Samuel Howard — Cybersecurity Engineer

Experience

Where I've Worked

Professional roles that shaped how I think about systems, reliability, and people.

Jan 2023 – Present

Senior Baseband Test Technician

UNH Interoperability Laboratory · Durham, NH

Tested Ethernet IEEE 802.3 standards across speeds from 10M to 25G, verifying interoperability between products from multiple vendors.
Developed custom test plans to meet client-specific Ethernet device certification requirements.
Managed testing schedules and coordinated directly with customers to hit tight project deadlines.
Led a team of student interns in building a cable-changing robot — overseeing Python, Flask, Arduino, and all hardware assembly including soldering.
Onboarded, trained, and mentored new hires, adapting quickly as team composition changed each semester.
Assembled SMT, through-hole, and SMA components for prototype boards and test fixtures (PCB work).

Jan 2023 – 2024 (earlier tenure)

Junior Baseband Test Technician

UNH Interoperability Laboratory · Durham, NH

Learned interoperability, Clause 4 MAC, and Clause 31 Flow Control testing under IEEE 802.3 standards.
Constructed multiple Ethernet cable plants for 10M through 10G in-house test beds.
Practiced Agile sprint methodologies using the Atlassian suite (Jira, Bitbucket, Confluence).

Feb 2021 – Apr 2021

Outward Bound Leadership Semester

Leadville, CO & Utah Desert

Completed a 55-day leadership-intensive backpacking and canoeing expedition across the Colorado Rockies and Utah desert.
Developed core skills in leadership, rapid decision-making, and high-stakes team coordination under pressure.

Skills & Expertise

What I Bring

A blend of software, hardware, and people skills built in the classroom, in the industy and real-world projects.

🛡️

Cybersecurity

Threat detection, log analysis, incident classification, and network security monitoring using industry-grade tooling and open-source intelligence.

Threat Intel OSINT Log Analysis Palo Alto

☁️

Cloud Computing

Hands-on experience with AWS, Azure, and GCP for deploying, configuring, and managing cloud infrastructure and services. Basic servers, Lambda Functions, Open ID connection, Kubernetes.

AWS Azure GCP OIDC Kubernetes

🐍

Software Development

Full-stack development from Python automation pipelines and Flask web apps to front-end dashboards and RESTful data interfaces.

Python Flask Java C HTML/CSS

🔌

Ethernet & Hardware

Deep expertise in IEEE 802.3 testing (10M–25G), cable plant construction, interoperability certification, and SMT/through-hole/SMA soldering for PCB assembly and prototyping.

IEEE 802.3 PCB / SMT / Through-hole Soldering SMA Test Fixtures

🤖

AI-Augmented Workflows

Proficient in leveraging Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI tools to solve complex problems faster, increase output quality, and scale the volume of work delivered without sacrificing precision.

Claude ChatGPT Prompt Engineering

🤝

Leadership & Teamwork

Led intern teams on robotics and automation projects, onboarded and mentored new hires, and thrived in dynamic teams where priorities shift quickly. Agile-native with real sprint discipline.

Mentorship Agile / Jira New Hire Training Team Leadership

Featured Project

Network Behavior

University of New Hampshire · Aug 2025 – May 2026

Project Lead · Computer Science, UNH

Automated Network Threat Monitoring & Analytics

Engineered a Python automation pipeline to parse and process 1,000,000+ line network traffic log files from the university's Palo Alto firewall infrastructure, replacing a fully manual review workflow and reducing operator processing time by a 10:1 margin.

Built a threat classification system that surfaces critical-severity security events by cross-referencing open-source threat intelligence reports and vulnerability detection service feeds — enabling faster incident response for network administrators. Results are published automatically to an Apache-hosted web dashboard built with Flask and HTML, providing a single centralized interface for real-time log querying, data visualization, and trend analysis backed by SQLite.

Led a two-team engineering group through Agile sprints (GitLab), coordinating the data visualization team and the threat intelligence/automation team simultaneously from concept to delivered product.

Python Flask SQLite Apache Threat Intelligence OSINT Data Visualization Agile / GitLab

SamuelHoward