Plates / 001 · Burst (Glide)

Plate I · 001 2021 — 2022 Amsterdam · Remote Regulated crypto fintech

Burst (now Glide).

Founding engineer on a regulated wallet platform — taking it from zero engineering through regulatory approval and into the market.

FIG. I.A · Frontispiece Wallet home + KYC/AML
onboarding spread
· iOS / Android · 6 screens ·

Fig. I.A The product spread, post‑launch. Wallet, onboarding, transaction signing. Renders here are placeholders pending the designer's drop‑in; the final plate will carry the real screens.

§ 01The problem

A regulated wallet, from zero.

Burst was an early‑stage crypto fintech in Amsterdam with a regulatory thesis: that the consumer market for crypto would consolidate around products that did the boring compliance work properly — KYC and AML, custody, transaction monitoring, audit‑grade reporting — instead of treating regulation as a temporary inconvenience.

Engineering had to deliver three things in parallel and have them all land at the same time: a cross‑platform mobile wallet, a fiat‑to‑crypto onramp integrated against a regulated custodian (PrimeTrust), and a backend capable of producing the audit trail a regulator would actually accept.

No part of this works unless every part of it works. The platform either passes review, or it doesn’t exist.

§ 02My role

Founding engineer, full surface.

TitleLead Software Engineer

Tenure2021 — 2022

TeamSolo eng. at first; small team at exit

Reported toCTO

I joined as the first engineer on the technical side and owned end‑to‑end delivery across mobile, backend and compliance systems. In practice this meant three jobs in parallel:

Mobile. I architected the cross‑platform SDKs (iOS and Android) for wallet functionality, secure transaction signing and private‑key management, designed for partner integration. Native clients on top of those SDKs.

Backend. Node.js services on AWS handling real‑time transaction processing, compliance auditing and regulatory reporting. The fiat‑to‑crypto onramp wired through PrimeTrust with KYC/AML at every step that mattered.

Identity. The secure onboarding and identity verification infrastructure that ultimately got reused across multiple partner integrations downstream.

§ 03The stack

What it was built on.

MobileNative iOS and Android clients with shared SDKs for wallet, signing and key management. Swift · SwiftUI · Kotlin · Combine

BackendNode.js services on AWS for transaction processing, audit and reporting. Event‑driven where it mattered. Node.js · TypeScript · AWS · Postgres · Lambda

CustodyPrimeTrust integration for regulated custody and fiat rails. PrimeTrust API · OAuth · KYC/AML

ComplianceTransaction monitoring, audit trail, regulatory reporting pipeline. Built to a regulator’s read, not an engineer’s. Audit log · AML rules · Reporting

IdentityOnboarding and verification flow reusable across partner integrations downstream. KYC providers · Document verification

FIG. I.B System topology
· mobile ↔ backend ↔ custody ·

FIG. I.C Transaction signing
flow
· key custody isolation ·

Fig. I.B–C System topology and the transaction signing path. Schematics — to be redrawn by the designer.

§ 04Outcomes

What shipped.

01Regulatory approval. The compliance backend and audit trail were the technical case that got the product through review and into the market.
02Platform launch. Wallet platform shipped with the SDKs, the onramp and the verification flow in production.
03Partner reuse. The identity and verification infrastructure was used across multiple partner integrations downstream — designed for that from day one.
04Continuity through acquisition. The platform continues operating today as Glide.

More specific figures — transaction volume, KYC throughput, partner names — available under NDA to qualified employers.

Endnote

You can’t move fast and break things when breaking things means a regulator opens a file on you. That’s the kind of forcing function I’ve come to like.

— from §V, Biographical note. Read more.