About Victoria Drake

🕵🏻‍♀️💕 Hello! I’m Victoria Drake. You’ve now joined the few special people who have previously discovered this page. Congratulations! This site is my blog, where I share my technical experiences in articles and tutorials. I write about designing and developing secure software, and geek out over development processes and good programming practices. Here’s more about me.

📖 I’m a co-author and core maintainer for the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Web Security Testing Guide (WSTG). Organizations worldwide consider it the foremost open source resource for web application security testing. As part of its core team, I establish modern CI/CD and automation practices, and help to incorporate updated recommendations from NIST publications and security researchers.

🚀 I worked as a freelance software developer and consultant for years. I saw firsthand how difficult it is to hire competent developers through a traditional resume process. To help, I developed ApplyByAPI.com. It’s a SaaS application that allows companies to accept candidate submissions via API. This acts as an effective initial filter for developer capabilities, reducing screening efforts. All our customers hired great developers through ApplyByAPI and reduced time spent screening applicants by an average 71%. (Yes, that’s up-to-date!)

🏆 Along with shipping projects, I enjoy writing technical articles for numerous publications. You can find me in The Startup, Better Programming, Towards Data Science, Hacker Noon, and more. I earned the annual Top Contributor award from freeCodeCamp two years in a row in 2018 and 2019. I was also recognized as a Distinguished Author on the DEV.to developer platform. I’m passionate about paying it forward and serve as mentor and code reviewer in multiple communities.

🖌 For fun, I design and code static site generator themes like Introduction for Hugo, as well as a super-nostalgic Visual Studio Code theme inspired by my trips to Tokyo, Kabukichō.

📍 I spent a few years traveling the world with just one bag, and now spend most of my time around Washington, DC. I currently serve as Director of Engineering leading the development of enterprise cybersecurity software.

💌 To ask me anything, say hello@victoria.dev.

🔎 Find me in the ‘verse: