Tauqir Ahmad

Work Experience

• Working on acoustics, security, and safety applications

• Led the development of a new secure tunnel implementation for our device management
• Started and led a 2½ year engineering-wide effort to migrate build system to Yocto
• Brought up and launched Meraki's first cellular security appliances end-to-end (MX67, MX68)
• Developed and launched Meraki's first cloud-based security appliance on AWS and Azure (vMX100)
• Oversaw firmware readiness for Meraki in China
• Revamped security and architecture of Meraki AutoVPN using well-established protocols
• Helped harden defense against reverse-engineering of backend servers using TPM-based solutions
• Set up fuzz-testing of Click Modular Router through AFL fuzzer as a side project
• Helped set up a scale testbed using thousands of vMXes

• Redesigned Meraki VPN to significantly reduce the attack surface
• Implemented VPN encryption, decryption, authentication, and exchange of keys using the IKE protocol
• Worked on a massive virtual testbed for our devices
• Worked on a side project to improve tools internally used at Meraki for code reviews/audits

• Worked with Professor Jesse Hoey on Bayesian Affect Control Theory
• Investigated turn-taking agents and group social simulations

• Extended and improved the user-facing ONS control script functionality for Linux Containers (LXC)
• Worked on the Open Network Software to add functionality and fix reported issues
• Started and led the effort to enable Yocto project compilation using LLVM/Clang

• Worked on LLVM and Clang to optimize performance on Intel processors
• Optimized parts of LLVM IR and parts of X86 code generation from IR
• Worked on adding Intel Haswell architecture's instruction set to LLVM and LLVM Vectorizer
• Worked on supporting Intel Memory Protection Extensions in LLVM

• Worked on Automated Malware Detection system and researched taint analysis for the system
• Added various analyses to improve malware detection capabilities
• Improved the API for the system to facilitate development of modules for the system
• Learned about various malware detection methods and reverse engineering of binaries

• Ported to x86 Linux, discovered design limitations and implemented solutions for an IPSec package, racoon2
• Added the ability to encrypt data (through racoon2-managed IPSec) to the WLAN simulation system
• Investigated parallel association of APs/MUs to the controller; Gained experience modifying Linux kernel for debugging

Skill Summary

• Leading technical projects in terms of design, execution, and people management
• Excellent problem-solving skills; very quick learner

• Proficient in C/C++, Python, Ruby/Rails
• Familiar with Go, Scala, Rust, Perl, PHP, Haskell
• Experienced with Linux kernel development and debugging
• Experienced with distributed systems, network programming, concurrency
• Experienced with compiler development
• Experienced in implementing and using various networking and security protocols
• Experienced with various compilers, build systems and debuggers
• Experienced with backend and frontend technologies
• Comfortable with development on Linux/MAC

Education

Projects & Activities

• github.com/mtahmed/antnest: A distributed system/tasks queue implementation in python (abandoned)
• github.com/mtahmed/balance: A command-based splitwise
• poky-clang, meta-tc-llvm: Secondary LLVM toolchain layer to allow yocto project to be compiled using clang
• Contributed a number of patches to the LLVM/Clang project
• Worked with androguard developer during BlackBerry internship
• Contributions to various other opensource projects on github/bitbucket

• Project leadership
• Problem solving
• Robotics
• Cryptography, security
• Embedded systems, sensors, IoT