Tim Hinrichs
About Tim Hinrichs
Tim Hinrichs is the Co-Founder and CTO of Styra, with a background in computer science and significant contributions to policy enforcement and cloud-native security.
Current Title and Role
Tim Hinrichs is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Styra, based in Mountain View, CA. His role includes overseeing the technological vision and strategy of the company, particularly focusing on policy enforcement and cloud-native security. He has been a pivotal figure in driving the advancement of Styra's core technology, which helps enterprises manage and enforce policies across their cloud infrastructure.
Previous Roles at Styra
Tim Hinrichs has held multiple positions at Styra, contributing significantly to its growth and innovation. He served as the Interim CEO from 2022 to 2023 for 7 months, and as Vice President of Products from 2020 to 2021 and from 2015 to 2018. In these roles, he was responsible for driving product strategy and development, ensuring that Styra's tools and solutions met the evolving needs of enterprises in the cloud-native ecosystem.
Education and Academic Background
Tim Hinrichs holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Computer Science from Stanford University, where he studied from 2001 to 2007. Prior to that, he earned a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, studying from 1997 to 2001. His academic background in formal methods and programming languages has deeply influenced his work in policy enforcement and security.
Industry Contributions and Open-Source Projects
Tim Hinrichs co-created the Open Policy Agent (OPA), an open-source project that provides policy-based control for cloud-native environments. His contributions have been instrumental in the adoption of policy-as-code within the cloud-native ecosystem. He regularly contributes to open-source projects and engages with the community through conferences and meetups, sharing his expertise and insights on policy enforcement and security.
Publications and Blogging
Tim Hinrichs has authored several blog posts and research papers on topics related to policy enforcement, security, and formal methods. He has written about building policy on Neo4j data, Kubernetes Admission Control, securing communication between microservices, real-time authorization with Enterprise OPA and gRPC, and the importance of continuous monitoring in microservices. His writings also cover the impact of policy changes and the importance of policy lifecycle management.