Charlie Williams

Application
Product
Cloud
Mobile
DevOps
AI
Data
Security

Summary

Staff Security Engineer operating at the intersection of security engineering, AI, and data—using AI to do security work, and securing AI workflows org-wide. I build developer-first guardrails across GitHub/CI and the PDLC: secure-by-default workflows, supply chain hygiene, and scalable code review patterns that raise security coverage without slowing delivery. I partner with infrastructure and data teams to unify telemetry in Snowflake/dbt and ship decision-grade security metrics and dashboards that help engineering and leadership act on real signals instead of noise.

Secure AI Enablement Copilot governance (policy + controls) MCP/agent guardrails (permissions + boundaries) Provenance + usage telemetry (audit readiness)
Secure Code & Dependencies SAST + secure code review guardrails SCA + upgrade automation (Dependabot) Secrets prevention + remediation loops
Cloud & API Security AWS controls + logging strategy AuthN/AuthZ patterns + API abuse prevention WAF/API gateway controls
Security Data Engineering Telemetry pipelines (normalize + enrich signals) Snowflake + dbt (trusted security datasets) Hex dashboards + risk metrics (coverage, ownership, time-to-fix trends)
DevSecOps & Automation GitHub Actions guardrails (policy-as-code) CI controls that reduce friction IaC scanning + drift-aware checks

Work Experience

Upside

Staff Security Engineer

- Present

Lead security engineering across Upside's product and platform orgs (100+ engineers) with a focus on secure-by-default developer experience, security telemetry, and secure AI enablement. Build GitHub/CI guardrails and supply chain controls that reduce friction and raise code quality. Partner with infra/data teams to unify telemetry and ship decision-grade risk signals. Lead Copilot governance, MCP/agent guardrails, and AI provenance standards across engineering and business stakeholders (IT/GRC/legal).

Upside

Senior Application Security Engineer

-

Established Upside's AppSec function and initial PDLC guardrails. Launched secure code review standards, GitHub Advanced Security adoption, and early CI/supply chain controls. Supported product teams with secure design guidance across web, mobile, and cloud services while helping define the scope of the Product Security team.

Booz Allen Hamilton

Lead Engineer

Application Security
-

Helped build and run the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' first agency-wide AppSec program, supporting thousands of applications. Led SAST/SCA reviews across major stacks and worked directly with teams to triage findings, improve SDLC practices, and prioritize risk-reducing fixes across hybrid and cloud environments (AWS/Azure).