Othonas Soultatos
Senior Systems Engineer at ZEDEDA
Senior Software Engineer and Systems Engineer with 10+ years of experience in distributed systems, edge computing, and cybersecurity. Specializing in Go, cloud-native architectures, and Linux-based edge platforms. Currently contributing to the open-source LF Edge/EVE (Edge Virtualization Engine) project, building and maintaining edge computing infrastructure that powers IoT and enterprise edge deployments worldwide. Strong track record in real-time data platforms, microservices design, Kafka-based messaging, and database optimization. MSc in Cybersecurity with 13 peer-reviewed publications. Experienced in release engineering, CI/CD automation, and cross-functional collaboration in open-source ecosystems.
Education
Skills
Experiences
ZEDEDA
Apr 2025 - Present
San Jose, CA (Remote)
Edge computing company building the orchestration layer for the distributed edge, powering EVE-OS — an open-source edge virtualization engine under the LF Edge umbrella.
Senior Systems Engineer (Contractor)
Apr 2025 - Present
Responsibilities:
- Contributing to the open-source LF Edge/EVE project — an edge virtualization engine powering IoT and enterprise edge deployments worldwide.
- Developing and maintaining edge computing infrastructure in Go for Linux-based edge platforms.
- Building and testing cloud-native microservices for edge device orchestration and lifecycle management.
- Implementing release engineering processes and CI/CD automation for the EVE-OS platform.
- Collaborating with cross-functional distributed teams across open-source ecosystems.
- Debugging and resolving complex system-level issues in virtualized and containerized edge environments.
- Reviewing code contributions and maintaining quality standards for the open-source project.
Sword Greece
Mar 2023 - Mar 2025
Heraklion, Greece (Remote)
European technology consultancy delivering mission-critical, large-scale government systems, including EU border-management platforms.
Senior Java Developer
Mar 2023 - Mar 2025
Responsibilities:
- Built and maintained enterprise backend services in Java / Spring Boot for the European Union’s Entry/Exit System (EES) and ETIAS — large-scale, mission-critical border-management platforms.
- Applied CQRS and event-sourcing patterns for auditable, scalable state management across high-integrity government systems.
- Designed event-driven data flows and search/indexing with Elasticsearch.
- Developed and customized Atlassian Jira and Confluence integrations (plugins / REST API automation) to streamline team workflows and reporting.
- Delivered as part of a 7-engineer team, contributing to architecture decisions and code reviews.
Freelance
Oct 2022 - Feb 2023
Heraklion, Greece
Independent consulting — secure software development, backend systems, and cybersecurity research.
Senior Software Engineer
Oct 2022 - Feb 2023
Responsibilities:
- Developed secure software solutions in Go and Python, focusing on cybersecurity applications and backend systems.
- Implemented robust backend systems with RESTful APIs, database integration, and automated testing pipelines.
- Conducted cybersecurity research contributing to MSc thesis on network security and threat modeling.
- Managed full project lifecycle from requirements analysis through deployment and maintenance.
Axiomatics
Apr 2022 - Sep 2022
Stockholm, Sweden (Remote)
Global leader in fine-grained authorization, providing Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) solutions.
Senior Backend Engineer
Apr 2022 - Sep 2022
Responsibilities:
- Developed and maintained authorization policy engine backend services in Java, supporting enterprise ABAC (Attribute-Based Access Control) deployments.
- Designed and implemented RESTful APIs for policy administration and evaluation services.
- Contributed to microservices architecture improvements and automated testing infrastructure.
Sphynx Technology Solutions
Apr 2020 - Mar 2022
Zug, Switzerland (Remote)
Cybersecurity startup specializing in security analytics, risk assessment, and compliance solutions for EU-funded research projects.
Senior Software Engineer
Apr 2020 - Mar 2022
Responsibilities:
- Led the development of real-time data processing platforms using Java, Apache Kafka, and MongoDB for security analytics.
- Designed and implemented microservices architectures for EU-funded cybersecurity research projects (THREAT-ARREST, AI4HEALTHSEC, ASCAPE).
- Built Kafka-based event streaming pipelines for real-time threat detection and security monitoring.
- Developed REST APIs and backend services for security analytics dashboards and risk assessment tools.
- Managed PostgreSQL database optimization, data migration, and schema design for multi-tenant deployments.
ICS-FORTH
Nov 2016 - Mar 2020
Heraklion, Greece
Institute of Computer Science at the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), one of Greece’s leading research institutions.
Software Engineer / Researcher
Nov 2016 - Mar 2020
Responsibilities:
- Developed distributed IoT platforms and real-time data processing systems for EU research projects (SEMIOTICS, CE-IoT, CertCoop).
- Published 10+ peer-reviewed papers on IoT interoperability, edge computing, and cybersecurity in top-tier conferences and journals.
- Designed and implemented Java-based middleware for semantic IoT interoperability across heterogeneous edge devices.
Technical University of Crete
Dec 2014 - Dec 2015
Chania, Greece
Intelligent Systems Laboratory at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Crete.
R&D Software Engineer
Dec 2014 - Dec 2015
Responsibilities:
- Developed simulation and data analysis tools for EU research projects (COSSIM, VirtuWind) in the high-performance computing domain.
- Implemented network simulation components in C++ and Java for co-simulation of hardware/software systems.
Projects
AI4HEALTHSEC
EU-funded project addressing cybersecurity challenges in the healthcare sector. Led project management activities coordinating research and development tasks across consortium partners.
ASCAPE
EU-funded project developing an autonomous system for comprehensive patient monitoring in long-term care, using AI and FHIR-based interoperability standards.
SMART BEAR
EU-funded project creating a personalised health monitoring platform for elderly people, enabling proactive health management through wearable devices and FHIR-based data exchange.
SPIDER
EU H2020 project developing a comprehensive platform for smart energy grid management, providing advanced tools for demand response and energy efficiency in smart buildings.
COLLABS
EU-funded project creating a collaborative platform for industry and academia to exchange knowledge on cybersecurity, privacy, and data protection across European sectors.
CE-IoT
EU H2020 project developing an enabling framework for circular economy driven IoT systems, focusing on semantic interoperability and lifecycle management of connected devices.
CYBERSURE
EU-funded project developing assurance methods and tools for security and resilience of critical infrastructures and services, including risk assessment and mitigation techniques.
IDEAL-CITIES
EU H2020 project developing an IoT platform for smart city applications, enabling intelligent management of urban resources including energy, water, and mobility.
SEMIOTICS
EU H2020 project developing a semantic interoperability framework for IoT ecosystems, enabling heterogeneous IoT platforms to communicate through standardised ontologies and linked data.
VirtuWind
EU H2020 project developing an SDN/NFV-based architecture for wind parks, enabling virtualised, programmable control and management of industrial wind park networks.
COSSIM
EU-funded project developing an open-source, integrated simulation framework for parallel and distributed embedded systems, combining network and processor simulation.
nSHIELD
ARTEMIS JU project developing an embedded systems security framework for composite SPD (Security, Privacy, Dependability) in networked embedded devices.
LF Edge / EVE-OS
Active open-source contributor to the Edge Virtualization Engine (EVE) under the Linux Foundation Edge umbrella. Contributions include Go-based system services, release engineering, hardware compatibility improvements, and CI/CD pipeline maintenance.
AI-Native Developer Tooling
Designed and built a suite of AI coding agent skills (init, zed-plan, zed-execute) implementing a spec-driven development workflow. The tooling was adopted as part of the ZEDEDA AI-Native Team Transition Playbook, improving development velocity and consistency across engineering teams.
Real-Time Cybersecurity Platform
Architected and developed Go-based backend services for a real-time cybersecurity threat intelligence platform at Sphynx Technology Solutions. The system processes live threat feeds using Apache Kafka pipelines and persists structured threat data in MongoDB and PostgreSQL, enabling near-real-time threat detection and response.
EU Entry/Exit System (EES) & ETIAS — Border Management Platform
Backend services for the EU’s Entry/Exit System (EES) and ETIAS, applying CQRS/event-sourcing and Elasticsearch-based search across mission-critical, high-integrity government systems. Delivered with Sword Greece.
Twitterbot
A bot written in Go for automatically retweeting EU project dissemination activities. Monitors configured search terms and hashtags, then retweets relevant content to amplify project visibility.
Website Portfolio
NIS Summer School
CE-IoT
SEMIOTICS
CertCoop
THREAT-ARREST
RAID2018
Publications
MobileTrust: Secure knowledge integration in VANETs
Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) are becoming popular communication environments for intelligent transportation systems. This paper presents MobileTrust, a framework for secure knowledge integration across vehicular networks using semantic technologies and trust management.
Secure Semantic Interoperability for IoT Applications with Linked Data
Interoperability stands for the capacity of a system to work with or use the parts or equipment of another system. This paper proposes a secure semantic interoperability framework for IoT applications leveraging linked data principles and ontology-based data models.
The THREAT-ARREST cyber-security training platform
Cyber security is always a main concern for organisations across all sectors. This paper presents the THREAT-ARREST platform, a comprehensive cyber-security training environment combining serious games, emulation, simulation, and visualisation to improve security awareness.
End-to-end semantic interoperability mechanisms for IoT
This paper presents end-to-end semantic interoperability mechanisms for IoT environments, enabling heterogeneous IoT platforms to exchange data through ontology-based models and semantic translation services.
Pattern-driven security, privacy, dependability and interoperability management of IoT environments
This paper proposes a pattern-driven approach for managing security, privacy, dependability, and interoperability (SPDI) in IoT environments, providing reusable architectural patterns that address common IoT deployment challenges.
Architectural patterns for secure IoT orchestrations
This paper presents a set of architectural patterns for secure IoT orchestrations, enabling the systematic design of IoT systems with built-in security properties through reusable design patterns.
Review of security and privacy for the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
A comprehensive review of security and privacy challenges in the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), covering threat landscapes, existing protection mechanisms, open challenges, and future research directions for securing medical IoT deployments.
WARDOG: Awareness detection watchdog for Botnet infection on the host device
This paper presents WARDOG, a host-based detection system for botnet infections that monitors process behaviour, network activity, and system calls to identify infected hosts without requiring network-level visibility.
Review of security and privacy for the internet of medical things (IoMT): resolving the protection concerns for the novel circular economy bioinformatics
An extended review examining the intersection of IoMT security, privacy, and circular economy principles in bioinformatics applications. Identifies protection concerns and proposes research directions for securing bio-medical IoT in circular economy contexts.
Towards a security, privacy, dependability, interoperability framework for the Internet of Things
This paper proposes a holistic framework addressing the four key challenges for IoT deployments: security, privacy, dependability, and interoperability (SPDI). The framework defines a layered architecture and identifies key requirements for each dimension.
The Industrial Internet of Things as an enabler for a Circular Economy Hy-LP
This paper investigates how the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) can serve as an enabler for circular economy principles through Hybrid-Logic Processes (Hy-LP), analyzing how IIoT data and connectivity can support resource efficiency and waste reduction.
XSACd—Cross-domain resource sharing & access control for smart environments
XSACd presents a cross-domain resource sharing and access control framework for smart environments, enabling secure and controlled access to IoT resources across different administrative domains through federated identity and policy mechanisms.
Which IoT protocol? Comparing standardized approaches over a common M2M application
A comparative study of standardized IoT communication protocols (MQTT, CoAP, XMPP, AMQP) evaluated over a common M2M application benchmark. The paper provides quantitative performance metrics and recommendations for protocol selection based on use-case requirements.