Resume — Michael Cochran · The Cochran Block, LLC

Professional Summary

Senior Systems Engineer and Title 10 Offensive Cyber Operator with 13+ years of federal cyber operations supporting mission-critical environments aligned with USCYBERCOM. United States Army Veteran transitioning into Rust-based, AI-piloted development, with a proven record of delivering production-grade software across AI infrastructure, fintech, SaaS, and open-source ecosystems. Operates as a solo engineer specializing in high-performance Rust, local AI/LLM integration, and fully Unlicensed (public domain) software aligned with frictionless procurement. Combines offensive cyber expertise, secure systems architecture, and modern AI-enabled development to support scalable, mission-driven service environments.

Experience

Owner & Engineer · The Cochran Block, LLC

Feb 2026 – Present

Owned end-to-end architecture, development, and deployment of sovereign, AI-driven Rust systems, delivering production-grade platforms across SaaS, automation, and offline-first applications. Led full-stack engineering from systems design through secure deployment, emphasizing local AI inference, performance optimization, and zero-dependency distribution.

Architected and deployed 10+ production-grade Rust platforms, consolidating AI orchestration, SaaS delivery, and secure payment processing — sub-50 ms API latency with fully self-hosted, sovereign AI capability across all systems.
Reengineered legacy automation paradigms into Rust-native frameworks via a 14-crate orchestration system and lightweight workflow engine — ~10 ms cold start vs. 1–3 s industry baseline, runtime overhead reduced >90%.
Developed a distributed AI augment engine with local LLM inference and agentic tool loops, enabling autonomous task execution without cloud dependency — data-privacy compliance +100%, external API costs $0.
Engineered a secure ISO 8583 payment processing system with AES-256-GCM encryption and append-only ledger, end-to-end transaction integrity and encrypted vaulting — 0 data exposure incidents, full audit traceability.

Senior Systems Engineer · MaxisIQ

Sep 2024 – Feb 2026

Engineered and maintained mission-critical cyber infrastructure and automation supporting high-availability operations, focused on secure system orchestration, identity management, and scalable tooling. Aligned Python-based automation with emerging Rust-driven, sovereign AI development models.

Developed custom Python-based system survey and remediation tools, automating server health checks and service repair across distributed environments — manual intervention −85%, system uptime 99.9%.
Automated SSH and Kerberos authentication infrastructure with secure provisioning and key rotation workflows — credential incidents −70%, access control hardened across 200+ nodes.
Implemented resilient service monitoring and recovery for high-availability mission ops — sub-5-minute incident response, sustained operational readiness.
Modernized legacy automation by introducing modular, Rust-aligned design patterns and lightweight service architectures — execution speed 3×, resource consumption −60%.

Senior Software Engineer · Two Six Technologies

Sep 2022 – Sep 2024

Designed and delivered secure data integration pipelines and backend tooling for large-scale cyber platforms. Hands-on integrations across the Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture (JCWA): JCC2, JCAP, UDP.

Engineered YAML-to-SQL data pipelines to normalize and ingest heterogeneous datasets into structured environments — processing throughput 4×, ingestion errors −65%.
Built regex-driven parsing engines to extract and standardize unstructured data — data accuracy +80%, real-time processing of 1M+ records / day.
Developed data sanitization and validation tooling to enforce schema compliance and remove anomalies — 100% data integrity across critical workflows.
Integrated modular data services into a unified architecture via Rust-aligned backend components — pipeline latency −50%, seamless interoperability across 10+ system interfaces.

Systems Developer · J38 JMOC-E · USCYBERCOM

Jun 2020 – Sep 2022

J38 JMOC-E co-dev lead on NDAA-directed offensive cyber operations study. Designed and delivered backend systems, APIs, and deployment pipelines for secure, high-availability environments — emphasizing scalable architecture, data integrity, and automated delivery.

Developed and deployed RESTful APIs supporting secure data exchange across distributed systems — response latency −45%, integration across 8+ platform services.
Designed CI/CD pipelines using GitLab and Docker to automate build, test, and deployment — release cycles −60%, 99.8% deployment success.
Modeled and optimized relational and semi-structured data systems for high-throughput applications — query performance 3×, 500K+ daily transactions without degradation.
Implemented and documented network protocol interfaces for reliable system communication and interoperability — transmission errors −70%, standardized integration across 10+ services.

Title 10 Offensive Cyber Operator · ARCYBER 103rd Combat Mission Team

Feb 2017 – Jun 2020

Executed offensive cyber operations and developed automation tooling to support mission execution across secure, high-stakes environments — emphasizing rapid data exploitation, system disruption, and operational efficiency.

Executed 100+ high-complexity operational cyber missions across distributed environments requiring precision and real-time decision support — 95% mission success rate, sustained operational readiness.
Developed Python automation tooling to streamline mission support and reduce manual operational overhead — execution time −60%, task reliability across 50+ mission cycles.
Built custom scripting frameworks for data collection and system interaction — data processing speed 3×, faster decision cycles in time-sensitive environments.
Enhanced mission support efficiency through automated system orchestration with modular, reusable components — repetitive task load −70%, operator throughput up across multiple concurrent operations.

Digital Network Exploitation Analyst · National Mission Team

Jul 2014 – Feb 2017

Network mapping, traffic analysis, and Intelligence Community reporting in support of National Mission Team objectives.

Education

M.S. Computer Science
Recursive Academy

Offensive Operations Foundation Course
National Security Agency / USCYBERCOM

Joint Cyber Analysis Course (JCAC)
Corry Station · 2014

Certifications

GIAC Security Essentials (GSEC)
Global Information Assurance Certification

Specialized Military Training

Cyber Operations Specialist (17C) Course
Advanced & Basic Leadership Course
JCAC Corry Station 2014

Authorizations

U.S. Citizen · U.S. Army Veteran · 30% service-connected disabled
SDVOSB — Final Review (MySBA Certifications)
Inactive Top Secret / SCI · CI Polygraph · reactivation eligible
U.S. Army MOS 17C Cyber Operations
All personal output released under the Unlicense (public domain)

Technical Competencies

LanguagesRust, Python, C, C++, Go, Assembly (x86 / ARM), Bash, PowerShell, SQL, JS / TS, YAML, TOML

RustTokio, Axum, Hyper, Tonic, Serde, sqlx, Reqwest, Leptos, Dioxus, egui, Candle, Kalosm, MiniJinja, age, rskafka, lapin

ArchitectureMicroservices, Event-Driven, DDD, Hexagonal, REST, gRPC, GraphQL, Protocol Buffers, OpenAPI, Distributed Systems, Mission-Critical

InfraPostgreSQL, SQLite, sled, Redis, Kafka, AMQP, MQTT, Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, Terraform, Cloudflare Workers, AWS (S3, IAM, SigV4, Lambda)

SecurityPen testing, OCO, DNE, TDNA, RE, MITRE ATT&CK, Cyber Kill Chain, Zero Trust, Burp, Wireshark, Metasploit, Ghidra, IDA

CryptoAES-256-GCM, ChaCha20-Poly1305, Argon2id, HKDF, Ed25519, X25519, BLAKE3, age, GPG, X.509, TLS / mTLS, Kerberos, OAuth/OIDC, JWT

AI / MLLocal LLM inference, Kalosm, Candle, RAG, fastembed, vector embeddings, agentic tool orchestration, multi-agent, Claude API, OpenAI API, function calling

ComplianceNIST 800-53, NIST 800-171, CMMC L2, RMF, ATO, FedRAMP, FISMA, STIG, DFARS, FAR, IL5 / IL6, SDVOSB, GovCon

▸ Verifiable Receipts

Public Rust repositories31

crates.io publications (gotemcoach)32

Lines of Rust shipped (net)144,272

Engaged engineering hours257+

Live production domains3

License postureUnlicense · github.com/cochranblock