- Jacob joins from the National Security Agency, where he built the NSA’s Developer Experience function from the ground up
- He said that the reasons behind joining Github which are passion and impact
GitHub has announced the hiring of Jacob DePriest as VP, Security Operations, to lead the Security Operations team under CSO Mike Hanley as part of its continued investments in security. Jacob joins from the National Security Agency, where he built the NSA’s Developer Experience function from the ground up and was in charge of fostering private and public sector engagement with the open source community.
In a Linkedin post, Jacob DePriest said, “I’m excited to announce that I’ve joined GitHub as VP, Security Operations! Not only am I thrilled to be leading such a foundational area for securing the GitHub platform and by extension much of the world’s software, I’m also honored to be a part of this world-class team. ”
He also added. “I’ve had an amazing run at NSA and will miss working with the brilliant folks there. Over the past 15 years, I’ve had countless opportunities to learn, grow, and evolve as both a leader and an engineer. I will always be grateful for my time there as well as working with and learning from so many great people.”
Passion and impact
He also spoke about the reasons behind joining Github. They are passion and impact. He said that people who know him are aware that he is passionate about helping developers, open source software, and security. Much of his time in at NSA was spent building developer tools, improving the developer experience, and advocating for more open source engagement. He said that he has spent years working on developer security, zero trust, and enterprise security, balancing practical security considerations with enabling developer productivity.
In terms of impact, he said, “The reason I worked so long in the public sector was about impact – the opportunity to make my country and the world a better place. For software developers and arguably software in general, there is no company on earth that has the potential for more impact than GitHub. When GitHub rolls out a new feature like code scanning or dependency review, it can have immediate, global impact to millions of repositories. I’m humbled to take part in the continued efforts to make software more secure and for GitHub to be a safe and trusted platform for developers and enterprises.”
