In August 2025, Sam Waddell focused on security hardening and deployment consistency across the danswer-ai/danswer and onyx-dot-app/onyx repositories. He implemented non-root execution for backend services, model-server containers, and Celery workers, restructuring log paths and updating Docker Compose configurations to support safer, more auditable deployments. Using Python, Docker, and YAML, Sam unified security contexts and improved logging accessibility, ensuring compliance and maintainability across environments. He also updated documentation to outline best practices for non-root container operation. The work demonstrated depth in backend development and DevOps, addressing cross-repository security and operational challenges with a clear, maintainable technical approach.