Justin Cavinee

Chief Data Scientist Dragos, Inc.

Last Reviewed: September 26, 2026

Executive Summary

Justin Cavinee is a co-founder and the Chief Data Scientist of Dragos, the company that protects industrial control systems and other operational technology such as power grids, water systems, pipelines and factories from cyber attack. He founded it in 2016 with Robert M. Lee, now Chairman and CEO, and Jon Lavender, now Chief Technology Officer, after the three met in the U.S. intelligence community, where Cavinee built analytics to detect threats against ICS and SCADA networks. At Dragos he leads content development for its platform: the behavioral detection analytics, network characterizations and workflow automation that encode what its threat intelligence and threat operations teams learn into something every customer runs.

Career Highlights

• Co-founded Dragos in 2016 with Robert M. Lee and Jon Lavender; the startup closed a $1.2 million seed round from the DataTribe startup studio that August.
• Chief Data Scientist of Dragos, listed on its executive team alongside Chairman and CEO Robert M. Lee.
• Leads content development for the Dragos platform, codifying the work of Dragos’s threat intelligence and threat operations teams into behavioral analytics, network characterizations and workflow automation.
• Brings incident response and detection experience across nuclear, power, water distribution, manufacturing, and oil and gas pipeline environments.
• In the U.S. Intelligence Community, developed advanced analytics to detect threats targeting ICS/SCADA networks and conducted intrusion analysis and incident response against national-level adversaries.

Professional Journey

Cavinee studied computer science at Ohio University and took a master’s degree in the same subject at Johns Hopkins University. He then served in the U.S. Intelligence Community, where he was in charge of developing advanced analytics to detect threats targeting industrial control system and SCADA networks. The work spanned intrusion analysis and incident response against national-level adversaries and producing threat intelligence on adversary operations for audiences ranging from tactical defenders to heads of state, and he worked in both red team and blue team capacities.

It was there that he met Robert M. Lee and Jon Lavender, and in 2016 the three founded Dragos with the aim of identifying nation-states attacking critical infrastructure and building a security platform for industrial control systems. In August 2016 the Fulton, Maryland startup closed a $1.2 million seed round from DataTribe, a startup studio in Howard County, to build what it called the Dragos Threat Operations Center.

As Chief Data Scientist, Cavinee specialises in incident response and in developing analytics that detect advanced threats both before and after an incident, with experience in industrial environments including nuclear and conventional power, water distribution, manufacturing and oil and gas pipelines. He leads content development for the Dragos platform, turning the findings of the company’s threat intelligence and threat operations teams into the latest behavioral analytics, characterizations of customer networks and workflow automation, so that, as the company puts it, every customer is protected as if the Dragos team were sitting beside them.

Dragos has since grown into a company headquartered in Washington, DC with operations across the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. In September 2026 it acquired NetRise and runZero to build what it calls an end-to-end platform for extended operational technology, a move that coincided with the close of Accenture’s majority investment in the company.

Education

Ohio University

Bachelor’s degree, Computer Science

Johns Hopkins University

Master’s degree, Computer Science