Freddy Knuth

Senior Engineer · Architect · Technical Lead

Austin, TX · London, UK · Madrid, Spain · freddy@halkonmedia.com · 817.721.7117 · https://www.linkedin.com/in/freddy-knuth

SUMMARY

Engineer and architect with 25+ years across platforms, distributed systems, and security tooling. Solves problems at every layer — from debugging production fires to bridging the organizational gaps that block delivery. Builds what doesn’t exist, debugs what others can’t, and raises the engineering bar for the teams around the work. Bilingual English / Spanish.

CORE COMPETENCIES

Proficiencies

Languages: Go, Python, TypeScript / JavaScript, SQL
Frontend: Vue, React
Data & streaming: Cassandra, PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch, Kafka, NATS / NATS JetStream, Quine Streaming Graph
Architecture: Microservices, gRPC, Protobuf, REST, event-driven systems
Infrastructure & delivery: AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, OpenShift, CloudFormation, CI/CD (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, FluxCD), PagerDuty, OpenTelemetry, Jaeger

Domain expertise

Real-time media & communications — WebRTC, SFU, TURN, XMPP, client-side encryption
Automation — deployment pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, process automation (RPA), system integration and orchestration
Platform engineering — internal developer tools, component libraries, data layers, API gateways, multi-tenant / white-label platforms
Observability — end-to-end tracing, alerting, incident response, PCI-compliant environments

Engineering practice

Technical leadership across teams and organizations. Mentors engineers, sets code-review and deployment standards, builds onboarding documentation, and delivers internal tech talks. Fluent in AI-assisted development tooling (Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cline).

EXPERIENCE

Senior Software Engineer

CrowdStrike — Oct 2022 – Apr 2026

Lead development of CrowdStrike’s Zero Trust Assessment, a real-time endpoint scoring system that evaluates device security posture and gates enterprise access through integrations with Okta, Zscaler, and other identity providers.
Lead the vulnerability ingestion pipeline for Risk Repository, a platform that aggregates cloud security, vulnerability, and configuration assessment data into a unified risk view across customer assets.
Provide the foundational risk data consumed by CrowdStrike’s Attack Path Analysis product, enabling customers to identify and prioritize exploitable paths to critical systems.
Design and build a proof-of-concept evaluating Quine, a real-time streaming graph platform, for large-scale security data analysis on Kubernetes.

Senior Staff Engineer

ZenBusiness — Feb 2022 – Oct 2022

Designed and implemented a third-party integration enabling customers to securely store their legal documents — formation filings, compliance records, and registered-agent correspondence — in their preferred cloud storage provider, including OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, and Dropbox.
Identified and resolved query performance issues in the Django-based customer portal by restructuring ORM queries, reducing page load times from minutes-long timeouts to sub-second responses during on-call shifts.

Software Developer (II → V)

Rackspace — Feb 2014 – Feb 2022 (San Antonio / Austin)

Contributed to the architecture of Rackspace’s unified search platform, reducing live-call account lookup from 2.5 minutes (handled across five fallback teams) to 30 seconds handled by the main phone line alone.
Designed and built an application framework that unified the support platform’s micro UIs into a single seamless experience with cross-application communication and shared session management.
Architected and led development of an aggregated data platform using StreamSets pipelines, consolidating customer information from cloud, dedicated, and legacy services to power Rackspace’s internal support platform and enable broader data consumption across internal teams.
Delivered 15 automation processes to production, saving over 2,200 tracked hours in the first 16 months across 10 business units including finance, customer support, security operations, and account provisioning.

INDEPENDENT & CONSULTING ENGAGEMENTS

Systems Architect & Engineer

Banklot — Feb 2023 – present

Architect a multi-operator gaming platform with a unified API consumed by both web users and Java desktop clients, using Go microservices, gRPC, and an HTTP REST gateway.
Design the NATS JetStream streaming layer for distributing game results and transaction data across operators, products, and environments.
Build a Go-based cross-platform print service for Windows, macOS, and Linux, receiving requests from the web app and driving attached thermal printers.

Systems Architect & Engineer

Amera IoT Inc. — 2020 – Dec 2022

Patented picture-and-PIN encryption technology, applied in AmeraShare — an end-to-end encrypted collaboration tool for messaging, file sharing, and video.

Architected and built the platform backend API and the user-to-user encrypted contact system, where a shared picture and PIN derive the encryption keys securing all communications including chat, file transfer, and video calls.
Designed and shipped encrypted video communication platform where user keys never leave the client, ensuring the server infrastructure cannot access call content.
Owned platform infrastructure end-to-end, migrating from Rackspace Public Cloud to AWS with CloudFormation templates for test and production environments and Docker Compose for local development.

2021 · 2020 · 2019