Ekemini Liron Essien

Cloud | AI Security Engineer

Richardson, TX | 469-647-2097 | miniessien@gmail.com | www.eleresume.com

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Profile

Engineering and security professional with a track record securing AWS environments, implementing IAM/RBAC and policy-as-code controls, driving cloud security risk reduction, SOC2 compliance, and improving resiliency. Combines hands-on engineering with security and strong communication skills.

Employment History

Tunnl — DevSecOps Engineer

April 2022 – Present
  • Engineered and enforced AWS security controls across IAM, S3, EC2, RDS, VPC, ELB, and Secrets Manager spanning 5 organizational accounts and 9 teams, securing 100+ users while maintaining alignment with AWS Foundational Security Best Practices and CIS AWS Foundations benchmarks.
  • Built and led Tunnl's SOC 2 compliance program from inception, delivering 5 successful audit issuances across SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type I/II certifications — directly unlocking Fortune 500 client opportunities and strengthening enterprise security posture.
  • Drove a 22% reduction in security findings by executing continuous cloud security assessments, vulnerability remediation, and control enhancements via AWS Security Hub — achieving an average remediation time of 11 days across a multi-team engineering environment.
  • Partnered with Platform, API, ETL, and Data teams to close systemic security gaps and harden cloud configurations, reducing recurring vulnerabilities while aligning remediation priorities with executive and business stakeholders.
  • Architected Terraform and JSON policy-as-code frameworks to enforce security best practices and standardize configurations across 25 AWS organizational accounts, eliminating configuration drift at scale.
  • Provisioned and administered identity and access management across AWS, Databricks, GitHub, VPN, and additional enterprise platforms — supporting 9 departments and 50+ contractors with consistent, least-privilege access controls.
  • Automated credential rotation using AWS Lambda and Secrets Manager, reducing manual security operations and minimizing credential exposure risk across the organization.
  • Spearheaded implementation of a SaaS privacy-request platform, integrating vendor APIs with AWS RDS and S3 — processing 506,000+ deletion requests, 32 access requests, and 44 opt-out requests with average completion times under 7 hours, enabling scalable, audit-ready data subject request handling.
  • Established Tunnl's third-party security assessment program, formalizing vendor risk management processes and strengthening data protection controls across upstream and downstream data partners.

Cymulate — Cyber-Risk Assessment Specialist

September 2020 – March 2022
  • Collaborated with CISOs and enterprise security teams to simulate attacks across email, web gateways, endpoint security, lateral movement, and data exfiltration.
  • Supported extended security posture management initiatives by validating security controls and mapping risks to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
  • Advised enterprise teams on cloud migration security, attack surface management, automated red teaming, and purple-team exercises.

Operatix — Business Development

September 2019 – September 2020
  • Supported software and cloud vendor portfolios, connecting security leaders with solutions for threat intelligence, API protection, privacy, and Salesforce security.

Globe Life — Business Development Manager

December 2017 – September 2019
  • Managed a high-performing team generating an average of $500,000 in annual recurring revenue and introduced real-time goal-tracking to improve performance.

Projects

Cloud Resume Deployment

March 2022

Built a cloud-hosted website with a database, API Gateway, custom domain, HTTPS, and Python 3 serverless functions, packaged using an AWS SAM template.