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About

Final-semester student who builds real tools, not just findings — with tests, CI gates and strict typing.

Johan David Rodriguez Castro
Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia (remote-ready)

AI & Security Engineering · final-semester student | Model Training & Evaluation · Detection Engineering · Supply-Chain Security

Final-semester Systems & Software Engineering student (UPB Bucaramanga; expected to graduate in 2026)

I am a final-semester Systems & Software Engineering student at UPB (Bucaramanga, Colombia) with verified C2 English (EF SET), looking for a first remote role in AI and machine learning: training models and, above all, evaluating them properly. My second focus is cybersecurity, where I have applied most of what I have trained. I have trained tabular models (LightGBM, XGBoost), neural networks with TensorFlow/Keras (an SMS classifier at 98.1 % validation accuracy) and, right now, a LoRA adapter on a small language model (Qwen3-1.7B) with my own synthetic dataset, not yet evaluated against the base model. I work in Python and SQL. What I have measured, with its honest number. Phishing URL detector (LightGBM + SHAP): before training, I found two independent label leaks in the PhiUSIIL dataset; with both removed, the model reaches 70.5 % recall at a 1 % false-positive rate against phishing submitted two years later. Vulnerability prioritisation dashboard: I reproduced the 6.1× advantage usually quoted for the EPSS forecaster over CVSS, then froze its scores at five past dates and counted only later exploitation; the effort to reach 80 % coverage drops to 0.5–0.7×. Market system with XGBoost and agents (private repository): walk-forward validation and a gate that blocks live capital until the model clears 55 % accuracy; it scores 52.9 % today, so the gate stays shut. SlopGuard: a guard against slopsquatting, the package names a language model invents and an attacker registers, with 5 detection layers and 2,687 tests. At UPB I have volunteered as a developer and technical support since January 2026: I support the institution's end users, identify and analyse port scans and intrusion attempts on the network, and built, as part of a team, the GOATGuard mobile client (Flutter, TOTP 2FA). In 2025 I was Scrum Master of an academic project on high-availability infrastructure. I am also enrolled in the UPB postgraduate Specialisation in Information Security (in progress).

Skills

Security & AppSec

  • Software supply-chain security (slopsquatting detection)
  • Dependency scanning & pre-install guarding
  • Detection engineering (detection-as-code, MITRE ATT&CK T1566)
  • Risk-based vulnerability prioritisation (CISA KEV · EPSS · CVSS)
  • Phishing analysis & URL/host triage
  • Endpoint threat detection (port scans, intrusions)
  • TOTP 2FA & backup codes
  • Secure SDLC & CI security gates
  • Mobile app hardening (biometric lock with lifecycle re-lock)
  • Argon2id PIN hashing (memory-hard)
  • OS-backed secure storage
  • Encryption at rest (SQLCipher)
  • Row-Level Security (RLS)

Applied ML & AI

  • Gradient boosting (LightGBM, XGBoost) & ensembles
  • Data-leakage detection & honest evaluation design
  • Model explainability (TreeSHAP), reimplemented and parity-tested
  • Grouped, temporal and walk-forward validation; probability calibration
  • Statistical evaluation with bootstrap confidence intervals
  • Transformer NLP for sentiment (FinBERT)
  • Multi-agent orchestration (CrewAI) & LLM API integration
  • Model-as-a-service (FastAPI + Docker)

Languages

  • Python
  • TypeScript / JavaScript
  • SQL
  • Dart
  • HCL (Terraform)
  • LaTeX

Backend & Data

  • FastAPI · REST APIs
  • WebSockets & event-driven architecture (asyncio)
  • pandas / NumPy data pipelines
  • PostgreSQL · SQLAlchemy 2.0
  • DuckDB · SQLite · Streamlit dashboards
  • Hybrid SQL / NoSQL / in-memory data architecture
  • High-availability system design

Cloud & Infrastructure

  • Terraform (IaC), modules & state management
  • AWS — VPC, ALB, Auto Scaling, EC2, CloudWatch
  • Network segmentation & least-privilege security groups
  • Docker & container image hygiene
  • k6 load testing & CloudWatch observability
  • Google Cloud (BigQuery ML, Cloud Storage, DLP)

Tooling & DevSecOps

  • Git / GitHub
  • GitHub Actions / CI-CD
  • pre-commit
  • pytest & Playwright
  • mypy strict · ruff · import-linter
  • CodeQL
  • Package publishing (PyPI, npm)
  • Vercel · GitHub Pages

Frontend

  • React / Next.js (App Router) & Tailwind
  • Flutter UI
  • Responsive web (HTML / CSS / JS), D3.js data visualisation
  • Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA, axe-checked)

Soft Skills

  • Bilingual EN (C2) / ES (native)
  • Agile / Scrum (Scrum Master)
  • Technical writing: ADRs, specs and stakeholder-ready reports
  • Remote / async collaboration

Experience

  1. Developer / Technical Support (Volunteer)

    Pontificia Universidad Bolivariana (UPB) · Jan 2026 – Present · Bucaramanga, Colombia

    • Technical support for the institution's end users.
    • Endpoint threat detection: identifying and analysing port scans and network intrusion attempts.
    • Automatic classification of network assets (routers, printers, cameras) with a real-time monitoring dashboard and KPIs.
    • GOATGuard Android client (Flutter), a team network-monitoring project: real-time dashboard, inventory, severity-filtered alerts, TOTP 2FA and the JWT kept in OS-backed secure storage. Author of 19 of the client repository's 25 commits.
  2. Scrum Master (academic project)

    Pontificia Universidad Bolivariana (UPB) · Jun 2025 – Nov 2025 · Bucaramanga, Colombia

    • Ran the full Scrum cycle: sprint planning, daily stand-ups, retrospectives and stakeholder demos.
    • Contributed to the design of a high-availability infrastructure sized for about 100,000 concurrent users with a <500 ms latency objective (design targets, not measured outcomes), with hybrid SQL / NoSQL / in-memory data.

Education

  1. B.S. in Systems & Software Engineering

    Pontificia Universidad Bolivariana · Feb 2023 – Present (final semester)

    Advanced coursework in software architecture and systems design.

  2. Postgraduate Specialisation in Information Security

    Pontificia Universidad Bolivariana · Sep 2026 – Nov 2026 (in progress)

Certifications

Every certificate below links to its issuer for verification.

Security & Cloud

  • Introduction to Cybersecurity

    Cisco Networking Academy · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Protect Sensitive Data with Data Loss Prevention

    Google Cloud · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Secure Lakehouse Data

    Google Cloud · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Use APIs to Work with Cloud Storage

    Google Cloud · 2026

    Verify ↗

AI & Data

  • Google DeepMind: Train A Small Language Model

    Google · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Orchestrate Multi-agent Workflows with Gemini Enterprise

    Google Cloud · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Create Your First Gemini Enterprise Application

    Google Cloud · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Build a Smart Cloud Application with Vibe Coding and MCP

    Google Cloud · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Create ML Models with BigQuery ML

    Google Cloud · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Hugging Face Agents Course

    Hugging Face · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Machine Learning with Python

    freeCodeCamp · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Data Analysis with Python

    freeCodeCamp · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Intro to Machine Learning

    Kaggle · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Intermediate Machine Learning

    Kaggle · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Feature Engineering

    Kaggle · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Intro to Deep Learning

    Kaggle · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Pandas

    Kaggle · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Intro to SQL

    Kaggle · 2026

    Verify ↗

Engineering Fundamentals

  • Scientific Computing with Python

    freeCodeCamp · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Data Visualization

    freeCodeCamp · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures

    freeCodeCamp · 2026

    Verify ↗
  • Intro to Programming

    Kaggle · 2026

    Verify ↗

Languages

  • EF SET English Certificate — CEFR C2 (Proficient), 74/100

    EF SET · 2026

    Verify ↗