Ricky Melendez

Ricky Melendez is the CTO and Co-Founder of ContraForce, a cybersecurity firm based in the Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area. He earned a Bachelor's Degree in Computational Mathematics from The University of Texas at Austin in 2016 before working as an IT administrator at Rodriguez Engineering Laboratories for over six years. Melendez subsequently transitioned into specialized cybersecurity roles, working as a security operations center analyst and security engineer at McAfee for two years. He then served as a security engineer and solutions consultant at Armor Cloud Security for an additional two years, gaining expertise in building security operations centers. In 2021, he co-founded ContraForce, which won the 2021 DataTribe Challenge and currently operates with approximately 15 employees. His current focus centers on developing scalable cloud security solutions, hyperautomation, and artificial intelligence applications for small and medium-sized businesses.