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John Young_

CTO & Head of Engineering — Fintech, AI Systems, Data Infrastructure

Email:
john.anto.young@gmail.com
Location:
Laurel, Maryland

Nice to meet you_

I started my career in finance — modeling risk for a $1B+ credit card portfolio at Capital One — then taught myself to code and never looked back. Since then, I've founded two data platforms (both acquired), architected systems handling 1M+ daily API requests at scale, and built low-latency routing and optimization engines for real-time financial operations.

Currently I'm CTO at Combine Capital and Head of Engineering at Infrared, both under Branched Services, where I architect AI-driven workflows, trading infrastructure, and DeFi routing systems. I'm most at home at the intersection of finance and engineering — building things that make complex financial data actionable.

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Resume_

employment

Branched Services

2023 - Present

Investment and technology group behind Combine Capital, Infrared, and other portfolio properties.

Chief Technology Officer — Combine Capital (2023 - Present)

Spearheaded multi-agent systems development, optimized workflow automation, and led technical due diligence for portfolio investments.

  • Implemented a robust multi-agent system that streamlined data processing, achieving a 75% reduction in analysis time and increasing decision-making speed within 3 months
  • Fine-tuned LLMs to explain complex DeFi transactions in plain English, improving investigation efficiency by 65% for compliance reviews
  • Built ReAct-based agentic workflow automation for complex DeFi transactions, integrating dynamic slippage optimization and MEV protection across 10+ protocols
  • Developed an end-to-end data infrastructure that processed 100K+ daily events across multiple EVM chains and CEXs, enhancing data accessibility within 6 months
  • Led technical due diligence for portfolio investments

Head of Engineering — Infrared (2025 - Present)

Architecting a unified MIMO token router for globally optimal DeFi routing across swaps, deposits, and LP operations.

  • Architecting a unified MIMO token router that models all DeFi operations as arcs in a single flow network, eliminating suboptimal sequential solving across 50+ liquidity sources
  • Implementing min-cost flow optimization with capacity scaling, reducing algorithmic complexity to O((V+E) × log U) for handling ERC-20 amounts at 10^18 precision
  • Designing piecewise linear cost approximation with configurable segment counts, achieving <1% slippage estimation error while maintaining sub-100ms route computation
  • Engineering discretized bundle nodes for LP composition, enabling the optimizer to evaluate 11 ratio configurations per pool and discover optimal token allocations dynamically
  • Building gas-aware cost modeling that factors execution overhead into routing decisions, optimizing net output for trade sizes from $10K to $500K+

FRACTAL (Fractal Wealth)

2021 - 2022

Software Engineer

Designed and deployed automated crypto/DeFi trading strategies.

  • Developed a backtesting framework that processed 5+ years of historical data, enhancing strategy validation and performance analysis within 4 months
  • Engineered risk management systems with dynamic position sizing, reducing potential losses by 40% within 4 months through advanced algorithmic strategies

Cryptosheets

2018 - 2021

Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Founded and scaled cryptocurrency data platform to 30,000+ active users.

  • Built Microsoft Excel add-in providing real-time crypto market data via custom APIs
  • Designed scalable architecture handling 1M+ daily API requests
  • Led successful acquisition by private buyer within first year of operation
  • Managed product roadmap, technical development, and customer success

Spreadstreet.io

2016 - 2019

Founder & Chief Software Architect

Created Google Sheets integration for cryptocurrency market data.

  • Developed custom functions and real-time data feeds for 500+ cryptocurrencies
  • Built subscriber base of 5,000+ users with recurring revenue model
  • Negotiated and completed successful exit to strategic buyer

Capital One

2010 - 2017

Principal Financial Analyst

Progressive roles: Finance Rotation Program Analyst → Senior Financial Analyst → Principal Financial Analyst.

  • Led cross-functional teams in developing financial models for $1B+ credit card portfolio
  • Built automated reporting systems reducing manual processes by 70%
  • Developed predictive models for customer acquisition and retention strategies
  • Mentored junior analysts and led training sessions on advanced Excel and SQL techniques

education

Towson University College of Business and Economics

2008 - 2010

Bachelor of Science, Finance & Economics (Dual Concentration)

Activities: Towson University Investment Group

Thinkful

2018 - 2019

Engineering Immersion Program

Intensive 6-month program requiring 60-90 hours per week focused on full-stack development with JavaScript, React, Node.js, and PostgreSQL

certifications

StrategyV2 Developer

May 2024

Hummingbot Foundation

Developed trading strategy voted MVP by peers and instructors at demo day presentation

MVP NFT Proof | Certification List (Cohort 7)

technical skills

Languages
Go Python Solidity SQL TypeScript
AI/ML & LLM Technologies
Anthropic Claude API OpenAI API Gemini API LangChain LangGraph AutoGen CrewAI Multi-agent orchestration RAG architectures Model fine-tuning ReAct patterns
Frontend Development
React Next.js Vue.js Tailwind CSS Ant Design D3.js Recharts
Backend Development
Node.js REST APIs GraphQL gRPC WebSockets
Databases & Vector Stores
PostgreSQL MongoDB Redis TimescaleDB BigQuery ChromaDB Pinecone Qdrant
Infrastructure & DevOps
AWS GCP Docker Kubernetes CI/CD Modal
Blockchain & DeFi
Uniswap Aave Compound Ethers.js Web3.js EVM chains
Trading Systems
Autonomous agents Backtesting frameworks CCXT Hummingbot Risk management Order Management Systems

My Projects_

CLI Tool • Go

Flywheel

Worktree-based parallel agent orchestrator. Run multiple AI coding agents concurrently in isolated git worktrees with dependency-aware DAG scheduling, automated review, and crash recovery.

Go AI Agents CLI Git Worktree Orchestration
GitHub
Library • Go

go-weiroll

Go implementation of the weiroll command planner for Ethereum smart contract operation chaining. Batch multiple contract calls into a single atomic transaction with automatic state management and slot optimization.

Go Ethereum Smart Contracts DeFi Transaction Batching
GitHub
Library / Service • Go

go-gas

Ultra low-latency Ethereum gas price estimator (~69µs calculation time) for high-frequency trading and MEV bots. Push-based architecture with zero-copy math using uint256 to minimize GC pressure.

Go Ethereum EIP-1559 MEV Low Latency
GitHub
Library / Service • Rust + Go

tycho-bridge

High-performance DeFi simulation library wrapping the Tycho SDK. Zero-network local swap simulations with 5-3000µs latency via cached state. Dual interface with C FFI bindings and gRPC, supporting Ethereum, Base, Unichain, and Arbitrum.

Rust Go gRPC DeFi Low Latency
GitHub
CLI Tool • Python

Ethereum Fine-Tuning Cookbook

Open-source educational cookbook for fine-tuning language models on blockchain data using QLoRA/LoRA. Complete examples for extracting structured intents from Ethereum transactions with 90%+ accuracy.

PyTorch HuggingFace QLoRA web3.py Ethereum
GitHub
CLI Tool • Go

LLM Orchestrator

Powerful Go CLI that sends prompts to multiple LLMs in parallel and uses a Master Agent to synthesize responses from OpenAI, Google Gemini, Groq, and Anthropic Claude.

Go Claude GPT-4 Gemini Parallel Processing
GitHub
CLI Tool • Go

Go OHLCV Collector

Production-ready Go library and CLI for collecting historical OHLCV cryptocurrency market data with automatic gap detection, self-healing, and pluggable storage adapters.

Go DuckDB PostgreSQL Time Series Crypto APIs
GitHub
Excel Add-in • React + Node.js Acquired 2019

Cryptosheets

Real-time cryptocurrency data platform for Microsoft Excel with 30,000+ active users. Full-featured Excel add-in with live market data, portfolio tracking, and custom formulas.

React Node.js PostgreSQL Excel APIs WebSockets
Visit Site GitHub
CLI Tool • Go

go-code-2-prompt

Powerful CLI for generating LLM prompts from codebases. Features directory traversal, file filtering, Git integration, and token counting for AI-assisted development.

Go CLI Git Templates Token Counting
GitHub