u/therealmunchies

Provisionally passed a couple hours ago.

Education:

BS in Mechanical Engineering and finishing up my Master’s in Cybersecurity in the Fall. I also have my A+, Net+, Sec+, CySA+, and AWS SAA.

Experience:

Currently a Security Engineer of 1.75 years after being an ME for 3 years. My realm of expertise is mostly Infrastructure and Software Engineering (DevSecOps).

Study Resources:

• Main body of knowledge resource: Cert Mike’s LinkedIn Learning CISSP Videos
• Concept Mapping: DestCert MindMaps
• Practice Test Sets:
  • Sybex Official Study Guide’s Practice Tests (3/4 exams)
  • Sybex Official Practice Tests (4/4 exams)
• Mindset Videos
  • Kelly Henderson’s Why you will pass the CISSP
  • Andrew’s 50 Hard Exam Questions & CISSP Mindset videos
• Extra help - AI tools for domain and concept drills

Also took the official CISSP bootcamp from ISC2 last Fall, sponsored by my job, but it honestly went over my head because it was near finals of that semester.

In total, I spent about 1.5 months of studying--from the conclusion of my Spring semester up until this past weekend--and completed about ~1000 practice test questions (including the AI-assisted drills).

Objective:

Of course the main objective was to pass, but I also wanted to do it without spending any of my own money. Voucher was company-sponsored; LinkedIn Learning, O'Reilly, and Sybex access was provided by my local library; used various AI platforms up until their free limits; and, of course, YouTube is free.

Testing Experience:

Never experienced adaptive testing before, so the long scenarios to the short, technical recall swings were interesting. Lots of Domain 3 and 6 questions for me. Only tip: read carefully and answer the question. The "think like a manager" mindset doesn't work for every question.

Would like to be closer to $500. Willing to meet within a 30 mile radius of Washington, DC.

Please comment here before DM’ing

I took an unconventional path, Mechanical Engineering to cybersecurity, and I’ve spent the past couple years doing DevOps-heavy work: platform security (STIGs, CI/CD, sysadmin), cloud security (AWS + Terraform), MLOps for SOC workflows, and building a full-stack CTI app using LLMOps/RAG from the ground up.

My strongest areas are Python (FastAPI, LlamaIndex, Streamlit), Linux/infrastructure, and GitLab CI pipelines. DSA is my weak spot, but I have solid architectural intuition and a process-first mindset that carried over from engineering.

I love the building side of this work more than anything. My rule is simple: plan, understand, execute, and be able to explain every single thing going into main. That standard has made me a go-to resource for my team, which I genuinely enjoy.

I’m not looking to jump ship, but I want to grow into a true software engineer and eventually reach principal level.

To senior engineers—especially in security-adjacent roles:

- What fundamentals should I prioritize given this background?

- How much does weak DSA actually matter at this stage?

- What bridged the gap for you between DevOps-minded and software engineer?