Shadya Maldonado

LinkedIn Profile

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

Education

• Ph.D. in Quantum Computing (c)

• Master of Engineering in Cybersecurity

• Bachelors in Intelligence Studies

Location

USA

Executive Summary

Shadya Maldonado is the Co-Founder and CEO of ArcQubit Inc., a quantum-AI software company. She brings 17 years of experience in security operations, technology modernization, and risk management across U.S., international, and military domains. A combat veteran with notable service in the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division, Shadya held senior engineering and leadership roles at Sandia National Laboratories and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory before her assignment to establish a cyber systems engineering team within NASA's extravehicular activity and human surface mobility program. She earned multiple degrees as a first-generation college graduate, including a Master of Engineering in Cybersecurity from The George Washington University, and is now nearing the end of her doctoral candidacy in Quantum Computing. Her career spans work with DARPA, DOE, IAEA, NASA, and multiple branches of the Department of Defense, and she has authored more than twenty publications across IEEE, American Nuclear Society, and international cyber-physical security and regulatory forums.

Introduction

With 17 years of experience in security operations, technology modernization, and risk management across U.S., international, and military domains, Shadya serves as Co-Founder and CEO of ArcQubit Inc., a quantum-AI software company delivering decision intelligence at the convergence of cloud, AI, and quantum technologies.

Shadya enjoys building technology that helps organizations operate safely, effectively, and securely in a complex world. ArcQubit's mission is to simplify how the world adopts and makes decisions using cloud, AI, and quantum technologies through a single decision-intelligence platform. Under the tagline "Bridge to Utility," ArcQubit's vision is to bridge the gap between classical computing and quantum potential by delivering quantum-enabled AI solutions that drive immediate business value today and ensure architectural dominance tomorrow.

At ArcQubit, Shadya builds force-multiplying teams, sets product vision, guides architecture, and forges partnerships that connect established providers with emerging innovators. She works closely with early customers across government and industry who want practical ways to evaluate options, reduce risk, and accelerate digital technology transformation. She emphasizes secure-by-design principles, zero trust, and governance at the product level so customers can move fast without creating downstream exposure. She focuses on making advanced capabilities usable by real organizations with real constraints.

Shadya's career began in the U.S. Army in 2009, advanced through national laboratory research and engineering roles, and expanded into national security and federal aerospace programs, including mission-critical and regulated environments. Her project work, complex budget management, team building, and collaboration span 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. 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.

Foundation in Service

The foundation for Shadya's career began in uniform. She served eight years in the U.S. Army with the 82nd Airborne Division, qualifying as an Airborne paratrooper and serving as a combat veteran and military analyst. She graduated first in a basic training class of more than five hundred soldiers in 2009, and she achieved top distinctions at every level of professional development. She earned Military Specialty and NCO Academy honors and was awarded the German Armed Forces Badge for Military Proficiency (GAFPB) in Gold, an elite foreign decoration requiring superior performance in athletics, marksmanship, and endurance.

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 today.

Early National Laboratory Years

Before co-founding ArcQubit, Shadya served in senior technical and leadership roles at two U.S. national laboratories. At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) 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 and oversaw complex project budgets. Her projects supported computer network defense, cyber threat intelligence, and multi-domain threat assessments.

During this period, she operationalized AI and machine learning for critical infrastructure missions and helped teams translate new analytics into day-to-day operations. She also authored and co-authored government studies on 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. These lessons became core to her leadership approach and, eventually, to the product philosophy behind ArcQubit.

Sandia National Laboratories

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. Her work sat 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 capacity, she coordinated bilateral and multilateral efforts with allied governments, regulators, and facility operators. She helped stand up a country's first national nuclear cyber exercise and delivered activity review briefings for the U.S. and country points of contacts (POC) that aligned technical milestones with regulatory needs. She advised international stakeholders on plans 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 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.

Aerospace and Space Programs

Shadya's work also extended into space. 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, combined with her earlier work as a nuclear cybersecurity engineer, strengthened her ability to guide complex organizations through integration challenges that span technology, safety, and mission requirements.

Research and Thought Leadership

Shadya invests in research that shapes practice, and she presents that work to technical and executive audiences alike. 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 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 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. That topic, along with years of research and hands-on experience, now informs ArcQubit's approach to multi-agent automation and decision support for enterprise users.

Education

Education supports Shadya's applied focus. She earned an undergraduate degree in Intelligence Studies from Mercyhurst University's Ridge College, building on her military foundation in tactical security operations to develop the analytic tradecraft and strategic national security expertise that would define her career. 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 and PQC-related open-source ecosystem readiness. The work reflects her belief that innovation becomes valuable when it improves detection, response, and resilience for real missions. It also connects directly to the technical foundation of ArcQubit's platform.

Building ArcQubit and QuantumDrift

Every chapter of Shadya's career pointed toward the same realization: organizations need better tools to make high-stakes decisions faster, and those tools must be grounded in real operational context. The national laboratories taught her how to turn research into action. International engagements showed her how standards and governance enable (rather than slow) progress. Space programs reinforced the discipline required when failure is not an option. And her doctoral research confirmed that quantum-ready architectures could deliver practical value today, not just in some distant future.

ArcQubit was founded to act on that insight. The company's core offering is QuantumDrift, an AI-Native Decision Intelligence Platform built on three pillars. These three pillars reflect the lessons of Shadya's career: that speed matters, that risk must be measured and managed, and that the best technology disappears into the workflow of the people who use it.

Technical Portfolio

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 (OT, ICS, IT, and Cloud security assessments), supply chain risk management, and incident response for multiple organizations. She has deployed software and 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.

Leadership Philosophy and Mentorship

Shadya's 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 supports international capacity building in cybersecurity for nuclear and other critical sectors. She was profiled by the U.S. Department of Energy in its "Women @ Energy" series as a first-generation college graduate, combat veteran, and technical professional advancing national security through research and public service. As a first-generation college graduate and a decorated veteran, she understands how access, encouragement, and sponsorship can change the trajectory of a career.

Looking Forward

Today, as the leader of ArcQubit, Shadya directs product and go-to-market work that supports both product-led 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. Shadya's professional expertise and operational background position ArcQubit to effectively collaborate 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 led ArcQubit through fundraising, investors and partners see a co-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 building 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.