Hi! I'm Zach Wade. I'm the co-founder and CTO of CompassRx, and a long-time member of Carnegie Mellon's hacking team, PPP.
Most of my work centers on making complicated things accessible by building the right tool for the job. I believe product engineering is an ever-evolving conversation between the application and the user, and I build systems that can grow and change as part of that discussion.
Work
At CompassRx I lead product and engineering, working with a few brilliant healthcare experts to build the future of pharmacy. Our team applies AI at scale through the use of novel programming language techniques that set us apart from incumbents and competitors alike. We're hiring!
Prior to that, I was the first engineer at the supply chain finance startup Nuvo, where I scaled it from tens of active companies to tens of thousands. Before that, I was a founding engineer at Zensors, a computer vision startup out of CMU that used cutting edge model research to solve real world vision problems. Along the way I interned at Google and Jane Street.
Hacking
I've played with PPP for over a decade, focusing my efforts on web application exploitation and reverse engineering. I've won DEF CON CTF (the world finals for competitive hacking) seven times and am now part of the team that helps run it. Learn more and join us for quals with the Benevolent Bureau of Birds.
Over the years, I've written problems for PlaidCTF, helped run picoCTF, the world's largest high school CTF, and taught web exploitation to students and industry professionals.
Background
I studied computer science at Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, with a focus on human-computer interaction and programming language theory. I write about software, security, and practical uses of PLT on Down to the Wire.
Get in Touch
The best way to reach me is usually by email, via [email protected].