FormerEngineering · Software Engineer

Cooper de Nicola

“Building the ultimate attacker @ Armadin”

LinkedIn GitHub

Joined: Jan 2025
How they joined: Directly
Before Cognition: Stanford UniversityCS 144: Computer Networking, Course Assistant
Now: Armadin

Overlapped before Cognition

Stanford University16

Sources¹linkedin.com ²linkedin.com

Autumn profile

Researched with Autumn · 2026-11-04

Details

LocationUnited States

Company sitearmadin.com

UniversityStanford University

Computer ScienceTeachingPenetration TestingWeb DesignCreative WritingCopy EditingJournalismWritingKey Performance IndicatorsBusiness Process ImprovementBusiness PlanningBusiness Intelligence (BI)CybersecurityInformation SecurityNetwork SecurityComputer NetworkingVulnerability AssessmentJavaMicrosoft OfficeC++CMicrosoft ExcelJavaScriptPython (Programming Language)LeadershipTeamworkEnglishItalianRed Teaming

Notes

Since Nov 2025 he has been Member of Technical Staff at Armadin, Kevin Mandia's AI offensive-security startup, where his role is listed as 'Founding Infra Engineer'.Nov 2025
Armadin raised $255.5M at a $2.5B valuation (TechCrunch, Oct 2026). Cooper posted: "Casual Thursday night at Armadin: benchmaxxing and bug squashing to celebrate our Series B! We're raising the bar and growing the team. Come do the heavy lifting with us..."Oct 3, 2026Casual Thursday night at Armadin: benchmaxxing and bug squashing to celebrate our Series B! We’re raising the bar and growing the team. Come do the heavy lifting with us... https://lnkd.in/gFJxtnAj
In Aug 2025 his crew won DEF CON's Crypto & Privacy Village Gold Bug competition and earned a Black Badge. He thanked teammates Roberto Lama, George Hosono, Ashley Dai, Jack Cable, Teddy Zhang, Seyma Kilic, Keely Podosin and Liam J. Fay, plus mentor Alex Keller of Stanford Applied Cyber. Quote: "After four years chasing this treasure, I am thrilled to share that my crew struck gold at #DEFCON". Roberto Lama, a Gold Bug teammate, is now an Armadin engineering leader.Oct 3, 2025After four years chasing this treasure, I am thrilled to share that my crew struck gold at #DEFCON: winning the Crypto & Privacy Village’s Gold Bug 🥇🪲 competition and earning a coveted Black Badge — DEF CON’s highest award, granting us lifetime access 🏆 I want to thank the greatest crew who embarked on the treasure hunt with me: Roberto Lama, George Hosono, Ashley Dai, Jack Cable, Teddy Zhang, Se
Joined Cognition (maker of Devin and Windsurf) as a Software Engineer in 2025, after leaving Zoox the same year; the LinkedIn entry gives only the year, with no project description. The stint ended in 2025 when he moved to Armadin.2025
Product Security Engineer III at Zoox from 2023 to 2025, described as 'Offensive Security tech lead @ Zoox'. He worked on robotaxi security with Zhisheng Hu, Shanit Gupta (Zoox CISO) and Ali Ayoub.2023
Student-era security internships: Snap Inc. Application Security (Jun-Sep 2020, Santa Monica), Robinhood Trust & Safety team security intern (Jan-Mar 2021), Mandiant Red Team Consultant (Jun-Aug 2021) and Instabase Software Engineer, Security (Jun-Sep 2022). The Mandiant red-team stint is an early link to Kevin Mandia, Mandiant's founder and now his CEO at Armadin.Jun 2021
Head course assistant for Stanford's INTLPOL 268 Hack Lab (Sep 2020 - Dec 2022). He designed hands-on labs, managed 500 GCP VMs and led sections for a 200-student class. He was also a course assistant for CS 255 Cryptography (Winter 2023) and CS 144 Computer Networking (Spring 2023).Sep 2020
Public headline says "Building the ultimate attacker @ Armadin".
Cooper de Nicola is listed among the people tagged in a LinkedIn post about Armadin, a cybersecurity startup founded by Kevin Mandia that raised approximately $189.9 million in combined seed and Series A funding to develop autonomous AI agents designed to detect and respond to cyber threats.Mar 11, 2026
Cooper de Nicola posted about Corridor, describing it as the first tool securing AI generated code in real-time as it is being written. Quote: "Securing your code just got 10x easier!"Oct 25, 2025
Cooper de Nicola congratulated Jack Cable, Ashwin Ramaswami, Alex Stamos, and the whole team at Corridor. Quote: "Congrats to Jack Cable, Ashwin Ramaswami, Alex Stamos, and the whole team at Corridor"Oct 25, 2025
Cooper de Nicola is listed as a Contributor on a Black Hat USA 2025 briefing whose Speaker is Shanit Gupta.2025

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