--- name: Louis Grenzebach pronouns: They/Them location: Eugene, Oregon email: louis.grenzebach@gmail.com links: - { label: pknull.ai, href: "https://pknull.ai" } - { label: linkedin.com/in/louisg, href: "https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisg" } - { label: github.com/pknull, href: "https://github.com/pknull" } --- # Louis Grenzebach **Principal Software Engineer · Solution Architect · Prompt Engineer** Location : Eugene, Oregon Pronouns : They/Them Email : [louis.grenzebach@gmail.com](mailto:louis.grenzebach@gmail.com) Web : [pknull.ai](https://pknull.ai) LinkedIn : [linkedin.com/in/louisg](https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisg) GitHub : [github.com/pknull](https://github.com/pknull) ## Summary Three decades in software, the last nine architecting and shipping identity-protection systems at scale. Strongest where high-level systems architecture meets low-level implementation — built a company's first SSO/JWT auth platform, founded its cross-team architecture function, and led a multi-year greenfield platform rebuild that now serves ~1.7M customers. Currently driving field-level encryption, audit log standards, and AI-augmented engineering practices at Allstate Identity Protection. ## Experience ### Principal Software Engineer · [Allstate Identity Protection](https://www.allstateidentityprotection.com/) **Jul 2022 – present** · Remote (Eugene, OR) Led the post-acquisition greenfield platform rebuild across the finish line; **platform shipped Jan 2023, serving ~1.7M customers**. Continues as a lead principal in the Solution Architecture and Design (SAD) function, driving cross-team architecture and standards. - **Field Level Encryption**: drives both the standard and the platform-wide rollout, encrypting **~60% of customer profile fields** to protect PII against service-layer leakage — addressing what database-level encryption-at-rest leaves uncovered (compliance met; live-path leaks unmitigated). - **Audit Log standards & implementation**: owns the org-wide standard and its rollout across services for compliance and observability. - **Unified interface pattern**: original architecture design that exposes **CQRS and REST** through a single specification (shipped, in production), with **Model Context Protocol (MCP)** as the planned third leg now in active design — positioning AI-agent integration as a first-class interface modality alongside existing consumers. - **AI-assisted code generation** (specification-driven, test-gated): authored a methodology in which standards inform tests, tests are human-reviewed, and an LLM produces code bound to those tests — treating the LLM as a constrained implementer, not a free agent. - Established the company's **internal data archiving system**, **API standards**, and **security standards** as part of the post-launch SAD agenda. ### Senior Developer · InfoArmor / [Allstate Identity Protection](https://www.allstateidentityprotection.com/) **Jun 2017 – Jul 2022** · Phoenix, AZ - **Built the company's first SSO / JWT identity & authentication platform** from scratch — peak ~40,000 active users — establishing the auth substrate that carried the product through multiple platform generations. - **Drove engineering-practice modernization** in the first two years — including the move from git-based deployment to a Jenkins CI/CD pipeline — bringing standard practices into a small-company org, slowly and by partnership rather than mandate. - **Led the post-acquisition greenfield platform rebuild** (2018+): new CI on **Buildkite** in place of Jenkins, **Helm-chart deployment to Kubernetes**, and **migration of the in-house auth platform onto Auth0** (freeing engineering capacity from owning a security-critical undifferentiated service). - **Modernized internal API systems** as a multi-year thread — pattern work that later became the org-wide API standards under SAD. - **Founded the Solution Architecture and Design (SAD) function**: started as an internal initiative ~late 2019; recognized as an official function within months. **Every initiative now flows through SAD** for spec research and acceptance criteria; the function also maintains architectural alignment and interoperability across domains and teams, so engineering work is *informed, not ad hoc*. ### Owner · Up9 Consulting **Jan 2008 – Dec 2021** · Phoenix, AZ · concurrent side practice - Served primarily K-12 and higher-ed clients across OS X / Linux server deployment, directory and SSO integration, SIS integration and reporting, LAMP application development, MySQL data warehousing, and network-based lab imaging. - **Remote Linux host deployments for a new PayPal datacenter** as part of a three-person team over six months. - **AESD email migration to Google Workspace** — cleaned up an overloaded legacy mail system; included server placement and an OAuth gateway shim for legacy clients during cutover. - **VUSD Curriculum Planner** — centralized web app that loaded curriculum from multiple districts and pushed daily/weekly goals to teachers as iCal calendar updates. - **PVUSD LDAP centralization** — led the move of district authentication onto a single LDAP service, integrating service-by-service across the existing application landscape. - **HCLC charter-district consolidation** — collapsed a charter district's auth and file-storage workloads onto a single high-capacity VM host; on-site deployment included. - **PVUSD pCHAT** — Jabber server installation tied into LDAP for authentication, with MySQL-backed maintenance and persistence. ### Senior Customer Delivery Technical Engineer · CyberSponse **Jun 2013 – Dec 2016** · Phoenix, AZ Hired as a senior application developer on a Symfony2 platform; scope expanded across operations, system architecture, and lead developer duties as the startup evolved. - **Designed the security mechanism for inter-service communications and the licensing system**, owning the cryptographic boundaries between platform components. - **Led the application architecture rework into microservices** for geographically distributed scaling. - Took on and delivered a major government client at end-of-year before the company closed its Phoenix office. ### Earlier roles **Unix/Linux Administrator** at Bechtel (May 2007 – Feb 2008) — monitoring and audit tooling on HP-UX. **Senior Systems Analyst** at Arizona State University (May 2006 – May 2007) — development and project lead on a data warehouse contracted to Paradise Valley USD; aggregated data nightly from ~40 source databases (DBF, SyBase, MySQL) into a Drupal-fronted query environment with a self-service query module so end users could build views without ASU assistance. **Programmer II → Network Applications Specialist III** at Paradise Valley USD (Jan 2001 – May 2006) — established the district's data warehousing initiative (later continued under ASU); built a PHP standards-based testing platform (DAPS), a 5-server OS X + XRAID web-storage cluster on Apache + WebObjects (ePAC), a district gradebook with nightly SIS sync across five high schools (pOGB), an automated account-generation system pulling from ~30 dBase sources plus Powerschool exports (pACC), a PHP trouble-ticket system, and a Moodle deployment used as a standards-testing pilot. Trained other programmers and introduced district-wide use of blogging, wikis, instant messaging, secure email, and mailing-list collaboration during a period when those were novel for a K-12 IT organization. **Junior Developer** at What's For Free Technologies (May – Dec 2000) — JSP brand-promotion portal with newsletter opt-in, Oracle data-entry web frontends, and a JSP + Sendmail mailing system; the dot-com collapsed mid-December 2000. **Self-Employed Consultant** (Jan 1997 – Jun 2002) — dynamic shopping carts, small-to-mid network buildouts, home-to-office VPNs. ## Selected Projects Active personal work; full notes at [pknull.ai/projects](https://pknull.ai/projects). - **[Asha](https://pknull.ai/projects/asha/)** — multi-harness AI workflow system: persistent identity, session memory, and pluginized workflows for Claude Code and Codex. - **[Thallus](https://pknull.ai/projects/thallus/)** — local-first AI agent infrastructure umbrella covering Egregore, Familiar, Servitor, Scry, and thallus-core. ## Skills - **Languages** — Python (3.10+), Go, Rust, TypeScript, JavaScript (Node.js), PHP, Bash, SQL - **AI / LLM engineering** — Anthropic Claude API, prompt engineering, LLM-bound TDD methodology, multi-agent / multi-harness coordination, Model Context Protocol (MCP) design - **Architecture** — CQRS, REST, event-driven systems, microservices, identity & SSO design, schema- and standards-driven design - **Platform & infra** — Linux, Kubernetes, Helm, Docker, Apache, Buildkite, Jenkins, Ansible, AWS, Auth0, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis - **Security** — field-level encryption, SSO / JWT, LDAP, identity & access management, audit log standards, security architecture - **Practices** — test-driven development, cross-team standards authorship, technical writing, code review