About Darius J. Davis

I grew up on the south side of Chicago. Before I ever had a job title, I was the kid fixing computers at CPS (Chicago Public Schools). I just liked figuring out how things worked, and people started asking me to fix theirs. That turned into a real passion pretty quickly. I started writing code for money when I was 15 and never looked back.

My first real jobs were building websites, wrangling databases, and being the person everyone called when something broke. Early on I worked under a remarkable IT manager who taught me what it looked like to run a department the right way. That experience stuck with me. From there I worked my way through web development, database administration, professional services engineering, and eventually into engineering leadership: leading teams, designing systems, mentoring engineers, and owning the full lifecycle of products from requirements to production.

I've been both the individual contributor heads-down in code and the team lead in the room explaining tradeoffs to stakeholders. Both perspectives shaped how I work today. I seek out hard problems, the ones that don't have obvious answers, because that's where the most interesting work happens.

I didn't set out to be a security engineer. I got here by doing the work that touches security every day: managing access, hardening infrastructure, responding to incidents, writing automation, reviewing code. At some point the title caught up with what I was already doing.

That path made me practical. I care about controls that actually work in production, alerts that produce real signal, runbooks people can follow under pressure, and automation that reduces risk without creating more complexity.

I founded Southside CHI Solutions - the name comes from where I'm from. It's a Chicago-based IT and cybersecurity consulting practice focused on helping small businesses that don't have the budget or staff of a large enterprise. Practical security, no fluff.

I'm also an advocate for diversity in tech. I spoke at BITCON 2019 (the Blacks in Technology conference) and I share what I'm learning on my YouTube channel, Talking Tech with D. The industry gets better when more people from different backgrounds have a seat at the table.

Outside of work, I'm a proud father. That perspective keeps me grounded and reminds me why the work matters. Building things that last and making the communities around me a little better.