NathanaelRitz | Calgary • AB
PDF_RESUME

Infrastructure Strategist & Software Engineer

Bridging cryptographic security theory with cloud-native production realities to build resilient, distributed systems.

Nathanael L. Ritz

Protocol Design

Cross-Functional Collaboration,
ProVerif Formal Analysis

Systems Engineering

Strategic Systems Design,
Zero-Trust Architecture

Cloud & Reliability

Multi-Cloud Architecture,
HA/Disaster Recovery

01 //
IETF_Engagement

IETF Protocol Design & Security Research Participation

Active protocol researcher and primary editor of SEAT Architecture ↗ and SEAT Proxies ↗, advancing standard mechanisms for binding remote attestation evidence to secure transport channels.

  • Protocol Design & Standardization Defining interoperable specifications that map the intersection of transport-layer protocols with standards-based remote attestation. Extending this work via collaborations on WIMSE Workload Attestation ↗ and the RATS RARE API ↗.
  • Formal Verification (ProVerif) Independently building formal models to analyze intra-handshake attestation. Producing machine-checked proofs that demonstrate cryptographic binders achieve injective agreement over post-handshake application data under single-key compromise. View seat_playground models ↗
  • Vulnerability Analysis & Mitigation Evaluating KEX downgrade and relay attack mitigations across proposed IETF standards. Applied ProVerif symbolic modeling to analyze known attestation vulnerabilities (e.g., CVE-2026-33697) and contributed formal architectural critique to working group mailing lists. Read WG Analysis ↗

02 //
System Ops

Impact Highlights

  • Multi-Cloud Architecture: Built geo-redundant, multi-provider architecture across Vultr, Linode, and Genesis Cloud; balanced latency vs. availability to withstand single-provider outages.
  • Cost Optimization: Reduced infrastructure cost ~75% by leading a high-stakes migration from AWS to a multi-provider alt-cloud footprint, preserving uptime and runway.
  • Resilience Engineering: Deployed a multi-site MySQL cluster tuned for the DAM workload; designed for city-local cross-provider replication and controlled failover.
  • Performance Optimization: Improved API latency by up to ~1s under load via a resource-constrained Kafka cluster (≈2GB RAM/1 vCPU) that absorbed bursty workloads and protected primary DBs.
  • CI/CD Automation: Authored complete Git-driven CI/CD pipeline (Bash + Docker Compose) enabling automated build, test, and deploy across 12+ service roles.

CleanPix Corporation

Digital Asset Management SaaS | Calgary, AB

Infrastructure Strategist

2011 — Present

  • Reduced infrastructure cost ~75% by leading a high-stakes migration from AWS to a multi-provider alt-cloud footprint, preserving uptime and runway.
  • Maintained 24/7 on-call responsibility as primary responder for production issues, ensuring business continuity across 5-7 VMs and on-premises hardware.
  • Built geo-redundant, multi-provider architecture across Vultr, Linode, and Genesis Cloud; balanced latency vs. availability to withstand single-provider outages.
  • Deployed a multi-site MySQL cluster tuned for the DAM workload; designed for city-local cross-provider replication and controlled failover.
  • Improved API latency by up to ~1s under load via a resource-constrained Kafka cluster (≈2GB RAM/1 vCPU) that absorbed bursty workloads and protected primary DBs.
  • Authored complete Git-driven CI/CD pipeline (Bash + Docker Compose) enabling automated build, test, and deploy across 12+ service roles; includes multi-stage container builds that deconstruct Java WARs for cache efficiency, dynamic per-role manifest generation, and just-in-time secret delivery via transient helper containers.
  • Integrated Cloudflare for DNS management, WAF protection, and load balancing; implemented Amazon SES for email delivery with a full deliverability stack (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).
  • Automated integration testing using BDD principles with Gherkin/Cucumber feature files that gate production deployments.
  • Maintained direct customer-support channel, translating real-world user issues into infrastructure fixes, UX improvements, and SLA-driven priorities.

Product Champion

2011 — 2016

  • Overhauled customer-facing web application using JSPs and modern JavaScript, significantly improving user experience.
  • Bridged the gap between business needs and technical execution through daily collaboration with the head software architect.
  • Crafted user stories and acceptance tests, translating client and operational requirements into actionable, high-quality software deliverables.

Infrastructure Specialist

2007 — 2011

  • Recovered botched Sun Apple Xserve migration after catastrophic XRAID failure—restored critical endpoints from near-total data loss, preventing company closure.
  • Responsible for monitoring, review, and reporting of on-prem hardware health.

03 //
Skill_Stack

Cloud & Reliability

  • Multi-Cloud Architecture
  • Cost Optimization
  • HA/DR/BC
  • Linode, Vultr, AWS
  • Cloudflare

Security & Protocols

  • Zero-Trust Architecture
  • Cryptographic Protocol Design
  • Formal Verification (ProVerif)
  • Remote Attestation (IETF RATS/SEAT WG)
  • OAuth 2.0/DPoP, HPKE

Engineering & DevOps

  • CI/CD Automation
  • DevSecOps
  • Infrastructure as Code
  • BDD (Gherkin/Cucumber)
  • Linux, Bash
  • Docker, Docker Compose
  • Git

Data Systems

  • Apache Kafka
  • MySQL Clustering
  • Object Storage (Wasabi S3)
  • REST APIs

Observability

  • Netdata Cloud
  • Cloudflare Analytics
  • AWS SNS

Languages

  • Python
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • SQL