Harish Kumar Pallerla

Versatile Offensive Security & Threat Analyst with a strong full-stack software engineering foundation, specialising in application security, mobile internals (Android), red/purple teaming, and threat hunting. Adept at both executing advanced adversary simulations and engineering enterprise-grade defensive measures. Proven track record of developing hardened security frameworks, performing deep-dive malware analysis, and leading end-to-end security engagements across traditional, cloud, mobile, and AI-powered systems to identify vulnerabilities and harden organisational resilience.

Freelance AI Engineer

(2024-11 - 2026-03)

• Designed and built multiple AI‑powered product prototypes using Python, FastAPI, PyTorch, TensorFlow, OpenCV, Hugging Face Transformers, and OpenAI/Anthropic APIs, applying secure‑design principles and adversarial‑resilience techniques throughout the development lifecycle.
• Developed full AI pipelines for text‑classification, embeddings, OCR, and image‑analysis workflows, validating feasibility through iterative experimentation, model tuning, and architecture refinement while enforcing secure data‑handling, safe model‑integration patterns, and robust input‑validation controls.
• Performed adversarial evaluations on LLM‑powered components, assessing jailbreak resistance, prompt‑injection vectors, output‑manipulation risks, and hallucination patterns. Built targeted test cases and threat models to identify gaps and strengthen defensive measures across AI‑assisted features.
• Conducted secure‑architecture reviews of backend logic, API integrations, and model‑execution flows to detect misconfigurations and unsafe dependencies.
• Developed internal tooling for automated log ingestion, crash‑pattern correlation, and LLM‑assisted code‑path de‑obfuscation to improve debugging, runtime stability, and model interpretability.
• Strengthened the security posture of the product's mobile application by hardening client-side logic, enforcing secure storage, validating permission usage, and ensuring safe communication with backend and AI-powered services across Android/iOS.
• Conducted structured threat modelling across the product ecosystem, identifying risks such as insecure API flows, reverse engineering vectors, client-side tampering, adversarial input paths, and unsafe integration patterns between mobile and backend components.
• Developed and maintained penetration testing tools and scripts, including API fuzzers, certificate pinning bypass utilities, adversarial input generators, and automated log analysis pipelines to support continuous security testing of both mobile and backend features.
• Ensured alignment with OWASP MASVS, MASTG, Android secure coding guidelines, and iOS security best practices when reviewing mobile app architecture, data flows, API integrations, and release readiness.

Security Consultant - IPSL (Intelligent Processing Solutions Ltd)

(2021-04 - 2024-10)

• Executed proactive threat hunting across Microsoft Defender, Splunk, Sysmon, and mobile-endpoint telemetry, developing hypotheses based on attacker TTPs, malware behaviour, anomalous patterns, and infrastructure weaknesses. Correlated multi-source telemetry to surface stealthy activity, uncover lateral-movement indicators, and drive rapid containment actions.
• Performed deep behavioural analysis of Android malware families, including Anubis, Cerberus, Joker, Hydra, and Alien, mapping credential-harvesting workflows, overlay attacks, keylogging hooks, dynamic code-loading patterns, and encrypted C2 channels. Used these insights to build custom detection logic and strengthen behaviour-based hunting across mobile endpoints.
• Validated detection coverage for red-team and purple-team operations by simulating Android malware behaviours, tuning alerts, and improving monitoring logic based on adversary tradecraft. Partnered with SOC analysts to refine detection thresholds, reduce noise, and enhance signal fidelity for high-risk behaviours.
• Expanded enterprise hunting coverage by building structured hunting playbooks aligned to MITRE ATT&CK, mapping mobile‑specific TTPs, cloud‑attack paths, and infrastructure misconfigurations into repeatable investigation workflows. Developed baseline behavioural profiles for normal application and endpoint activity, enabling faster anomaly detection and more targeted hunts.
• Led end-to-end offensive-security and security-engineering initiatives across web, mobile, cloud, and infrastructure environments, performing full-stack assessments, source-code review, adversary simulation, and threat modelling using Burp Suite, ZAP, MobSF, Frida, Nmap, Nessus, Metasploit, Impacket, BloodHound, and mitm6. Converted offensive findings into threat-hunting hypotheses and actionable hardening guidance adopted across multiple product teams.
• Owned Android security operations, conducting deep-dive analysis of mobile applications using Apktool, Frida, Objection, Ghidra, mitmproxy, and Burp Suite to uncover insecure logic, bypass controls, and validate resilience against real-world attacker techniques. Fed behavioural insights directly into detection engineering and hunting workflows.
• Developed a hardened Android security library (Java/C/OpenSSL) to detect rooting, debugging, emulator artefacts, hooking frameworks (Frida/Xposed), tampering, and unsafe runtime conditions. Implemented secure crypto, key-management workflows, certificate pinning, and biometric authentication. Adopted across multiple mobile products to detect malware-like behaviours and enhance runtime-based threat detection.
• Performed cloud and infrastructure security reviews across Linux and cloud-hosted environments supporting mobile-security pipelines. Identified misconfigurations, insecure services, and architectural weaknesses; used findings to generate new threat-hunting leads and improve detection logic for cloud-based attack paths.
• Designed and executed vendor evaluations, POCs, and tool-selection processes for mobile security, malware analysis, and endpoint-security tooling. Assessed architecture fit, integration complexity, detection capabilities, and operational impact. Led onboarding and lifecycle management of new tools used in threat-hunting and detection workflows.
• Contributed to early machine-learning–based detection initiatives by defining data-ingestion requirements for malware telemetry and validating features used in anomaly-detection and malware-classification models—strengthening automated behavioural-detection pipelines and supporting advanced hunting use cases.
• Led multiple concurrent red-team and purple-team engagements across new product launches, major updates, regulatory commitments, and SLA-driven workstreams—ensuring full coverage of threat models, test cases, detection validation, and remediation assurance under tight timelines. Used adversary-simulation results to refine hunting playbooks and improve behavioural detections.

Senior Threat Analyst - NHS – Health Education England

(2019-05 - 2021-02)

• Planned and continuously improved enterprise defensive controls aligning with CIS and NIST standards, investigating security alerts, and new detection use cases via Microsoft Defender, Splunk, and Sysmon.
• Executed end-to-end infrastructure, intranet, and Active Directory assessments—including scoping, threat modelling, and hands-on evaluation using BloodHound, mitm6, Impacket, Nmap, and Nessus.
• Integrated mobile security tooling within application CI/CD pipelines, designed secure crypto key management systems, and built custom security automation tools in Python to streamline incident response workflows.
• Supported incident response operations by researching emerging cyber threats, reconstructing attacker behaviors through deep log analysis, and authoring cloud security best practices for AWS environments.

Senior Full Stack Developer - NEXT PLC

(2018-11 - 2019-04)

• Engineered secure retail applications using MVC5, C#, and SQL Server, conducting regular PII compliance audits and optimizing data workflows via Active Batch.
• Automated infrastructure tasks and production fixes using PowerShell, collaborating with enterprise security teams to review threat models, data flows, and encryption strategies.

Full Stack Web Developer - Logo Docs

(2018-11 - 2019-04)

• Owned the full SDLC delivery and schema design for scalable C# applications across core administrative, accounting, and agent modules.
• Integrated third-party systems including iText PDF and external booking platforms while managing cloud deployments and SSRS reporting.

Analyst Programmer - Protech Computer Systems

(2010-02 - 2012-04)

• Built business applications using C# and VB.NET, supported by database design and data migration work.
• Developed dedicated Sales & Marketing module, integrating SSRS/SSIS and automating deployment workflows

Master of Science - Computer Programming - Staffordshire University (2009-09)