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About Victoria Drake
π΅π»ββοΈπ Hello! I’m Victoria Drake, and I’m a software developer. You’ve found my blog, where I share my technical experiences designing and developing software with a security-first mindset. I also geek out over computer science topics, command line tools, and good programming practices.
π I’m a co-author and maintainer for the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Web Security Testing Guide (WSTG). Aside from inventing lengthy acronyms, the project produces the foremost open source resource for testing web application security used by organizations and developers worldwide. As part of its small core team, I’m establishing modern CI/CD and automation practices, incorporating updated recommendations from NIST publications, and serving as editor for submissions from contributors.
π I’m passionate about building tools to help people save time and do more with their lives. Recognizing the difficulty in industry with hiring competent software developers through the traditional resume process, I developed ApplyByAPI.com. It’s a SaaS application that allows companies to accept candidate submissions via API POST request, acting as an effective initial filter for developer capabilities. All of our customers successfully hired through ApplyByAPI while reducing human hours spent on screening by around 79%.
π I enjoy writing technical articles for a number of 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, and have also been recognized as a Distinguished Author on the DEV.to developer platform.
π For fun, I design and code static site generator themes like Introduction for Hugo and a super-nostalgic vaporwave Visual Studio Code theme named KabukichΕ.
π I spent a few years traveling the world with just one bag, and now spend most of my time around Washington, DC. When I’m not on a computer, I’m probably making pour-over coffee or practicing my zombie apocalypse skills, just not at the same time since shooting arrows through zombie heads makes maintaining a steady pour rate rather difficult.
π To ask me anything, say hello@victoria.dev.