About Joe
Updated November 22, 2025 00:43
My name is Joe Basirico. I’m Director of Security Engineering at Shopify, where I lead a team of security engineers helping secure the platform for millions of merchants worldwide. I’ve been building and securing software for over 20 years, holding nearly every engineering role along the way: developer, security engineer, trainer, manager, director of services, and SVP of Engineering managing international teams. I was previously Senior Manager of Product Security at Amazon Health, the first product security hire at Highspot, and spent years at Security Innovation. I also co-founded Technically Learning, a STEM nonprofit that eventually merged with code.org.
I’m a proud father and husband to my amazing family, including a middle-schooler who builds incredible Lego MOCs and my younger son who loves soccer. When I’m not working on security problems, I’m building things. Check out my projects page to see tools like Relief Mapper (for laser-cutting terrain maps), WikiRater (for discovering quality Wikipedia articles), and a suite of security tools to help build secure software. I write code and contribute to ReThink Security and this blog about security, leadership, productivity, and building resilient software.
I love to run, sail, hike, and camp. I enjoy coaching youth soccer and traveling with my family. We’ve explored Iceland, and all across the US. We continue to plan international trips with the kids to have even more adventures together.
ReThink Security
I launched Rethink Security with a friend as a free resource to provide insights drawing from my years of experience in the security industry. I post new articles there frequently and have a monthly newsletter to share what I’ve read.
Podcasts
Brakeing Down Security Podcast
Videos
CSNP - How an Attacker ‘Audits’ Your Software Applications
Interview With Security Innovation’s Joe Basirico
Owasp appsec USA
- https://youtu.be/JMzhyf2UxQ8
- https://youtu.be/WPv7dUZoNuw
- https://youtu.be/L1W0gWhf27o
- https://youtu.be/HwyMj28C4lU
Conferences / Webcasts
- An engineers guide to staying secure online
- Architecture secure web applications
- The Roadmap to a Vulnerability Disclosure Program for QASIG
- Reducing the cost of security
- If CI and CD can find time for security so can you
- Understanding your software vulnerabilities
- Buzz about fuzz
Videos Kept For Posterity
Images
Many of my images come from free websites or I’ve taken myself.
I wish to thank the following websites for putting this content together: