Daniel Wagner

About

Experience

Where I have worked

1. Mar 2021 - Jun 2026

   Software Developer

   TIGER NAILS SRL, Bucharest (wholesale cosmetics and nail-care products)

   • Built and maintained the company's in-house desktop application in C#/.NET (WinForms): invoicing, stock and inventory, orders, delivery notes and goods receipt notes (NIR).
   • Set up the company's web server from scratch on Ubuntu, Docker containers behind Nginx Proxy Manager with TLS certificates, and ran it afterwards.
   • Started in a team of three (one on the company website, one with me on the application and the server); sole developer by the end, owning both.

2. Oct 2025 - present

   Lab Instructor, Web Application Development (DAW)

   Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Bucharest

   • Teach the DAW labs to 90+ students across four groups; author the course materials.
   • Built and operate the course platform end to end: public labs site plus a gated dashboard for attendance, grading, quizzes and project tracking; re-implementing it in .NET 10 + Angular with clean architecture and TDD (production cutover attempted, rolled back pending semester close).
   • Per-student deployment slots on a dedicated VPS, provisioned from the admin UI.

3. 2023 - present

   Independent Engineer - Production Infrastructure

   danielwagner.ro / student-dev.ro (self-hosted)

   • Design, deploy, and operate ~10 live services across two VPSes: Docker, nginx, TLS automation (Let's Encrypt), PostgreSQL, rsync deploy pipelines.
   • Tested, manifest-driven PowerShell control plane; backups with a drilled, SHA-256-verified restore path.
   • Multi-tenant hosting for ~30 student deployments: per-student Linux accounts, nginx vhosts, SAN certificates, provisioned from a web admin UI on an isolated, sacrificial VPS.

4. 2023 - 2024

   Lab Instructor, OOP (C++) and Web Development in C# (PAW)

   Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Bucharest

   • Taught object-oriented programming in C++ and web development in C# (Razor Pages, EF Core, SQL Server, MVC, Web API) by live-coding with the students.
   • Authored full-semester public teaching materials; ran an optional SFML game-development track.

5. 2020 - present

   Private Tutor, Mathematics and Computer Science

   Independent

   • 6+ years of one-on-one teaching: ~60 students from a dozen universities, across ~30 subjects - from mathematical analysis and linear algebra to C/C++, algorithms, Linux systems programming, assembly, cryptography and databases.
   • Distilled the archive into a 17-course online catalogue (187 structured lessons) on my own learning portal.

6. 2019 - 2020, 2022 - 2023

   Volunteer Peer Tutor (Tutoriat)

   Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Bucharest

   • Ran three faculty tutoriat series for fellow students: Special Mathematics (2019-2020), C Programming and Operating Systems (2022-2023) - volunteer, faculty-organized peer tutoring.

7. 2018 - 2021

   Freelance Software Developer

   Independent, during the B.Eng. years

Featured

Featured projects

Six case studies that show the range: production platforms and infrastructure, security research, and systems programming from the ground up.

Teaching & PlatformsGated

DAW Teaching Platform(Oct 2025)

The full-stack platform behind my university web development course

.NET 10AngularPostgreSQLFlaskDockernginx

Live↗Code↗Case study →

Infrastructure

Production Infrastructure(2023)

Two VPSes, ~10 live services, one tested control plane - everything on this site runs on it

LinuxDockernginxPostgreSQLPowerShellTLS

Case study →

SecurityPaper

NIST SP 800-22 Test Suite(May 2026)

All 15 NIST randomness tests in C++17, built in a team of four - my part: the spectral (DFT) test, analyzed in depth

C++CryptographyStatisticsNext.js

Live↗Code↗Case study →

SecurityPaper

Zero-Click Exploit Chain Analysis(Apr 2026)

Anatomy of the 2025 WhatsApp/ImageIO zero-click attack, with labs and a paper

Security researchMemory corruptionFlaskLaTeXIEEE format

Live↗Code↗Paper↗Case study →

Systems C/C++

JPEG Encoder(Nov 2025)

Baseline JPEG encoder in C++, from block splitting and DCT to entropy coding, written from scratch

• Every stage implemented from scratch in C++: block splitting, DCT, quantization, zigzag ordering, entropy coding (RLE + Huffman).
• No image-compression library anywhere in the pipeline.
• An analysis module measures and reports the achieved compression ratios.

C++DCTBinary formats

Code↗Case study →

Teaching & PlatformsGated

Edu Course Portal(2026)

Multi-course learning portal in .NET 10 + Angular, courses published from the UI

.NET 10AngularPostgreSQLDockerClean architecture

Live↗Case study →

Everything else

All projects

The full index, organized by domain. Live links open the deployed service; code links open the repository.

Teaching & Platforms

Platforms I built and teach on: the DAW course platform, the Edu learning portal, and an interactive electromagnetics course site.

Teaching & PlatformsGated

DAW Teaching Platform(Oct 2025)

The full-stack platform behind my university web development course

.NET 10AngularPostgreSQLFlaskDockernginx

Live↗Code↗

Case study →

Teaching & PlatformsGated

Edu Course Portal(2026)

Multi-course learning portal in .NET 10 + Angular, courses published from the UI

.NET 10AngularPostgreSQLDockerClean architecture

Live↗

Case study →

Teaching & Platforms

Bazele Electrotehnicii(2026)

Interactive electromagnetics course site: Manim animations + p5.js simulations

Next.jsManimp5.jsKaTeXElectromagneticsDocker

Live↗

Infrastructure

The two-VPS estate every live project on this site runs on: Docker, nginx, TLS automation, and a tested PowerShell control plane.

Infrastructure

Production Infrastructure(2023)

Two VPSes, ~10 live services, one tested control plane - everything on this site runs on it

LinuxDockernginxPostgreSQLPowerShellTLS

Case study →

Security

Exploit-chain analysis and randomness testing: the 2025 WhatsApp/ImageIO zero-click chain taken apart stage by stage, and all 15 NIST SP 800-22 tests built from scratch in C++17.

SecurityPaper

NIST SP 800-22 Test Suite(May 2026)

All 15 NIST randomness tests in C++17, built in a team of four - my part: the spectral (DFT) test, analyzed in depth

C++CryptographyStatisticsNext.js

Live↗Code↗

Case study →

SecurityPaper

Zero-Click Exploit Chain Analysis(Apr 2026)

Anatomy of the 2025 WhatsApp/ImageIO zero-click attack, with labs and a paper

Security researchMemory corruptionFlaskLaTeXIEEE format

Live↗Code↗Paper↗

Case study →

Systems C/C++

Systems work in C and C++, 2019 to today: a baseline JPEG encoder, a thread-pool TCP server over POSIX sockets, Chandy-Lamport distributed snapshots, and a WinAPI wrapper.

Systems C/C++

JPEG Encoder(Nov 2025)

Baseline JPEG encoder in C++, from block splitting and DCT to entropy coding, written from scratch

C++DCTBinary formats

Code↗

Case study →

Systems C/C++

Flash-Era Game Preservation(2026)

The engineering side of my M.Sc. thesis, in progress: porting Flash-era (ActionScript/SWF) game logic to C++ compiled to WebAssembly, with an automated SWF-decompilation pipeline

C++WebAssemblyActionScriptReverse engineering

Code on request

Systems C/C++

Thread-Pool TCP Server(2024)

Multi-threaded server over POSIX sockets: thread pool, mutexes, condition variables

CPOSIX socketspthreads

Code↗

Systems C/C++

Chandy-Lamport Snapshots(2022)

Global snapshot algorithm for distributed systems, implemented over IPC

C++IPCDistributed systems

Code↗

Systems C/C++

WinAPI Wrapper(Sep 2022)

A friendlier C layer over the Windows API: windows, widgets, event callbacks

CWinAPIGUI

Code↗

Systems C/C++

Operating Systems Labs(Oct 2019)

A terminal-to-terminal talk program over POSIX signals, fork/pipe IPC, and other Linux exercises

CPOSIXProcesses

Code↗

Systems C/C++

UFC Web Scraper(2025)

UFC event and fight data scraper in C over libcurl

ClibcurlHTML parsing

Code on request

Games

Games written from scratch: SDL2 titles in C++ (Bubble Shooter, Firefly Fantasies), a terminal Breakout in C with ncurses, and a VR tower defense in Unity.

Games

Bubble Shooter(Sep 2022)

Bubble shooter with a rotating board, written from scratch in C++ with SDL2

C++SDL2Game dev

Code↗

Games

Firefly Fantasies(Nov 2023)

Hexagonal-board puzzle game: connect fireflies, special and bomb mechanics

C++SDL2Game dev

Code↗

Games

Breakout(Mar 2022)

Arkanoid-style breakout rendered entirely in the terminal with ncurses

CncursesGame dev

Code↗

Games

VR Tower Defense(Jul 2023)

Bachelor's thesis in Unity/C#: custom A* pathfinding, wave-based enemies, six tower types, extended into full VR with OpenXR

UnityC#A* pathfindingOpenXR

Code↗

Scientific Computing

Applied mathematics in code: face recognition with PCA and SVM, wavelets in image compression, and a Manim component library.

Scientific ComputingPaper

Face Recognition: PCA + SVM(May 2026)

The mathematics of face recognition: PCA whitening, eigenfaces, and kernel methods on LFW

Pythonscikit-learnOpenCVFlaskManimLaTeX

Live↗Code↗Paper↗

Case study →

Scientific Computing

Wavelets in Image Compression(Nov 2025)

Interactive presentation: Fourier, filter banks, the Mallat algorithm, JPEG vs JPEG 2000

PythonFastAPIReactFFT & spectral analysis

Live↗

Scientific Computing

manimx(2026)

Reusable, themeable Manim component library for STEM animations

PythonManim

Code on request

Web & Scripting

A classical cipher tool in Python with a Tkinter GUI.

Web & Scripting

Classical Ciphers(Mar 2020)

Caesar and Polybius square cipher encoder/decoder with a GUI

PythonTkinter

Code↗

Teaching

I teach what I build.

Teaching is where everything else compounds: I run university labs, build the platforms my students work on, and turn hard topics into materials people actually use.

• Web Application Development (DAW) lab instructor at the University of Bucharest: 90+ students across four lab groups.
• Built and operate the course platform itself: labs site, attendance, grading, quizzes, and per-student VPS deployment slots.
• Three volunteer tutoriat series at the faculty: Special Mathematics (2019-2020), C Programming and Operating Systems (2022-2023).
• Built an interactive electromagnetics course site around the professor's own lecture material, and a multi-course learning portal.
• Private tutor since 2020: ~60 students from a dozen universities, across ~30 subjects - analysis, linear algebra, special mathematics, statistics, numerical methods, C/C++, OOP, algorithms, Linux systems programming, assembly, Python, C#/.NET, cryptography, databases, plus BAC and university-admission prep (incl. SAT/TOLC-I).
• Distilled that archive into a 17-course online catalogue (187 structured lessons) on my learning portal, each course built from my own teaching materials.

Education

The record behind the work

1. 2025 - 2027

   In progress

   M.Sc., Coding Theory and Information Storage (TCSI)

   Faculty of Applied Sciences, National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest

   • Official program name: Teoria Codării și Stocării Informației. Focus: coding theory, cryptology (cryptography and cryptanalysis), cybersecurity, information compression.
   • GPA 10/10 to date.
   • First-year coursework already shipped as live services: the face-recognition pipeline, the zero-click exploit-chain analysis, the NIST SP 800-22 randomness suite.
   • M.Sc. thesis in progress: security analysis and preservation of Flash-era browser games.

2. 2017 - 2023

   Engineer's degree (B.Eng.), Computers and Information Technology (CTI)

   Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Bucharest

   • 4-year engineering program, 240 ECTS, on the Information Technology track. Overall GPA 9.33/10.
   • Engineering core: computer architecture, microprocessor systems, analog & digital electronics, control systems, robotics, mechanics, electricity & magnetism - the layer below the code.
   • Web application development - I now teach those labs and built the platform the course depends on.
   • Cryptography and security - became the NIST SP 800-22 suite and the zero-click exploit-chain research.
   • Operating systems and distributed systems - became thread-pool POSIX servers and Chandy-Lamport snapshots.
   • Electricity & magnetism - became the interactive electromagnetics course site, built around the professor's own lecture material.
   • Programming in C, special mathematics, operating systems - subjects I went on to tutor through the faculty's tutoriat program and one-on-one for years.