James does most of his research and work is at the intersection of the DevOps and Security communities. He works as a Sr. Engineer at Signal Sciences and is a supporter of the Rugged Software and Rugged DevOps movements. Seeing the gap in software testing, James founded an open source project, Gauntlt, to serve as a Rugged Testing Framework. He is the author of the Hands-on Gauntlt book and is a Lynda.com author of the DevOps Fundamentals course (releasing the fall of 2016).

He got his start in technology when he founded a startup as a student at University of Oklahoma and since then has worked in environments ranging from large, web-scale enterprises to small, rapid-growth startups. He is a dynamic speaker on topics in DevOps, InfoSec, cloud security, security testing, Rugged DevOps and serverless.

James is the creator and founder of the Lonestar Application Security Conference which is the largest annual security conference in Austin, TX. He also runs DevOps Days Austin and is on the global DevOps Days board. He also holds several security certifications including CISSP and GWAPT.

In his spare time he is trying to learn how to make a perfect BBQ brisket.