Education

  • University of Latvia

    2022—2024

    Master's Degree in Computer Sciences with Specialization in Software Engineering.

  • Riga Technical University

    2018—2022

    Bachelor's Degree of Engineering in Computer Control and Computer Science

Certifications

  • Google Cybersecurity Certificate

    In progress

    Security frameworks, threat detection, incident response, and SIEM tooling.

Skills

  • Application security

    OWASP Top 10, threat modeling, secure code review, vulnerability management, authentication and authorization design

  • Incident response

    Triage and root cause analysis, log analysis, third-party and supply chain risk review, phishing assessment, post-mortem facilitation

  • Offensive security

    External penetration test scoping and management, bug bounty program governance, CVSS severity assessment

  • Security governance

    Security policy authoring, DORA compliance, access control policy, asset tracking, secure SDLC

  • Programming languages

    PHP, Go, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, C++, C#, Java

  • Infrastructure & Tooling

    Linux, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Ansible, Grafana, Loki, Elasticsearch, GitLab CI

  • Frameworks & Libraries

    Symfony, Laravel, Yii, Phalcon, Spiral, React, Vue, Flask, Express, Gin

  • Databases & APIs

    MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, REST, OpenAPI, GraphQL, gRPC

Language

  • Latvian

    Native

  • English

    Fluent

Lauris Stekels

Security Engineer

Security engineer with a deep software engineering foundation. I lead application security at a high-traffic e-commerce platform, where I grew the security function from a single project into a dedicated team. I handle incidents, run external penetration testing and bug bounty programs, review code and third-party integrations, and support secure development across roughly 70 engineers. Backed by over 8 years of backend engineering in fintech, payments, and anti-fraud systems, I read, write, and audit code fluently across several programming languages.

  • Founder & Security Consultant

    SIA Ubik

    Independent company delivering security and backend engineering work to clients under contract.

    • Security Engineer / Security Team Lead

      Eneba, UAB

      October 2025—Present

      Joined to establish security as a dedicated function and now lead the security team. Handle security incidents end to end: triage, root cause analysis, containment, remediation, and post-mortem. Own the external penetration testing program from vendor sourcing and scoping through legal negotiation to execution, and govern the bug bounty program including severity assessment and payout terms. Review code, features, and third-party integrations for data handling, credential management, and supply chain risk. Drive vulnerability management, authentication and authorization design, and access control policy across a distributed microservice estate. Author security policy and lead DORA regulatory compliance work. Support secure development across approximately 70 engineers through code review, threat modeling, training, and security screening in hiring.

    • Senior Software Engineer

      Byborg Enterprises

      March 2025—July 2025

      Developed and maintained high-scalability backend features using PHP and MySQL on cloud-based infrastructure, and contributed to core architecture planning.

    • Software Engineer

      Eneba, UAB

      November 2023—November 2024

      Built the internal tooling used by the Risk Operations team to detect and investigate fraudulent activity, later expanding into payments as the teams merged into Payments and Risk. Developed and monitored distributed PHP services handling financial transactions in a high-availability environment. Led team knowledge-sharing sessions on secure and reliable transaction processing.

  • Senior Software Engineer

    Syncro Group AB

    January 2022—November 2023

    Led a direct banking integration with SEB on the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard, handling live account transaction data under bank-grade security and compliance requirements. Built microservices with PHP (Symfony) and AWS Lambda using CQRS and SQS messaging.

  • Software Engineer

    Printful, Inc.

    March 2021—December 2021

    Built and extended e-commerce integrations with REST APIs, including OpenAPI documentation.

  • Software Engineer

    SIA Paydoo

    June 2020—February 2021

    Backend work on payment processing systems, including PHP version migration and gRPC messaging services for internal communication.

  • Software Engineer

    SIA Mapon

    September 2018—June 2020

    Backend development on the Tachogram digital tachograph project (Laravel), including GraphQL API development.