Nathael Bonnal

Software Engineer
Building and leading distributed
systems.

I design cloud-native architectures, lead open-source initiatives, and work on identity systems at scale.

  • Kubernetes-native
  • Control/Data Plane
  • Identity at scale
Currently at Explore systems architecture →
Nathael B.

What I Build

FerrisKey

FerrisKey is an open-source identity and access management system built in Rust, designed for cloud-native and distributed environments. It focuses on modern authentication, scalable architecture, and externalized authorization.

  • distributed identity management
  • multi-tenant security domains
  • event-based reconciliation
  • kubernetes-native architecture
  • Rust
  • Kubernetes
  • IAM
  • Operator
Read system notes →

IAM as a Service Architecture

Design of a multi-tenant identity platform built around a control plane / data plane model, enabling scalable, cloud-native IAM deployments.

Externalized Authorization Engine

Policy-driven access control using distributed PDP/PEP patterns, integrating modern standards and cloud-native enforcement strategies.

Open Source Projects

  • FerrisKey

    Active

    FerrisKey is an open-source identity and access management system built in Rust, designed for cloud-native and distributed environments. It focuses on modern authentication, scalable architecture, and externalized authorization.

    • Rust
    • IAM
    • Kubernetes
    • OAuth2
    GitHub →

  • FerrisPass

    WIP

    100% open-source password manager built in Rust. Designed as a self-hostable alternative to ProtonPass with a strong focus on security and data sovereignty.

    • Rust
    • Security
    • Self-hosted
    • Encryption
    GitHub →

  • Aether

    WIP

    IAM as a Service platform built in Rust with a micro-services control plane architecture. Designed for scalable, cloud-native identity management at scale.

    • Rust
    • IAM
    • Micro-services
    • Control Plane
    GitHub →

Tech Stack

  • Kubernetes
  • Rust
  • FerrisKey
  • Keycloak
  • OPA
  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • PostgreSQL
  • ScyllaDB
  • Kafka
  • RabbitMQ

Architectural Focus / Operating Principles

Distributed Systems

Designing reliable systems around explicit consistency boundaries, deterministic failure handling, and predictable recovery paths.

  • Consistency
  • Failure domains
  • Recovery

Identity & Access Management

Composing trust models where identity, authorization, and auditability stay understandable under scale.

  • Federation
  • Policy engines
  • Workload identity

Cloud Infrastructure

Building cloud platform primitives that reduce operational drag while preserving velocity for product teams.

  • Kubernetes loops
  • GitOps
  • Rollout safety

Event-Driven Architectures

Using events as durable contracts so domains can evolve independently without central fragility.

  • Immutable streams
  • Replayability
  • Async orchestration

Leading Open Systems / Execution

Project Ownership

Owning technical direction from architecture design to production reliability, with clear accountability at each stage.

  • Roadmaps
  • standards
  • operational discipline

Community Contributions

Contributing reusable patterns, tooling improvements, and engineering notes that help other teams ship safely.

  • Mentorship
  • reviews
  • knowledge transfer

System Evolution

Evolving live systems through controlled migrations, observability-first decisions, and explicit tradeoff management.

  • Refactoring strategy
  • migration plans
  • observability