# Cooper de Nicola

Founding infra engineer at Armadin; ex-Cognition, ex-Zoox offensive security lead; DEF CON Black Badge winner  
Armadin  
United States

## At Cognition

- Role: Former Software Engineer (Engineering)
- Joined: Jan 2025
- How they joined: Directly
- Before Cognition: CS 144: Computer Networking, Course Assistant, Stanford University
- Now: Armadin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola)
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Stanford University (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola
- GitHub: https://github.com/cdenicola
- Domain: armadin.com

## 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'. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola)
- 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..." (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_its-amazing-how-far-weve-come-all-while-activity-7511945905177038848-LL15)
- 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. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_defcon-ugcPost-7370987037396492288-M-iS)
- 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. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola)
- 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. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola)
- 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. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola)
- 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). (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola)
- Public headline says "Building the ultimate attacker @ Armadin". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola)
- 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. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/founderstoday_armadin-secures-190m-to-build-autonomous-activity-7437560656691879936-76ZK)
- 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!" (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_securing-your-code-just-got-10x-easier-activity-7387651785655713793-DiRM)
- 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" (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_securing-your-code-just-got-10x-easier-activity-7387651785655713793-DiRM)
- Cooper de Nicola is listed as a Contributor on a Black Hat USA 2025 briefing whose Speaker is Shanit Gupta. (https://blackhat.com/us-25/briefings/schedule/)
- The Black Hat USA 2025 briefing Cooper de Nicola contributed to is categorized under the tracks Defense & Resilience and Cyber-Physical Systems & IoT. (https://blackhat.com/us-25/briefings/schedule/)
- Cooper de Nicola is listed as a Product Security Engineer at Zoox, Inc. in the Black Hat USA 2025 briefing description. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmPhJAz-5Rc)
- Cooper de Nicola co-presented the Black Hat USA 2025 talk 'Evaluating Autonomous Vehicle Resilience' with Zhisheng Hu and Shanit Gupta. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmPhJAz-5Rc)
- The talk describes the Adversarial Scenario Fuzzer, an automated testing framework that evaluates autonomous vehicle resilience against potentially harmful teleoperation commands. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmPhJAz-5Rc)
- Cooper de Nicola co-presented the talk "Web Hacking for Social Good" for CS 106S Week 8 with the page author. (https://saligrama.io/resume/)
- Cooper de Nicola posted on LinkedIn about Zoox Product Security hiring for multiple cybersecurity engineering roles across all experience levels, from intern and new grad to senior and leadership roles. Quote: "Product Security at Zoox is growing rapidly and we are hiring for multiple extremely interesting cybersecurity engineering roles across all experience levels — from intern and new grad to senior and leadership roles!" (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ)
- Cooper de Nicola described Zoox Product Security as owning the cybersecurity aspects of Zoox's robotaxi service, from on-vehicle software to associated infrastructure. Quote: "Product Security owns the cybersecurity aspects of Zoox’s robotaxi service: from on-vehicle software to associated infrastructure." (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ)
- Cooper de Nicola stated that Zoox Product Security hires offer the opportunity to work with a stellar team on impactful projects with large responsibility and support. Quote: "You will have the opportunity to work with a stellar team, on enriching and impactful projects on which you will be given large responsibility and support, on a product that will revolutionize the way we interact with and travel throughout our cities." (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ)
- Cooper de Nicola shared a Zoox job posting link for a Cybersecurity, Software Engineering Internship/Co-Op. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ)
- Cooper de Nicola shared a Zoox job posting link for a Product Security Engineer role open to new grad and all levels. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ)
- Cooper de Nicola shared a Zoox job posting link for an Application Security Engineer role. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ)
- Cooper de Nicola shared a Zoox job posting link for an Infrastructure Security Engineer role. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ)
- Cooper de Nicola shared a Zoox job posting link for a Director of Product Security role. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ)
- Cooper de Nicola noted that Zoox is also hiring for multiple Information Security roles involving design, implementation, and maintenance of PKI and IAM systems for infrastructure and the robotaxi service. Quote: "Additionally, Zoox is hiring for multiple roles in Information Security. You will play an essential part in design, implement, and maintain public key infrastructure (PKI) and Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems for our infrastructure and robotaxi service." (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ)
- Cooper de Nicola shared a Zoox job posting link for a Security Engineer - IAM role. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ)
- Cooper de Nicola shared a Zoox job posting link for a Senior/Staff Security Engineer - PKI role. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ)
- Cooper de Nicola encouraged candidates interested in other areas, stating Zoox is hiring at all levels across the board and is an amazing place to work with great people united on an exciting mission. Quote: "Interested in something else? We are hiring all levels, across the board. Zoox is an amazing place to work, with great people, united on an exciting mission." (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ)
- Cooper de Nicola shared a link to all Zoox job openings. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ)
- Stanford BS in Computer Science (2018-2022) and MS in Computer Science (2021-2023), overlapping as a coterm. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola)
- Cooper de Nicola co-presented the Stanford Applied Cyber Intro Security Workshop at ACWM with the page author. (https://saligrama.io/resume/)
- Building the ultimate attacker; this comes from the profile summary and preserves the person's own positioning. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola)
- Cooper de Nicola has GitHub achievements including Pair Extraordinaire, Pull Shark x2, YOLO, Quickdraw, and Arctic Code Vault Contributor. (https://github.com/cdenicola?tab=repositories)
- Cooper de Nicola has a public repository named dotfiles written in Shell with 1 fork. (https://github.com/cdenicola?tab=repositories)
- Cooper de Nicola is listed as a coauthor of the VehicleSec '25 demonstration "Scenario Fuzzer: A Simulation-Based Adversarial Testing Tool" alongside Zhisheng Hu, Ali Ayoub, and Shanit Gupta. (https://www.usenix.org/conference/vehiclesec25/presentation/hu-demo)
- The demonstration presents an adversarial scenario fuzzer for testing vehicle control systems in simulated environments that generates adversarial teleoperation commands optimized to maximize system vulnerabilities. (https://www.usenix.org/conference/vehiclesec25/presentation/hu-demo)
- The demonstration includes an overview of the fuzzer's architecture, its workflow, and an example adversarial test case designed to assess the robustness of autonomous driving systems against malicious teleoperation inputs. (https://www.usenix.org/conference/vehiclesec25/presentation/hu-demo)
- Cooper de Nicola authored the CatShare repository, a purposely insecure toy webserver for learning about security vulnerabilities. (https://github.com/cdenicola/catshare)
- CatShare was originally designed for Stanford's CS106S course. (https://github.com/cdenicola/catshare)
- Cooper de Nicola co-authored CatShare with Aditya Saligrama and George Hosono. (https://github.com/cdenicola/catshare)
- CatShare has since been used a few times for workshops by Stanford Applied Cyber. (https://github.com/cdenicola/catshare)
- CatShare features an IDOR vulnerability in the /user endpoint. (https://github.com/cdenicola/catshare)
- CatShare features an XSS vulnerability in the /hello endpoint. (https://github.com/cdenicola/catshare)
- CatShare features insecure session handling in the /login endpoint. (https://github.com/cdenicola/catshare)
- Previous roles include Software Engineer at Cognition; Product Security Engineer III at Zoox; CS 144: Computer Networking, Course Assistant at Stanford University; CS 255: Cryptograpy, Course Assistant at Stanford University; INTLPOL 268: Hack Lab, Course Assistant at Stanford University; Software Engineer, Security at Instabase; Red Team Consultant at Mandiant (now part of Google Cloud); Software Engineer, Security at Robinhood. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola)
- Education history includes Master of Science - MS, Computer Science, Stanford University; Bachelor of Science - BS, Computer Science, Stanford University. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola)
- Location is United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola)

## Experience
- Member of Technical Staff at Armadin (Nov 2025 - Present): Founding Infra Engineer
- Software Engineer at Cognition (Jan 2025 - Jan 2025)
- Product Security Engineer III at Zoox (Jan 2023 - Jan 2025): Offensive Security tech lead @ Zoox
- CS 144: Computer Networking, Course Assistant at Stanford University - Stanford, California, United States (Apr 2023 - Jun 2023)
- CS 255: Cryptograpy, Course Assistant at Stanford University - Stanford, California, United States (Jan 2023 - Mar 2023)
- INTLPOL 268: Hack Lab, Course Assistant at Stanford University - Stanford, California, United States (Sep 2020 - Dec 2022): Head course assistant for Stanford’s intro cyber security technology, law, and policy course. Design hands-on labs, manage course cloud infrastructure (500 GCP VMs), and led sections teaching 200-student class.
- Software Engineer, Security at Instabase - Menlo Park, California, United States (Jun 2022 - Sep 2022)
- Red Team Consultant at Mandiant (now part of Google Cloud) - San Francisco Bay Area (Jun 2021 - Aug 2021)
- Software Engineer, Security at Robinhood - Menlo Park, California, United States (Jan 2021 - Mar 2021): Software Engineer, Security, Intern on the Trust & Safety Team.
- Application Security Engineer at Snap Inc. - Santa Monica, California, United States (Jun 2020 - Sep 2020)
- Archeology Field Assistant - Bosnia and Herzegovina at Stanford University - Bosnia and Herzegovina (Jan 2019 - Jan 2019)
- Archeology Field Assistant - Venice, Italy at Stanford University - Venice, Veneto, Italy (Jan 2019 - Jan 2019)

## Education
- Stanford University - Master of Science - MS, Computer Science - (Sep 2021 - Jun 2023)
- Stanford University - Bachelor of Science - BS, Computer Science - (Jan 2018 - Jan 2022)

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmPhJAz-5Rc
- https://www.usenix.org/conference/vehiclesec25/presentation/hu-demo
- https://github.com/cdenicola?tab=repositories
- https://github.com/cdenicola/catshare
- https://saligrama.io/resume/
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_securing-your-code-just-got-10x-easier-activity-7387651785655713793-DiRM
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_zoox-cybersecurity-software-engineering-activity-7148345265203073024-UzLZ
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/founderstoday_armadin-secures-190m-to-build-autonomous-activity-7437560656691879936-76ZK
- https://blackhat.com/us-25/briefings/schedule/
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/cooperdenicola?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAB5mn3sBofGMEe_TIvSEz4B4XWov3QekJVI
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/01/kevin-mandias-new-agent-swarm-security-startup-armadin-raises-255-5m-at-2-5b-valuation/
- https://github.com/cdenicola
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/dsslater?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAABcCQloBxZJAesFqUkvqMoQ9TOtKYXWILIg
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/k-lu?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAACGy4igB_NEcMVWixbUKQWY5-wcllXn5Pew
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertolama?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAB549wkBEktwLpkrlLnnMAt-56qIqWXRfHo
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-f-wise?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAACXXvP8B5tyAuXn3VoIrPFteDRMoWPhxp4U
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/armadin/posts
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericfoster?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAAClmfIBeKyeit3Sd0C2cgci0eL2WpdnrRo
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/winnie-chai?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAAAZOWwBeMLYwASR2jmsuz_1fIVBtxnIf7s
- https://www.armadin.com/company
- https://github.com/cdenicola/shagworm-goldbug-2025
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_its-amazing-how-far-weve-come-all-while-activity-7511945905177038848-LL15
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cooperdenicola_defcon-ugcPost-7370987037396492288-M-iS


Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/cooper-de-nicola · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people