Leif Strand

Software Engineer

Los Angeles Metropolitan Area

About

The year was 1982. My family had just returned to California; I was starting the fourth grade. In the corner of every classroom was an Apple II and a Commodore PET. In the name of "computer literacy", we were taught Logo, even feeding our programs to a robot truck that drove around the floor. Fascinated, I started attending the after-school programming class. By high school, I was saving my allowance to buy Apple technical reference manuals. In APDAlog magazine, I read about MacApp, learning about OOP for the first time. Soon after, I learned Smalltalk. Naturally I majored in CS, hoping to turn a hobby into a career. After graduation, I saw a job posting on Usenet. Thus began an immersive C/C++ experience at Parasoft...

Experience

  • Senior Windows Engineer at Keeper Security, Inc.
    Oct 2025 - Present · 9 mos

    Developed and maintained Privileged Access Management platform for end-user devices using C++ and Windows APIs.

  • Senior Software Engineer at UFO
    Feb 2024 - Apr 2025 · 1 yr 3 mos

    Debugged and extended the C++ flight software framework for a 1U CubeSat. ~ Debugged 32-bit ARM microcontroller code running on FreeRTOS by using GDB over JLink, freeing scarce RAM and flash memory for use by new code. On a separate 64-bit Linux "payload" processor, wrote code to synchronize image capture between three separate USB cameras.

  • Software Engineer at Parasoft
    Feb 2018 - Nov 2023 · 5 yrs 10 mos

    Updated the company's legacy C/C++ memory debugging tool, Insure++. ~ Rewrote the product's dynamic linking technology so that it works on Windows 10 and later. Rewrote the desktop GUI app for both Windows (Win32) and Linux (GTK). Analyzed crash call stacks and core dumps for the runtime library and fixed bugs.

  • Software Engineer at Whalerock Industries
    Oct 2016 - Sep 2017 · 1 yr

    Member of the backend services development team at a digital media company that builds websites and apps for celebrities. ~ Wrote and maintained backend microservices on top of AWS Lambda, written in Python or Javascript.

  • Software Engineer at Slated, Inc.
    Sep 2014 - May 2016 · 1 yr 9 mos

    Member of the four-person development team at a small startup. ~ Mostly backend work in Python and Django, fixing bugs and adding features. Wrote a new REST API for a new Angular page on the site using Django REST framework. Wrote code to schedule tasks using Celery.