RESUME·Long-form record

Six years across APT threat hunting, SIEM detection engineering, and quantitative analysis. Two-time 3rd-place winner of the Palisade Research AI Misalignment Bounty (arXiv:2510.19738). Currently building autonomous incident-response agents for the SANS FIND EVIL! hackathon — applying the frontier-AI evaluation methodology I developed in the Unified AI Misalignment Framework to defensive security operations.

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Ma'alona Mafaufau and Holly
§ 01 — SELECTED PROJECTS
Feb 2026 — PresentTāmaki Makaurau Auckland

G1 — Embodied alignment harness

—Approxiom Research
  • MuJoCo-simulated Unitree G1 humanoid on Inspect AI (UK AISI), testing whether AI models deceive operators when controlling a physical robot under pressure.
  • Across 4 frontier models / 30 reproducible runs, found safety and honesty are independent failure dimensions — Gemini Robotics ER 1.5 showed L3 strategic concealment in 29% of runs, while GPT-5 stayed fully honest (5.0/5) despite low safety (1.9/5).
  • Telemetry-corruption variant probes concealment of safety violations. Built at the Gemini 3 Hackathon — source on GitHub.
Inspect AIMuJoCoNext.jsPython
Sep 2025 — Nov 2025Remote

Palisade Misalignment Bounty — Two-time 3rd-place

—Palisade Research
  • Submitted a single misalignment scenario that elicited fundamentally different fabrication patterns from o3 and GPT-5 — awarded two separate prizes, both 3rd-place, from one elicitation.
  • 9 of 295 submissions awarded; results published in Palisade Research's paper at arXiv:2510.19738.
  • Both winning submissions released publicly on Hugging Face — submission #1 · submission #2.
Frontier model evalsLLM-judge pipelines
§ 02 — SECURITY & AI SAFETY
Apr 2025 — PresentAuckland, NZ

Independent AI Safety Researcher

—Approxiom Research
  • Systematic vulnerability discovery and alignment evaluation in frontier AI systems.
May 2024 — Dec 2024Auckland, NZ

Cyber Security Engineer

—Workday
  • Led APT threat-hunting initiatives across the enterprise environment following promotion.
  • Coordinated incident response across global SIRT teams (NZ, Ireland, USA).
Apr 2023 — May 2024Auckland, NZ

Snr Associate Cybersecurity Engineer

—Workday
  • Developed custom Splunk SPL detection rules to improve detection efficacy and reduce false positives across the global SIEM.
  • Built automated threat-intelligence pipelines in Python.
  • Created a SIEM efficacy analysis tool adopted globally by the security team.
Jan 2022 — Apr 2023Auckland, NZ

Snr Associate Cybersecurity Operations Analyst

—Workday
  • Triaged and investigated security detections across enterprise SaaS infrastructure.
  • Coordinated incident response handoffs with regional SIRT teams.
Apr 2021 — Jan 2022Auckland, NZ

Cybersecurity Analyst / Intern

—Datacom
  • Triage analyst monitoring customer environments for SIEM detections.
  • Escalated tuning recommendations to the engineering team.
§ 03 — ENGINEERING & TEACHING
Mar 2026 — PresentAuckland, NZ

Full Stack Engineer (Contract)

—Takitoru Developments Ltd
  • Architecting a full-stack mobile and web platform end-to-end — codebase, CI/CD pipeline, and production observability; test-first delivery.
  • TypeScript, React Native, Next.js, PostgreSQL, Supabase, Vercel, GitHub Actions.
Mar 2026 — PresentAuckland, NZ

Director & Technical Lead

—IPU Collective
  • Technical leadership for a Māori-led studio delivering for Crown and council clients (Auckland Transport, KiwiRail, Watercare, Oranga Tamariki).
  • Own the production pipeline and ship interactive web deployments; set up hosting, version control, and deployment infrastructure.
Oct 2025 — Dec 2025Auckland, NZ

Assistant Trainer / Full Stack Developer (Contract)

—Mission Ready HQ
  • Mentor Level 4 students on frontend technologies (HTML, CSS, React) and modern build tools.
  • Guide students through backend development, API creation, and database integration.
  • Code reviews, debugging sessions, GitHub collaboration workflows.
  • Delivered learning sessions on AI integration and API development.
Jul 2025 — Sep 2025Auckland, NZ

Robotics & AI Educator

—Robotlab NZ (Contractor)
  • Designed and delivered engaging robotics lessons aligned with MakeX educational standards.
  • Prepared students for national and international MakeX competitions.
  • Mentored students in mechanical design, sensor integration, and autonomous robot programming.
Sep 2019 — Mar 2021Auckland, NZ

Data Analyst

—Halter Limited
  • Analysed agricultural IoT data from smart-collar systems; built statistical models and ML-based products for customer needs.
  • Data wrangling, sanitisation, stitching, organisation; quality assurance of coded cattle behaviours.
  • Collaborated with farm researchers and data engineers to collect data from cattle in situ.
§ 04 — COMMUNITY & TEACHING
Sep 2022 — Nov 2024Auckland, NZ

Pasifika Tech Tutor / Speaker

—Pasifika Tech Education Charity
  • Led workshops helping Pacific students develop practical tech skills.
  • Organised workplace visits connecting students with industry professionals (including a visit hosted while at Workday).
  • Helped bridge cultural perspectives in technology education.
Mar 2015 — Nov 2016Auckland, NZ

Tuākana Statistics Tutor

—University of Auckland
  • Supported Māori and Pasifika students in STATS 20X: Data Analysis.
  • Developed culturally responsive teaching methods for technical concepts.
  • Part of the university's flagship indigenous student support programme.
§ 05 — RECORD
EDUCATION
May 2016
BSc (Honours), Statistics
University of Auckland
May 2015
BSc, Double Major Mathematics & Statistics
University of Auckland
AWARDS
Nov 2025
Two-time 3rd-place winner — Palisade Research AI Misalignment Bounty 2025
Two prizes from one scenario; 9 of 295 submissions awarded. Published in [arXiv:2510.19738](https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.19738).
Verify
Oct 2021
Unitec CTF 2021 Winner
Kawaiicon 2021 (Boot2Root challenges).
CERTIFICATIONS
23 Jan 2026
AI-Powered Advanced Full Stack Developer
Mission Ready HQ
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7 Aug 2025
Full Stack Developer
Mission Ready HQ
Verify
Feb 2025
Palo Alto Networks Cybersecurity Professional Certificate
Coursera
Verify
Aug 2023
AWS Cloud Quest: Cloud Practitioner
Amazon Web Services
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Sep 2022
Blue Team Level 1 (BTL1)
Security Blue Team
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