Joseph Fenderson

About Joseph Fenderson

I am a Software Engineer with 6+ years of experience who realized that \'building it right\' means \'building it securely.\'Currently, I bridge the gap between Development and Security at Protective Life, where I manage critical release cycles for regulated insurance systems and remediate high-priority logic vulnerabilities in financial engines. Unlike traditional security analysts, I don\'t just find vulnerabilities, but I have the development background to fix them in the code.My Focus: Application Security (AppSec), Identity & Access Management (IAM), and DevSecOps. Current Tech Stack: C#/.NET Core, Azure DevOps, AWS Lambda, OAuth 2.0, and Terraform. Certifications: CompTIA Security+, Google Cybersecurity Professional.I am currently pursuing my Master’s in Cybersecurity & Information Assurance at WGU and am looking to bring my engineering mindset to a dedicated Application Security team.

Experience

1. Software Engineer Ii Application Development

   Protective Life

   Dec 2018 — Present · Birmingham, AL, US

   Release Management & Availability: Orchestrated the end-to-end release lifecycle for the Enterprise Life Illustration (ELI) system, successfully executing multiple Sunday production cutovers (Patches v7.8.40 – v7.8.45) to ensure high availability and zero-downtime deployment.+3Compliance & Regulatory Engineering: Implemented critical logic updates to strictly adhere to state and federal insurance mandates, including the automation of the Florida Comparative Form and tax qualification logic for Inherited IRAs in the Dimensions V system.+3Financial Data Integrity: Remediated high-priority logic vulnerabilities within financial calculation engines, such as resolving a 105% fund total calculation error in Variable Annuity (VA) UI modules and correcting \"SecurePay\" output logic to protect financial reporting accuracy.+2System Modernization & Maintenance: Led technical debt reduction initiatives by upgrading the ActiveReports engine (v19.1.1) for the IFS Reproposal Service and cloning complex product configurations (CCT #2,#3,#4) to support new business benchmarks.+4Secure API & Backend Development: Designed and maintained RESTful APIs and batch jobs using ASP.NET Core and SQL Server, integrating with third-party vendors (e.g, Schwab Genesis) while adhering to strict compliance and documentation standards.+2DevOps & CI/CD: Leveraged Azure DevOps for source control management and CI/CD pipeline execution, facilitating agile delivery of UI enhancements and backend fixes for regulated insurance products

Education

• Western Governors University

  Master of Science, Cybersecurity & Information Assurance

• Miles College

  Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Business Administration and Management, General

  2010 — 2015

• Robert E. Lee High School

  High School Diploma, Regular/General High School/Secondary Diploma Program

  2008 — 2010

• UAB Collat School of Business

  Certification, Software Development

  2018 — 2018