Curriculum Vitae
Ami Heines
AI Security & Governance Architect
Summary
AI security & governance architect and full-stack builder with thirty years designing and running production backends for regulated industries. For the past seven years, backend architect and team lead for CISOteria, a security governance & compliance (GRC) SaaS — which also powers the Israel National Cyber Directorate’s GRC portal. I make AI systems safe to ship and able to survive an audit: guardrails and hard limits for LLM apps and agents (built as Guardrail, a fail-closed AI gateway), the EU AI Act / ISO 42001 controls behind them, and tamper-evident audit trails on self-hosted chains. Former startup founder (Flixel — MEMS displays, 7 patents), IDF Major (ret.), B.Sc. Mathematics & Physics.
Selected projects
CISOteria — Security & Compliance (GRC) SaaS · Backend Architect
2019–present- — Backend architect and team lead for a multi-tenant CISO / compliance platform on AWS Marketplace — owning API design, the data model, and overall architecture. Also powers the Israel National Cyber Directorate’s GRC portal (grc.cyber.gov.il).
- — Node.js / Express microservices alongside a large legacy PHP codebase I incrementally modernized; MariaDB, Redis, Docker; NVD / CVE vulnerability data into a management dashboard; SSO / SAML, AWS CloudTrail, Terraform.
- — Led a small distributed team across Israel and India, and guided the automated-test practice.
Guardrail — Fail-closed AI gateway
2026- — A reference AI-security gateway for LLM apps and agents: prompt-injection and abuse defense, PII redaction, output validation, and hard spend caps.
- — Controls mapped to the OWASP LLM Top 10, EU AI Act, and ISO 42001 — enforcement in the request path, not a policy document.
Smallest Business — Cloud & AI-Cost Engineering
2026–present- — Advise teams on cutting cloud bills and controlling AI / LLM spend without re-architecting the product — request-path cost controls, caching, model routing, egress and compute reduction.
- — Built the supporting tooling in Astro / Node.js; near-daily writing at smallestbusiness.com.
Blockchain Infrastructure — ChainVault & Verarta · Freelance CTO
2023–present- — Self-hosted private Antelope / BFT networks for tamper-proof record-keeping: real-estate wire-fraud prevention (ChainVault) and art provenance (Verarta).
- — Immutable audit trails with no third-party dependency; smart contracts in C++ / WebAssembly.
Earlier: NFT pack-opening contract on EOSIO (2022); biometric blockchain wallet (2021); enterprise cyber & privacy application, IPV Security (2019); encrypted-SMS lottery automation, Philippines (2017–2018); automated online lending platform, USA — Lendmart (2016–2017).
Experience
Technical skills
- AI security
- LLM guardrails, prompt-injection & abuse defense, output validation, spend caps; OWASP LLM Top 10, EU AI Act, ISO 42001, NIST AI RMF
- Backend & architecture
- Node.js / Express, PHP (legacy modernization), REST APIs, microservices, multi-tenant SaaS
- Data & caching
- PostgreSQL, MariaDB / MySQL, Redis, Elasticsearch
- Infra & DevOps
- Docker, Terraform, AWS, nginx, Linux, CI/CD, SSO / SAML, Prometheus / Grafana / Loki
- Blockchain
- Antelope / EOSIO, BFT consensus, smart contracts (C++ / WebAssembly), private-chain deployment
- Frontend
- Angular, React, D3.js
- Languages
- JavaScript / Node.js, PHP, Python, C++, SQL
Education
Recognition & patents
- — EOSIO Stack Exchange — ranked #11 globally (above Daniel Larimer, creator of EOS)
- — 7 international patents in MEMS display technology (1998–2004)
- — SPIE Conference: Bi-Stable flat-panel display (Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 4712, 2002)
- — Commanding Officer, Major (ret.), Israel Defense Forces
- — Member of Mensa International
Available for short- and long-term engagements. Book a scoping call →