About me:
My name is Salvatore (Sal) J. Skare, and I am a DevSecOps engineer and security researcher. I’ve been creating software since 2012, and love learning about new technologies and new ways of thinking about and writing code. My favorite languages to write are C and Python, but I’ve used a wide variety of programming languages over my career. My preferred development environment is the Bash shell and Vim. I’ve been a dedicated Linux user since 2013.
I received my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science in 2019 from the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse. I started a PhD program at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, but decided not to continue on a career in academia due to personal and family reasons. My professional interests include a wide range of topics within computer science, ranging from microcontrollers and robotics to machine learning and cybersecurity.
In my spare time I enjoy working on electronics projects or my homelab, reading, and spending time with my family. I also consider myself something of an amateur herpetologist and enjoy keeping and talking to people about a wide variety of reptile species (Seriously, ask me anything about reptiles!).
Professional history
For the last several years my focus has been on cybersecurity. I currently work at Trane Technologies as a DevSecOps engineer. Before that I worked as a research engineer at GrammaTech, where I had the pleasure of working on the novel dynamic monitoring platform ARTCAT (Autonomic Response To Cyber-Attack), as well tooling for the state-of-the-art disassembler DDisasm. Prior to my security work at GrammaTech I worked as a full stack web developer for the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse. I worked on some internal tools for faculty and students, as well as adding features to the university website (Such as the news and blogging backend).
Publications and selected work:
These are a couple samples of my technical writing. The first has been published in several conference proceedings, the second was a capstone project for a graduate course on program synthesis.
- Using a Recurrent Neural Network and Articulatory Synthesis to Accurately Model Speech Output Presented at the 2019 National Conference of Undergraduate Research.
- Programmatically Interpretable Reinforcement Learning in a Robotics Domain