Alejandro Avina Fernandez

Cloud Security Engineer | Threat Intelligence · SIEM · DevSecOps · AWS · Python · C++

About

Cybersecurity researcher and CS senior at CSUEB specializing in cloud security, detection engineering, and data pipeline architecture. Published peer-reviewed malware research (arXiv:2512.20860) and currently contributing to a NASA mission architecture as a Computer Hardware Engineer in the L'SPACE Mission Concept Academy. Focused on building production-grade security tooling at the intersection of cloud infrastructure and threat detection.

Work Experience

NASA L'SPACE Mission Concept Academy
Remote
NASA
Hardware
Systems Engineering

Jan 2026 - Present

Computer Hardware Engineer

Selected to design a planetary science mission architecture under strict NASA standards as part of a cross-functional team of engineers and scientists.

Conducting hardware trade studies to optimize mass, power, and data handling constraints for mission-critical spacecraft systems.
Co-authoring a comprehensive Preliminary Design Review (PDR) document detailing system specifications, risk mitigation, and hardware integration.
Developing system architecture documentation to ensure robust hardware-software interfacing and reliable data telemetry.

Remote
NASA
Hardware
Systems Engineering

Education

California State University, East Bay

2022 - 2026

B.S. Computer Science — Dean's List (Fall 2025)

Skills

Python
C++
Docker
Kubernetes
AWS (IAM · CloudTrail)
SIEM (Wazuh · Splunk)
MITRE ATT&CK
Sigma Rules
YARA
OpenTelemetry / OCSF
CI/CD (GitHub Actions)
Linux (Debian/RHEL)
Threat Intelligence
Malware Analysis
Zero Trust / IAM
DevSecOps
SQL
Bash

Side projects

pokiSEC: Malware Detonation Sandbox

Developed an isolated, containerized sandbox for safe malware execution and automated IOC extraction across multiple CPU architectures. Published as peer-reviewed research on arXiv.

Docker
Python
YARA
Research

Data Pipeline & Telemetry Normalization Engine

Python pipeline normalizing heterogeneous logs (Sysmon, CloudTrail) into a unified OCSF schema. Reduced cross-source query complexity by 40% through unified field naming.

Python
OpenTelemetry
OCSF
AWS

Detection-as-Code Pipeline

CI/CD pipeline that auto-lints, validates, and regression-tests Sigma detection rules against MITRE ATT&CK before production deployment. Tracks Defense Evasion blind spots.

Python
Sigma
GitHub Actions
MITRE ATT&CK

Multithreaded HTTP Server + WAF

High-performance HTTP/1.1 server from scratch in C++20 with a custom thread pool and integrated WAF blocking SQL injection, XSS, path traversal, and malicious scanners.

C++20
POSIX Sockets
Systems Programming

Alejandro Avina Fernandez's Resume