Nathan Gough

Senior Software Engineer transitioning back into full-time engineering after pursuing independent real estate investments. Recently completed an M.S. in Cybersecurity at UMBC.

Apache

NiFi PMC member and major contributor to the Apache NiFi and NiFi Registry projects, with extensive focus on application-level security, authentication systems, and CVE remediation. Previously built and operated large-scale data engineering systems using Hadoop ecosystem technologies including HDFS, MapReduce, Accumulo, and Apache NiFi, along with relational database systems such as MySQL / PostgreSQL.

Experience includes designing and supporting distributed data pipelines with a focus on reliability, fault tolerance, and performance at scale. Strong background in production troubleshooting, cross-system debugging, and collaboration with enterprise customers and open-source communities.

Independent Real Estate Investor at Self-Employed (2024-01 – Present)

Independent real estate investment pursuits

MPS Cybersecurity at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (2023-01 – 2023-12)

Master of Professional Studies in Cybersecurity program completion

Senior Software Engineer at Hortonworks / Cloudera (2018-04 – 2022-12)

Senior software engineer working on Apache NiFi and NiFi Registry projects with focus on security, authentication, and CVE remediation.

• Promoted to member of the Project Management Committee for Apache NiFi / Apache NiFi Registry in September 2022 after significant contributions.
• Led CVE management including CVSS assessment, producing fixes, dependency upgrades, and communicated updates to the open source community.
• Integrated and enhanced authentication and authorization mechanisms including X.509, OIDC, LDAP, Kerberos, and CSRF protections, improving system security and user experience. Integrated AWS and Google Cloud identity providers and resolved complex authentication and authorization issues.
• Consistently deployed and tested NiFi clusters and data flows for testing and verification purposes, including for major releases.
• Presented an 'Introduction to NiFi' crash course at the DataWorks Summit in both Barcelona and Washington DC.
• Resolved numerous customer issues with Apache NiFi and NiFi Registry, with direct consultation either written or through video call and supplying 'hotfix' code changes/solutions as required.

Data Engineer at Australian Department of Defence (2013-02 – 2018-04)

Data engineer developing and maintaining large-scale mission-critical systems for the intelligence community using big data technologies.

• Developed and maintained large-scale mission-critical systems to support analysts within the intelligence community. Utilized big data technologies, including Apache NiFi, MapReduce, Hadoop/HDFS, and Accumulo, and ensured robust and secure data handling.
• Configured, administered, and monitored production Apache NiFi environments and data flows, designing and implementing data integrity, fault tolerance, and reliability best practices across pipelines. Operated both virtualized and bare metal infrastructure.
• Build, deployed and maintained surrounding ecosystems including build and deployment systems using Jenkins, Artifactory, Satellite and Puppet. Performance metrics and logging with ElasticSearch, Grafana and Kibana fed by JConsole/JMXTrans/StatsD or NiFi.
• Served as on-call engineer for mission-critical production systems, independently diagnosing and resolving high-severity incidents.
• Broadened my experience with two different 6 month roles in Maryland USA, one in 2016 learning and using Javascript/Angular and another in 2017 as a direct project liaison to Australian DoD for PKI generation infrastructure procurement.

Master of Professional Studies in Cybersecurity – University of Maryland, Baltimore County (2023-01 – 2023-12)

Bachelor of Software Engineering (Honors) in Software Engineering – Australian National University (2009-02 – 2013-07)