Montréal, Canada · Open to interesting problems

Engineering leader who still ships systems & ventures.

Seven-plus years designing distributed systems, leading teams, and turning side projects into real businesses. Formerly Unity and Collective[i]. Built benchmark-beating AI in college, patented it, watched the patent get acquired. Now CEO of Slynk.

CurrentlyCEO @ Slynk
FocusAI · Distributed systems · Product
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01 · About

Builder by default

I'm a full-stack engineer who ended up leading teams, and never lost the habit of building things on the side.

At Collective[i] I led a team of six engineers on a Go microservices platform: real-time WebSocket infrastructure, zero-downtime deployments, and a full identity-provider migration for over 100,000 users. At Unity I built blockchain tooling for game developers and consulted for web3 customers including Google and The Sandbox.

AI isn't a recent pivot for me. In 2017, while still in college, I co-founded a company that built a world-class lip-reading AI for noisy drive-thrus. By 2019 it was beating the best published benchmarks in the field. We secured patent CA 3065446, which was later acquired and licensed by a major fast-food chain. Meanwhile, I started a window-cleaning business that's still profitable six years later, and grew a YouTube channel into a full-service content agency.

Today I'm the CEO of Slynk, an outcome-based wellness platform where employers stop paying vendors and start paying people: employees unlock real rewards by hitting verified health goals.

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Years engineering, from startups to scale
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Users migrated Okta → Auth0, zero downtime
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Engineers led across product teams
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AI patent (CA 3065446), acquired & licensed
02 · Selected Work

Things I'm proud of

001

Identity migration at scale

Led a full Okta → Auth0 migration for 100k+ users with zero production downtime, and made login 65% faster in the process.

Auth · Go
002

Blockchain tooling at Unity

Built Unity's NFT and blockchain tooling for game developers, live on multiple chains and used by millions, plus a blockchain proxy securing client access to nodes.

Web3 · Infra
003

World-class lip-reading AI

Co-founded a startup in college that built lip-reading AI for noisy drive-thrus that beat the best published benchmarks in 2019. Patent CA 3065446 was acquired and licensed by a major fast-food chain.

AI · Acquired
004

Real-time chatbot infrastructure

Delivered WebSocket-based chatbot infrastructure and revamped multi-frontend experiences across React, Remix, and Angular.

Real-time
03 · Ventures

The side-hustle portfolio

2017 · Patent acquired

Lip-Reading AI

World-class computer vision for drive-thru ordering. Beat the best benchmarks in 2019. Patent acquired & licensed by a major fast-food chain.

2019 · Still running

Window Cleaning Co.

A bootstrapped local services business, profitable for six years and counting. Proof that boring businesses work.

2020 · Growing

A Squared Productions

Started as a YouTube channel, now a full content agency: brand deals, editing, and growth strategy for short-form creators.

Now · CEO

Slynk ↗

Outcome-based wellness for employers: stop paying vendors, start paying people. Employees unlock real rewards by hitting verified health goals.

04 · Capabilities

The toolkit

AI & Applied ML

  • Computer vision & lip-reading models
  • Beat 2019's best published benchmarks
  • Patented AI research (CA 3065446)
  • AI product strategy, lab to license

Backend & Systems

  • Go microservices, zero-downtime deploys
  • Real-time WebSocket infrastructure
  • PostgreSQL · MongoDB · Redis
  • RESTful API & service architecture

Identity & Security

  • OAuth2 · SAML · SSO at scale
  • Custom auth integrations
  • Certified Ethical Hacker (EC-Council)
  • Pentesting hackathon finalist

Cloud & Infra

  • AWS · Azure · GCP
  • Terraform, infra-as-code
  • Docker & orchestration
  • CI/CD & observability

Frontend & Product

  • React · Remix · Angular
  • TypeScript across the stack
  • Business analysis & finance
  • Rubik's cube in under 30s
05 · Contact andrewabouantoun@live.ca

Got a cool project, role, or idea? I'm always up to talk, especially if it involves hard problems or new ventures.