Jack Jusko | Software, AI & Cybersecurity Engineer

01 — About

About

jack@homelab:~$ cat ~/.profile

# Jack Jusko — Software, AI & Cybersecurity Engineer

I have been building full-scale software applications for 14 years. I specialize in systems architecture, cybersecurity, and web development, with a focus on resilient infrastructure and responding to security threats. Since starting at age 10, I have worked across diverse technologies to build and secure complex systems.

I skateboard, snowboard, and ski. A few years ago, I pulled a 1981 Yamaha XJ550 out of a garage where it had sat for 30 years. It was missing parts and wouldn't start. I rebuilt it from the frame up, fabricating parts when I couldn't find them. It was a hack-and-slash job, but it worked. I rode it 2,000 miles across the country. When I'm not outdoors or in the garage, I run a home lab on a mini PC to host my own media servers and network shares.

02 — Experience

Work Experience

jack@homelab:~$ journalctl --user -u career --reverse --no-pager | head -n 3

Jan 26  fms-consultant.service     Started
Dec 23  bastion-cto.service        Started
Aug 19  eds-project-head.service   Started

Web Development and Cybersecurity Consultant — Foundation Management Services, Inc.

Jan 2026 – Present · Cleveland, Ohio

I serve as web developer and cybersecurity consultant for Foundation Management Services and affiliated organizations, building new features and maintaining websites for FMS Cleveland, the Bruening Foundation, and related properties. I advise on security posture and incident response, and use Cursor rules/skills and OpenRouter CLI agents to accelerate feature delivery and verification.

Acting CTO & Lead Architect — Bastion LLC

2023 – 2024 · Remote

Hired as Acting CTO & Lead Architect at an existing fitness marketplace startup, I architected a P2P platform that secured pre-seed funding and reached the finals of the Ann Arbor Desai Accelerator. I managed the technical roadmap and a team of software interns, designed scalable AWS infrastructure (EC2/RDS), built custom Stripe Connect logic for split payments and tax compliance, and shipped a Node.js/Vue.js SPA with real-time WebSocket chat and coach-matching algorithms.

Node.js, Vue.js, AWS, MySQL, Stripe Connect, WebSockets

Project Head — Enterprise Data Solutions

2019 – 2020 · Cleveland, Ohio

Promoted from Junior Developer to lead engineering of a cross-platform mobile marketplace for educational classes. I participated in the full Agile SDLC on a collaborative engineering team, architected C# / ASP.NET REST endpoints and SQL Server data access, and built base64 chunking upload logic for reliable large media transfers over unstable mobile networks.

C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server

03 — Build

Software Projects

jack@homelab:~$ ls -1 ~/projects/

brewledger/ bevwire/

BrewLedger

~/projects/brewledger/

I built a local-first brewery operations platform with mobile and desktop clients, offline sync, an append-only inventory ledger, batch tracking, and TTB compliance — one API, deliberate conflict resolution, and an intentional split between floor and office workflows.

Vue 3, Capacitor, Dexie, Express, SQLite, Stripe

BevWire

~/projects/bevwire/

I built a markdown-native publishing platform for beverage industry news — file-based CMS, no editorial database, plus Newswire, an AI pipeline that scrapes press wires, filters for relevance, and publishes industry-press analysis within minutes.

Node.js, Express, Playwright, OpenAI, Tailwind, Capacitor

04 — Secure

Cybersecurity Labs

Hands-on detection, response, and network telemetry work using Wazuh, Suricata, and simulated attacks in virtual lab environments.

jack@homelab:~$ sudo /var/ossec/bin/wazuh-control status

wazuh-manager is running · wazuh-agent is running

Simulated brute force detection and response

~/labs/brute-force-detection-response/

I deployed a Wazuh agent on an Ubuntu droplet to monitor for security events. During a simulated SSH brute-force attack using Hydra, I detected authentication failure spikes, identified the attacker's source IP, and wrote custom Wazuh rules to trigger an active response firewall drop. After debugging an initial misconfiguration, I successfully secured the system.

Wazuh, Ubuntu 24.04, Kali Linux, Hydra, Nmap, DigitalOcean, VMware

Advanced network threat detection and telemetry analysis

~/labs/network-threat-detection-telemetry/

I deployed Suricata on a dual-homed VMware sensor to capture network traffic in promiscuous mode, piped eve.json alerts into my existing Wazuh SIEM, and triaged Nmap stealth scans and Gobuster directory enumeration against an Apache victim. When the Wazuh agent event queue saturated under Gobuster flood volume, I tuned buffer settings and disabled the client buffer to prevent event drops.

Suricata, Wazuh, Ubuntu 24.04, Kali Linux, Apache, Nmap, Gobuster, VMware

05 — Writing

Latest writing

First-person notes on building software, security work, and whatever I am thinking through.

jack@homelab:~$ ls -lt ~/blog/ | head

Loading posts…

All posts →

06 — Background

Relevant Coursework

Education and certifications are in the sidebar.

jack@homelab:~$ apropos security | head -n 3

eecs388 (8) - Computer Security · eecs376 (8) - Foundations of CS · eecs445 (8) - Machine Learning

Course	Topics
EECS 388 — Computer Security	Web application security: SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, TLS/PKI Network security & defense: protocol attacks, firewalls, IDS, VPN, zero-trust Applied cryptography: AES, RSA, authenticated encryption, cryptanalysis Binary exploitation & reverse engineering: buffer overflows, ROP, Ghidra Hands-on projects in cryptography, web security, networking, and application security
EECS 376 — Foundations of Computer Science	Cryptography: Diffie-Hellman key exchange, RSA encryption & digital signatures Computational hardness & complexity (P vs NP) applied to cryptographic security Algorithm design & analysis: divide-and-conquer, dynamic programming, greedy methods Randomized algorithms and probabilistic analysis
EECS 445 — Introduction to Machine Learning	Supervised learning: regression, classification, kernel methods, neural networks, and regularization Unsupervised learning: clustering, density estimation, and dimensionality reduction Theory and implementation of state-of-the-art ML algorithms for large-scale real-world applications
EECS 470 — Computer Architecture	Design and organization of processors, memory hierarchies, peripherals, and I/O Performance techniques: instruction sets, speculation, parallel execution, branch prediction, virtual memory, cache design, and multiprocessing Hardware/software trade-offs for efficient task execution Hands-on processor component design using an HDL
EECS 481 — Software Engineering	Pragmatic software production: structuring principles, design methodologies, and informal analysis Development of large, complex software systems Real-world engineering practices for building and delivering production software Term project developing a full software system
EECS 486 — Information Retrieval and Web Search	Information retrieval: indexing, processing, querying, classification, and retrieval models/algorithms IR system implementation across text, image/video, audio, and geospatial data Web search: crawling, link analysis, and search engine development Social media and crowdsourcing in modern search systems

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