Shadya Maldonado

Together we are stronger

LinkedIn Profile

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shadyam/

Education

• Ph.D. in Quantum Computing (c)

• Master of Engineering in Cybersecurity

• Bachelor of Arts in Intelligence Studies

Location

USA

Highlights

• Technical business acumen and international engagement publicly on human–machine teaming topics as early as 2019, translating complex doctrine into practical AI teamwork for operators and analysts. This and her 16 years of experience informs ArcQubit's approach to multi-agent automation.

  
  

• Project work experience, complex budget management, team building, and collaboration spans CISA, DARPA, DOE, IARPA, IAEA, DoD (Air Force, Navy, Army, Space Force), NASA, and other U.S. government agencies across multiple DOE national research laboratories.

  
  

• Graduated first out of a basic training class of more than five hundred soldiers and qualified as an Airborne paratrooper with the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division.

  
  

• Served as the U.S. delegation cybersecurity point of contact (POC) for DOE's International Nuclear Security engagements, coordinating with allied regulators and facility operators across multiple countries. Domestic and international work and publications span HCI, INMM, IEEE, IAEA and American Nuclear Society venues.

  
  

• Profiled by the U.S. Department of Energy in its "Women @ Energy" series as a first-generation college graduate, combat veteran, and cybersecurity professional advancing national security through research and public service.

  
  

Biography

Shadya enjoys building technology that helps organizations operate safely, effectively, and securely in a complex world. She serves as Founder and CEO of ArcQubit Inc., an AI technology company operating and integrating technologies between the convergence of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and quantum technologies. She brings a sixteen-year career that began in the U.S. Army in 2009, advanced through national laboratory research and engineering roles, expanded into federal space programs, and now focuses on delivering accessible, next-generation computing for mission-critical and regulated environments. Her work blends hands-on cybersecurity, applied research, standards leadership, and company building in a way that informs executives, equips technical teams, and inspires students.

At ArcQubit, Shadya leads the creation of a vendor-agnostic platform that lets teams discover technology providers, design hybrid solutions, and orchestrate cloud, AI, and quantum workloads from a single browser workspace. She sets product vision, guides architecture, and builds partnerships that connect established providers and emerging innovators. She works closely with early customers across government and industry who want practical ways to evaluate options, reduce risk, and accelerate adoption. She emphasizes secure-by-design, zero trust, and governance at the product level so customers can move fast without creating downstream exposure. Her leadership draws on sixteen years of experience in security operations, technology modernization, and risk management across U.S., international, and military domains. She focuses on making advanced capabilities usable by real organizations with real constraints.

Before founding ArcQubit, Shadya served in senior technical and leadership roles at two U.S. national laboratories. At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory from 2015 to 2021, she joined the Nuclear Engineering and Analysis Group and later moved into the Computing and Analytics Division as a cyber analyst. She managed the Secure Systems Research and Engineering Team within the Cyber Security Research Technical Group, where she led a staff of a dozen or more engineers and analysts. Her projects supported computer network defense, cyber threat intelligence, and multi-domain threat assessments. She operationalized AI and machine learning for critical infrastructure missions and helped teams translate new analytics into day-to-day operations. She authored and co-authored government studies on Army facility-related control systems that quantified the cost to secure infrastructure and the savings that strong programs can deliver. The experience taught her how to turn research into decisions, how to measure outcomes, and how to communicate engineering tradeoffs to sponsors and operators.

From 2021 to 2024, Shadya served as a Principal Cyber Security Engineer at Sandia National Laboratories. She focused on cybersecurity for advanced nuclear reactors, secure-by-design analysis, and modeling and simulation methods for reactor security and operations. She worked at the intersection of digital systems, physical protection, and regulatory guidance. She served as the U.S. delegation cybersecurity technical lead and primary point of contact for the U.S. Department of Energy International Nuclear Security Program. In that role she coordinated bilateral and multilateral efforts with allied governments, regulators, and facility operators. She helped stand up Romania's first national nuclear cyber exercise and delivered activity review briefings for the U.S. and France that aligned technical milestones with regulatory needs. She advised international stakeholders on plans that aligned to NIST, ISO, and IEC frameworks and supported cyber-informed engineering practices that improve safety and reliability.

During this period she also volunteered as a co-lead on the MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration glossary update for the terms "weakness" and "attack pattern." The work clarified and improved the language the global community uses to describe software weaknesses and adversary behavior. She published and presented research on deception networks that harden the cybersecurity of physical protection systems, on layered attack surface modeling for digital assets in nuclear facilities, on the use of software-defined networking to reduce attack surface in security systems, and on remote operations risks and mitigations for modern reactor concepts. These contributions advanced practical techniques for designing, testing, and operating secure systems in environments where safety, reliability, and compliance matter.

Shadya's work also extended into space programs. At Booz Allen Hamilton in 2024 and 2025, she served as the lead information systems security engineer supporting cybersecurity for NASA's program focused on extravehicular activity and human surface mobility. She integrated cyber strategy, governance, and architectural guidance with engineering and operations. Her contributions received an award and recognition through the company's program for outstanding leadership in cyber strategy, including topics across AI security, post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and Zero Trust (ZT) implementation. This role, along with her former work as a nuclear cybersecurity engineer, strengthened her ability to guide complex organizations through integration challenges that span technology, safety, and mission requirements.

The foundation for this career began in uniform. Shadya served in the U.S. Army with the 82nd Airborne Division and graduated first in a basic training class of more than five hundred soldiers in 2009. She qualified as an Airborne paratrooper and later served as a military analyst. The Army taught her to lead under pressure, to learn quickly, and to stay accountable for outcomes. Those habits carried into every role that followed and they shape the way she builds teams and companies.

Shadya invests in research that shapes practice and she presents that work to technical and executive audiences. Her public record spans more than twenty publications and presentations from 2018 through 2024. She authored an IEEE paper that introduces a deception network framework for nuclear physical protection systems and she contributed American Nuclear Society (ANS) proceedings that formalize a layered attack surface model for digital assets in nuclear power plants. She delivered multiple papers at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conference series on computer security in the nuclear world, including guidance on zero trust for nuclear environments, attack surfaces for remote operations, and validation of software-defined networking for physical protection systems. She helped produce international guidance on remote cybersecurity inspections during the COVID-19 pandemic and she contributed to federal studies on cybersecurity maturity models and state and local government risk.

Earlier in her career she presented internationally on human-machine teaming. Her talk at HCI International in 2019 examined how military doctrine and organizational design can guide effective teaming between human operators and AI-enabled systems. The topic and years of research and experience now informs ArcQubit's approach to multi-agent automation and decision support for enterprise users.

Education supports her applied focus. Shadya earned an undergraduate degree in Intelligence Studies from Mercyhurst University's Ridge College, which grounded her in analytic tradecraft and national security methodology. She completed a Master of Engineering in Cybersecurity at The George Washington University, where she developed the engineering depth needed to design defensible systems at scale. She is currently a doctoral researcher in Quantum Computing at Capitol Technology University. Her research explores a quantum-enabled security operations center concept that blends modern SOC workflows with quantum ready analytics and decision support. The work reflects her belief that innovation becomes valuable when it improves detection, response, and resilience for real missions.

Shadya brings a technical portfolio that spans strategy and implementation. She has designed secure-by-design methods for advanced reactors, built model-based simulations for cyber testing and evaluation, and standardized attack surface terminology for regulated industrial contexts. She has operationalized AI and machine learning pipelines for threat detection and analyst workflow reduction, with a focus on explainable methods for high-consequence decisions. She has delivered specialized assessments, including OT, ICS, IT, and Cloud security assessments, supply chain risk management, and incident response for multiple organizations. She has deployed software and even training tools. She understands export control, intellectual property, and safety requirements. On domestic and international levels, she has briefed national regulators, built cross-functional teams, and delivered outcomes against tight schedules.

Her professional philosophy centers on trust, clarity, and inclusive problem solving. She believes that diverse teams make better decisions when leaders create environments that reward curiosity and rigorous debate. She takes calculated risks, pairs qualitative judgment with quantitative evidence, and maintains a bias for action that respects safety and compliance. She mentors students and early career professionals and she supports international capacity building in cybersecurity for nuclear and other critical sectors. As a first-generation college graduate and a decorated veteran, she understands how access, encouragement, and sponsorship can change the trajectory of a career.

Today, as the leader of ArcQubit, Shadya directs product and go-to-market work that supports both product-led (PLG) adoption and enterprise engagement. She focuses on reducing complexity and cost for teams that want to experiment with AI and quantum while staying compliant with standards and regulations. She collaborates with partners across the ecosystem, from national laboratories and universities to cloud providers and hardware vendors. She brings the discipline of national security work to commercial software and she measures success by customer outcomes and by the strength of the teams that deliver them.

Executives recognize a leader who translates research into operational capability and who aligns stakeholders around measurable goals. Technical experts see a practitioner who publishes, prototypes, and deploys and who advances the state of the art while staying grounded in field realities. Students and early career professionals see a pathway that begins with service, grows through study and hard work, and expands through curiosity and community. Having lead ArcQubit through fundraising, investors and partners see a founder who understands regulated markets, who respects safety and mission, and who can position a company to capture value as AI and quantum reshape the technology landscape.

Shadya is proud to continue to build where security, science, and entrepreneurship meet. She invites collaboration from those who want to make powerful computing more accessible, more secure, and more useful to the people who need it most.