Hi, I'm
Andrew Brown
I build local AI systems, security-hardened infrastructure, and production software.
My long game? Creating autonomous systems resilient enough for deep space.
From the field to the full stack.
I've been in the field — literally. ISP installations for Starry, NOC monitoring with PRTG and Grafana, 50+ network deployments at ICS, and 3.5 years servicing electronic security systems inside bank branches. Vault doors, alarm panels, IP cameras, the works.
Then I built Vociferous — an offline speech-to-text desktop app, from scratch. 1200+ hours. 420+ commits. 14 GitHub stars. I scored a perfect 3,000/3,000 in NCL Spring 2026 — 19th individually out of 7,010 and led a team to 18th out of 3,634, both 100th percentile. I'm president of Franklin University's Programming SIG, senior officer in the Cybersecurity SIG, and I've delivered 30+ presentations across both clubs.
I care about what happens to people when they use software. Vociferous exists because it shouldn't take an internet connection to transcribe your own voice. Every system I design starts with the same question: what does the person on the other side of this actually need?
The right amount of complexity is the minimum needed for the current task.
"...[Airplanes] are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality."
What I work with
Languages
Frameworks & Tools
Infrastructure
Security
AI / ML
Generative Media
Monitoring
Networking
Aerospace & Orbital Mechanics
Spacecraft Systems
Defense, Geospatial & Strategic Systems
Where I've worked
Financial Security Systems Specialist
Wittenbach Business Systems
Physical security contractor whose primary client was Huntington Bank. Maintained all electronic security infrastructure across bank branches — DMP panels, vault doors, KABA locks, IP cameras, NVR systems.
- Upgrades and preventative maintenance on networked security systems across financial institution branches.
- Troubleshot alarm systems, access control, and surveillance to restore service and reduce repeat failures.
- Serviced vault door hardware, electronic lock mechanisms, and DMP alarm panels across Huntington Bank branches.
- Coordinated service windows directly with branch operations managers to minimize disruption during business hours.
- Managed IP camera and NVR infrastructure — firmware maintenance, remote diagnostics, and component replacement.
Security Systems Specialist
Cennox, Inc.
Installed and serviced networked electronic security systems — DMP Remote Link, Wireshark, Wisenet Device Manager.
- 30+ DMP burglary system takeovers and CCTV deployments.
- Wrote technical guides and trained 12+ field technicians on integration troubleshooting.
- Programmed DMP Remote Link and central station communication paths for alarm system takeovers.
- Diagnosed communication faults between DMP panels and monitoring centers, restoring supervision within SLA windows.
- Maintained Wisenet IP camera systems — configuration, component replacement, and NVR programming.
Field Services Engineer
ICS Technology Group
Network installations and rehabilitations for SMBs — Ubiquiti and MikroTik deployments.
- 50+ Ubiquiti and MikroTik devices deployed across routing, switching, and wireless.
- Delivered a deployment two weeks early. Improved client network performance ~30%.
- Planned and deployed point-to-point radio internet supporting ~74 households.
- Configured VLANs, firewall rules, and DHCP scoping across UniFi and MikroTik RouterOS environments.
- Conducted site surveys and cable plant assessments prior to each deployment.
Reliability Engineer (Remote NOC)
Starry, Inc.
Network operations center — monitoring, triage, and escalation for ISP infrastructure.
- Monitored network performance with PRTG and Grafana across ISP infrastructure.
- Resolved 100+ PagerDuty equipment alerts during critical periods.
- Produced site reports and coordinated restoration during high-alert periods.
- Triaged alerts by severity — assessing, escalating, or resolving per runbooks with appropriate priority.
- Maintained shift logs and incident documentation to support handoffs and root-cause investigation.
Subscriber / Installer
Starry, Inc.
Residential wireless internet installation and on-site diagnostics.
- Installed and maintained fixed wireless CPE equipment for residential broadband subscribers.
- Performed on-site diagnostics for connectivity, signal quality, and performance issues.
- Walked subscribers through equipment operation, signal indicators, and self-service troubleshooting at point of install.
How I lead
President of Programming
Franklin University ACM — Programming SIG
2024 — Present- Delivered weekly presentations and workshops covering Python, Git workflows, AI architecture, and software engineering fundamentals.
- 5-episode "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" series covering ML paradigms, neural network architecture, backpropagation, RAG, AI ethics, and frontier models.
- 3-part "Fundamentals of GitHub" series teaching professional Git workflows to student developers.
- Built the organizational structure of the club from scratch — roles, decision-making, communication.
Senior Officer
Cybersecurity Special Interest Group — Franklin University
2024 — Present- Designed and delivered defensive-security presentations including "Physical Security for SOC Analysts" — bridging 3.5 years of field experience into cybersecurity context.
- "Hashing Made Simple" — made cryptographic concepts approachable for non-technical audiences.
- Built the cybersecurity lab infrastructure: honeypot VMs, VLAN isolation, WireGuard VPN access.
- Created a comprehensive NCL prep briefing from Fall 2025 experience (20th/4,674 teams).
NCL Team Leader
Franklin University NCL Teams
2025 — 2026- Led Home Sweet 127.0.0.1 to a perfect 3,000/3,000 score and 18th place out of 3,634 teams nationally in Spring 2026.
- Led Team Terminalators to 20th place out of 4,674 teams nationally in Fall 2025.
- Coordinated divide-and-conquer task assignment by team member skillset.
- Documented category walkthroughs, tooling notes, and prep material for future competitors.
What I've built
Vociferous
Local-First Dictation — Your Voice, Your Hardware
A cross-platform desktop application for offline dictation, local transcription, and controlled AI refinement. Vociferous captures speech on-device with faster-whisper and CTranslate2, stores sessions locally in SQLite, and routes frontend actions through an intent-driven backend so recording, refinement, tagging, search, and analytics stay coherent. It exists because private speech should not require a cloud subscription, a persistent connection, or trust in someone else's server. Nothing leaves your hardware. No cloud, no telemetry, no exceptions.
Community Engagement Engine for Discord
Event-driven system that records guild activity into an immutable event lake, evaluates it through a composable rule engine, and rewards members with currency and XP. Versioned rules with optional historical replay, achievement system, marketplace, member dashboards, and public leaderboards. One instance, one guild, full data ownership.
FUNet
Cloud Service Backend
Student-led microblogging platform built cloud-first. REST interface designed for gRPC and message broker expansion. Team project at Franklin University — core contributor.
Homelab
6-VLAN Segmented Network & Services
MikroTik-routed, UniFi-switched homelab running 15+ services. Plex, Pi-hole, Graylog, MinIO, WireGuard VPNs, and a weekly-reset pen test training lab. Six VLANs because I don't trust my own IoT devices.
Interactive Hashing Teaching Lab
Presenter-driven CLI tool with five demos: toy hash functions, collision generation, the avalanche effect, password hashing with bcrypt, and rainbow table lookups. Built for my "Hashing Made Simple" presentation at CySec.
TCP Canvas Pages
ACM Student Chapter Hub — Franklin University
Lead maintainer of the Technology Community of Practice Canvas course — the central hub for Franklin University's ACM Student Chapter. Houses SIG landing pages, newsletters, resource directories, meeting recordings, and membership onboarding for four Special Interest Groups spanning cybersecurity, programming, cloud, and analytics.
Cybersecurity
Perfect score — 3,000/3,000 points with 93.3% accuracy across all nine categories. 100% completion rate against a field averaging 40.3%. Top 0.3% of 7,010 solo competitors nationally.
Perfect score — 3,000/3,000 points with 90.6% accuracy as part of team "Home Sweet 127.0.0.1" representing Franklin University. 100% completion rate. Top 0.5% of 3,634 teams nationally.
The National Cyber League is a bi-annual cybersecurity competition run by Cyber Skyline, covering OSINT, network traffic analysis, cryptography, log analysis, password cracking, web application exploitation, and forensics. Top 0.5% of 4,674 competing teams nationally.
Solo division of the same competition — placed 121st individually across thousands of competitors. Categories reward hands-on execution: you either crack the hash, capture the flag, or you don't.
Cyber Skyline Reports
Programming
1200+ hours of solo development from first prototype to local-first desktop application. Offline speech capture, CTranslate2-backed transcription, controlled local refinement, session management, tagging, analytics, and a real-time activity dashboard.
Original talks and workshops as President of the Programming SIG (PSIG) and Senior Officer of the Cybersecurity SIG (CySec) at Franklin University — covering software engineering, AI architecture, professional Git workflows, cryptographic fundamentals, and security operations.
Certifications
In Progress CompTIA Network+ — expected soon
CompTIA Security+ Let's build something.
I'm open to roles across artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and software engineering. Long term, I'm aiming at autonomous systems for spacefaring missions; right now, I want to build useful systems with people who care about getting the details right.