Alexander Scheel
Head Of OpenBao Development
Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAlexander Scheel is a cryptography-focused software leader with 13 years of experience building and securing backend systems, currently heading OpenBao development at ControlPlane after roles at GitLab, Keyfactor, and HashiCorp. He combines deep PKI and secrets-management expertise—contributing to projects like HashiCorp Vault, Dogtag PKI, and FreeIPA—with hands-on cryptographic engineering on libraries such as Bouncy Castle and Cryptominisat. As an open-source maintainer and TSC/Dev WG chair for OpenBao, he blends governance with implementation, and has improved security tooling and compliance automation across OpenSCAP and ComplianceAsCode. Based in Saint Paul, he brings a rare mix of practical vulnerability fixes (including timing-attack mitigations and ACME/PKI work) and user-facing improvements, like markdown rendering fixes to Gitea. Outside of code he’s active in the arts as a board member of the Artaria String Quartet and lists violin among his open-source interests, hinting at disciplined, collaborative instincts beyond engineering.
14 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Iowa State University - College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Github Skills (58)
markdown10
git10
ldap10
oval10
c-language10
acme-protocol10
cap10
python10
testing10
it-security10
security-automation10
openscap10
c-programming10
identity-management10
java10
Programming languages (23)
Github contributions (5)
ComplianceAsCode/content
Jun 2018 - Mar 2022
Security automation content in SCAP, Bash, Ansible, and other formats
Role in this project:
Security Engineer
Security EngineerContributions:256 reviews, 710 commits, 230 PRs in 3 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Alexander primarily focused on enhancing security and compliance automation content within the repository. Their contributions involved modifying rule definitions, validating identifiers and references, and implementing strict enforcement of data types. Further, they introduced tools for fixing and managing rules, including those involving SCE checks, and generating content related to the STIG requirements. They also contributed to the build process to incorporate automated checks and validation.
ansiblebashsecurity-automationsecuritycompliance
hashicorp/vault
Oct 2021 - Jan 2023
A tool for secrets management, encryption as a service, and privileged access management
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Security Engineer
Back-end Developer & Security EngineerContributions:1380 reviews, 414 commits, 973 PRs in 1 year 3 months
Contributions summary:Alexander Scheel's commits primarily focus on enhancing the security and functionality of the HashiCorp Vault's PKI secrets engine. His contributions involve modifying the PKI's internals, improving certificate handling and ACME protocol support for advanced TLS features like RSA-PSS signatures and adding detailed logging, along with addressing vulnerabilities in the system's cryptography and operations (CWE-190). This includes adding ACME authorizatrions and challenge handling.
access-managementencryptionvaultgosecrets
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