teams and coordinated across multiple teams and programs; mentored and helped onboard teammates.

Associate Cyber Software Engineer 08/2020 – 02/2023

  • Test-automation engineer across defense programs, using an internal test framework and GitLab CI runners in support of multiple customer deliveries.
  • Maintained and extended large program-specific automated test suites and GitLab CI pipelines (across multiple runners), and contributed upstream fixes to a shared internal test-framework repository used across programs.
  • Received a BRAVO award for a rapid, quick-turnaround customer delivery that fulfilled urgent warfighter needs (in support of multiple quick-reaction capabilities / QRCs).
  • Performed security research and reverse engineering of widely used software and hardware, including GPS and RF technologies and microcontroller-based systems (notably ARM and PowerPC).

Cincinnati Precision Instruments — Cincinnati, Ohio

Information Technology Manager 02/2019 – 05/2020

  • Managed all IT operations and a $300,000 IT budget, streamlining processes to cut operating costs by $50,000.
  • Led an IT department of 3 employees, recruiting, hiring, and conducting performance reviews for 2 college co-op / intern positions.
  • Liaised with vendors and team members to promote ongoing network design; reevaluated and optimized systems and software to scale with company growth.
  • Analyzed network security and infrastructure, recommending and installing upgrades across 55 workstations.
  • Performed detailed risk/constraint assessments, identifying 6 major areas of unaccounted risk, and developed mitigation strategies and upgrades.
  • Built and maintained a production virtualization environment of 12 business-critical virtual machines; streamlined processes using IndySoft and QuickBooks.

Software Developer / Software Engineer 01/2016 – 02/2019

  • Analyzed, designed, administered, and supported 8 Microsoft SQL databases, including backup and migration strategies, with rigorous pre-deployment testing and post-deployment issue resolution.
  • Designed, built, documented, and tested 28 major internal projects (12 new, 16 existing) using VBScript, C#, Java, Pascal, and Delphi, consistently surpassing client expectations.

Technical Skills

  • Programming Languages: Python, C, C++, C#, Java, Assembly, VBScript, Pascal, Delphi (plus shell scripting; JavaScript/TypeScript and Go via open-source work).
  • Reverse Engineering & Vulnerability Research: Binary and firmware reverse engineering (static and dynamic analysis); Ghidra (custom processor modules, loaders, and scripting); fuzzing / vulnerability discovery (libFuzzer and harness development) and crash triage; custom/proprietary protocol analysis and emulation (TCP/UDP, serial, TDLs). Tooling: Ghidra, Fireflight, TAU, Nmap, Metasploit, OpenVAS, Wireshark, Snort, sguil, libFuzzer, SonarQube.
  • Processor Architectures / ISAs: Xtensa (incl. ESP32/Tensilica), ARM (32- and 64-bit / AArch64), MIPS, PowerPC.
  • Embedded & Low-Level: Bare-metal C/C++ on microcontrollers (register-level programming); RTOS-based development; bus and I/O protocols (GPIO, UART/serial, SPI, I2C, TCP/UDP); hardware debug/programming interfaces (JTAG, SWD); firmware extraction and parsing (e.g., ESP32 flash dumps).
  • SDR / RF & Signals: Software-defined radio payload emulation and integration; SDR hardware (HackRF, RTL-SDR, BladeRF); Universal Radio Hacker (URH) for wireless-protocol reverse engineering.
  • Databases: Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL), MySQL.
  • Systems, Networking & DevOps: Ubuntu Server 14.04 and later, macOS 10.8 and later, Windows 7/10/11, Windows Server 2008+, Cisco, GitLab CI runners, Docker, Nginx/reverse proxies, self-hosted infrastructure, virtualization.
  • Tooling & Other: LaTeX, Git/GitHub, IndySoft, QuickBooks.

Education

University of Cincinnati — Cincinnati, Ohio

  • Master of Science, Computer Science (May 2025)
  • Bachelor of Science, Information Technology — Cybersecurity Track (2020)

Cincinnati State Technical and Community College — Cincinnati, Ohio

  • Associate of Applied Science, Software Engineering

Open-Source & Notable Contributions

Ghidra — Xtensa Processor Support

Developed a Tensilica Xtensa processor module for Ghidra (the architecture behind the ESP8266/ESP32) and contributed it upstream to the NSA's open-source Ghidra project. Xtensa support is now included in Ghidra as of version 11.0.

Upstream PR · Repo

Personal Projects

Flagship — ESP32 / ESP-IDF Reverse-Engineering Toolchain for Ghidra

Built a complete toolchain for reverse engineering ESP32/ESP8266 firmware in Ghidra: a Tensilica Xtensa processor module (register windowing, MAC16, loop options) contributed upstream and now in Ghidra 11.0; an ESP32 flash-dump loader and firmware-image parser; a CMSIS-SVD peripheral loader; Ghidra Data Type (GDT) archives for the ESP-IDF SDK; and auto-generated Rizzo/FunctionID function signatures across IDF v2.0–v5.1.

Xtensa module · Flash-dump loader · Image parser

Volunteer & Awards

Ohio Cyber Reserve (OhCR) — Southwest Ohio Region

  • 02/2020 – 08/2021
  • 08/2022 – 11/2023

BRAVO Award (Northrop Grumman)

For a rapid, quick-turnaround customer delivery that fulfilled urgent warfighter needs (in support of multiple quick-reaction capabilities / QRCs).