Christiaan “Wimpie” Vermaak
Software architect in Johannesburg. I work the seam where development, infrastructure, and quality assurance meet.
What I do
I architect resilient systems with a deliberate focus on identity and access management, zero-knowledge and applied cryptography, multi-tenant SaaS architecture, and the audit discipline that keeps them all honest. I run CW Vermaak Informatics, and across the practice I work the full delivery lifecycle — lead architect on one engagement, DevOps engineer on another, developer or QA engineer where that is what the work needs.
Give me the messy, half-documented, three-systems-that-don't-talk problem. That's where the work is — and that's where the value lives.
What I'm building
- WeldForge — a multi-tenant federated identity platform. One Spring Boot binary that speaks OIDC, SAML 2.0, and SCIM 2.0, with MFA, internal PKI, and HMAC-signed audit webhooks. POPIA-aware, source-available.
- KeyCrypt — a zero-knowledge enterprise password & DevOps-secrets platform. Triple-key encryption, human credentials and machine secrets in one vault, federated to WeldForge — the server never sees plaintext.
- NoteForge — an offline-first, zero-knowledge note-taking platform. Client-side encryption (Argon2id, AES-GCM-256), zero-knowledge sharing via X25519, one Flutter codebase across web, mobile, and desktop.
- App-iary Buddy Suite — my early-childhood education line: Write-, Maths-, Memory-, and Music-Buddy on one shared backend, with mastery-paced progression and one family identity, on a GitOps-managed MicroK8s platform.
- Wellspring — a pro-bono outreach & visitor-management platform for community health programmes. Spring Boot, Flutter, and a Tina4 Python dashboard, with WeldForge as the identity layer.
- IntelliSuite — my office/business product line for South African SSMEs: one platform, one login, and one set of books across accounting, invoicing, payroll, and POS. SARS-aligned and POPIA-aware, with WeldForge for identity. Flagship Intelli-Accounting in development.
- Cross-device tooling & deep-tech R&D — mobile-to-desktop screen mirroring and cross-OS keyboard/mouse sharing, plus an early-stage venture in quantum control and machine intelligence (provisional patent filed).
How I work
- Principal-led. The person who scopes the work is the person doing it.
- Hand-over-first. Runbooks during the build, not at the end. If I vanished tomorrow, your team should still be able to run the thing.
- Test-driven. TDD and BDD throughout — numbers somebody is willing to sign their name to.
The stack I reach for
Java / Spring Boot for product backends. PHP and Python on Tina4 (I contribute to the framework) for sites, portals, and automation. Flutter for mobile. PostgreSQL, Docker, and Kubernetes on every project. Keycloak for client work; WeldForge for my own products. Robot Framework BDD for QA engagements.
Currently studying
Returning to Applied Mathematics — bringing analytical rigour to security-protocol design and reliability modelling.
Find me
English · Afrikaans