For Prop Shops · Crypto Funds · Trading Desks
Building AI agents instead? →Your signing p99 is hiding 8+ milliseconds of alpha. I find it in week one, fix it in week three. Ex-Akuna + ex-Gemini.
I built crypto infra at Akuna Capital and SRE'd at Gemini Exchange. I've worked at a firm that measured in microseconds. I've audited firms that didn't know what their p99 was. Same lesson either way. Signing latency is alpha leakage, and most shops don't know how much they're leaving on the table.
Your signing path, your key management, your execution loop. Each one has a tax. I find it. I fix it.
Why me.
Only one who's shipped it
I've built a TEE signing platform at 42µs
Most fractional CTOs advise on infrastructure. I've built it. ZeroCopy's AWS Nitro enclave is the reference implementation you'd otherwise hire a 3-month consulting firm to scope and design.
Both sides of the latency gap
Akuna Capital + Gemini Exchange
Prop shop crypto infra at Akuna. Exchange-scale SRE at Gemini. I know what institutional-grade signing looks like because I built and ran it. Not because I read the whitepaper.
Production AI orchestration
Letta and BAML agents in the loop
I run a production AI orchestration system for tasks where AI does well: code review against my checklists, test generation from spec, dependency scanning, documentation. AI handles parallel scope work; I own architecture, security-critical paths, and anything where the cost of being wrong is high.
Where your alpha leaks.
Every millisecond between signal and signed transaction is alpha you don't capture. Most shops don't know where the time goes.
Key management
AWS KMS: 130ms · CloudHSM: 5ms · TEE: 42µs
3,095× faster signing at the hardware level. The delta compounds across every trade in your book.
Signing path p99
Typical shop: 8–40ms · Best-in-class: <500µs
Most shops have never measured their signing p99 in production under load. The number is almost always worse than expected.
Order execution loop
strace overhead: 166× · eBPF overhead: <500ns
If you're profiling with the wrong tools, you're measuring the profiler. I know which tool fits each layer of the stack.
First-week deliverable: the latency audit.
Output: written report with severity ranking and remediation sequence. Most shops find 2–3 items in the top tier that they can fix in a week.
Track record
Gemini Exchange. SRE
Exchange-scale reliability engineering. Know what institutional-grade signing infrastructure looks like in production at real transaction volume.
Akuna Capital. Crypto Infra
Prop shop crypto infrastructure. Know what the latency bar looks like at a firm that trades for a living. That bar is the benchmark I use for audits.
ZeroCopy Systems. TEE Platform
Built a production TEE signing platform from scratch. 42µs deterministic signing. 40+ Rust crates. This is the implementation reference.
Quantfund Engine
Built the systematic trading infrastructure: kill-switch, circuit breaker, Telegram alerts, paper-to-shadow-mode pipeline. 1,245 tests. Not portfolio filler. Shipped infrastructure.
How to engage.
Most prop-shop engagements start at Fractional. Advisory works for a one-shot latency audit and remediation plan.
Advisory
$5K / mo
- . Weekly 90-min architecture review
- . Async Slack channel for questions
- . Infra risk register + remediation roadmap
- . TEE / signing system audit
- . 30-day rolling, cancel anytime
Fractional CTO
$15K / mo
- . Everything in Advisory
- . Up to 20 hours active engineering per month
- . Attend your engineering standups
- . Hiring bar-setting + technical interviews
- . Represent you in investor / customer technical calls
- . Production AI orchestration: Letta and BAML agents for code review, test generation, dependency analysis, and documentation — under explicit guardrails, with humans on every critical path
Embedded
$30–40K / mo
- . Everything in Fractional
- . Dedicated primary focus (one client at a time)
- . Hands-on production engineering ownership
- . Full team leadership including vendor management
- . Custom SLA and escalation path
- . Engagement typically 3–6 months
Compare tiers side-by-side 8 features × 3 tiers
| Advisory | Fractional CTO Popular | Embedded | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $5K / mo | $15K / mo | $30–40K / mo |
| Included hours / mo | . | 20 | Dedicated |
| Engineering standups | . | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hiring interviews | . | ✓ | ✓ |
| Investor / customer calls | . | ✓ | ✓ |
| Production ownership | . | . | ✓ |
| Dedicated focus | . | . | ✓ |
| Minimum term | 30 days | 30 days | 3 months |
Advisory
- Price
- $5K / mo
- Included hours / mo
- .
- Engineering standups
- .
- Hiring interviews
- .
- Investor / customer calls
- .
- Production ownership
- .
- Dedicated focus
- .
- Minimum term
- 30 days
Fractional CTO Popular
- Price
- $15K / mo
- Included hours / mo
- 20
- Engineering standups
- ✓
- Hiring interviews
- ✓
- Investor / customer calls
- ✓
- Production ownership
- .
- Dedicated focus
- .
- Minimum term
- 30 days
Embedded
- Price
- $30–40K / mo
- Included hours / mo
- Dedicated
- Engineering standups
- ✓
- Hiring interviews
- ✓
- Investor / customer calls
- ✓
- Production ownership
- ✓
- Dedicated focus
- ✓
- Minimum term
- 3 months
Free · No call required
The Latency Audit Template. 8 checks most shops have never measured
- . Signing p99 baseline across hardware security module vs. KMS
- . KMS API overhead attribution (network, serialisation, queue)
- . Linux kernel tuning checklist for sub-millisecond determinism
- . Exchange adapter round-trip decomposition (encode → sign → transmit)
Check your email. Or open it now:
Open the checklist →Tip: print it (⌘+P / Ctrl+P) to save a PDF copy for your team.
What's your current signing p99?
If you don't know the number, that's where we start. Three questions, reply within 24 hours. Or book directly: calendar.app.google/W1CEqo8GsoGtjJX49