Work · Alex Shortov

Selected work

Real engagements with named clients where the facts are public, and what they say about working with me.

SeamlessChex - payment platform rescue

Took over a prototype stuck after two years of outside development, re-architected it on AWS in six months - then stayed the exclusive engineering partner for eight years. Owned bank connectivity end to end: Plaid Link and re-authentication, Dwolla funding sources, instant and manual verification, ACH transfers, merchant onboarding and risk state.

The partner API other platforms embed

A versioned external API (v1/v2) with API-key auth and a per-app audit log, so other products could open bank accounts, move money and bill their own customers through the platform - documented, tested end to end, and shipped with a reference client.

Web3 and DeFi product engineering

Web and product engineering for DeFi protocols - liquid staking, governance-incentive marketplaces, tokenized yield and NFT lending - plus a web3 security firm. Interfaces on Next.js with ethers.js and web3.js, wallet and DeFi integrations, on-chain data indexing and node operation behind them.

Real-time market intelligence from a live-auction marketplace

Recording sales the platform itself never publishes: private GraphQL operations captured from the web client, authenticated browser sessions, adaptive rate limiting with 429 backoff, hundreds of concurrent live streams inside a fixed request budget - plus a comps API and a human-review app on top of a Postgres record that keeps the evidence for every fact.

AI-visibility turnaround for a B2B manufacturer

A 17-year client engagement that became one of AEO Content's first case studies: AI-visibility score 33 to 90 after implementing our optimization playbook.

SINGER22 to 22sGems - one owner, two businesses, 15+ years

Built and ran the custom platform behind SINGER22, a 10,000+ SKU fashion retailer. When that chapter closed, helped the same owner transform the business into fine-mineral brand 22sgems.com - new store, gallery, and an AI-narrated video catalogue publishing itself on autopilot.

Investment intelligence radar for a financial columnist

17 data collectors across regulatory, court and procurement sources - SEC EDGAR full-text search, CourtListener, SAM.gov, Congress and regulator feeds - with canonical-hash dedup, per-source health checks, AI scoring and a daily brief. From idea to production in weeks.

Where I lead the technology

My own products and the companies where I run the technology. AEO Content is where I am CTO today, AdPal where I was CTO in 2025; MarkosWeb is mine and runs without daily attention.

CTO · live

AEO Content

The first AI Engine Optimization platform, architected and built end to end: TypeScript monorepo with four apps, containerized crawl and audit workers, Postgres, Stripe, an MCP server, a Chrome extension and a WordPress plugin in the official directory. Audits how a site is seen by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.

My product · live since 2007

MarkosWeb

My own crawl-and-data infrastructure: a domain registry with agentic-readiness scoring and a radar tracking 20,000+ accelerator companies. Collectors, dedup, scoring and a weekly digest that publishes itself - the same pipeline discipline I bring to client data work.

CTO · 2025

AdPal

AI chatbot and lifecycle-engagement platform for B2B SaaS and fintech: multi-tenant RAG over customer knowledge bases, vector search, OAuth-connected CRM and ad-platform pipelines. Its architecture lessons went straight into AEO Content.

Client portfolio

Delivered through Data Subsystems, my consultancy - the engagements above are the ones with public detail, these are the rest of the field. Some clients were early-stage startups that have since shut down or been absorbed elsewhere; where the site is gone I say so rather than link a dead page. The engineering happened either way.

FinTech & payments
SeamlessChex - credit-card and ACH payments for US businesses: platform build, bank connectivity, eight years of engineering
SeamlessPay - payment optimization platform: intelligent routing, approval rates, chargeback reduction
Crypto & DeFi
Infrared Finance - Proof of Liquidity and liquid staking on Berachain
Dinero - yield suite: pxETH liquid restaking, pxUSD stablecoin, permissionless RPC acquired by Plume, products in sunset (2026)
Hidden Hand - marketplace where protocols incentivize vote-escrow token holders protocol sunset in 2026
Pirex - liquid wrappers for vote-locked governance tokens in the Curve and Convex ecosystem product moved into llama.airforce
Astaria - NFT-collateralized lending protocol startup wound down, site offline
Motherboard - web3 product work site offline
Resonance Security - security firm serving web3 teams site offline
Data Subsystems Blockchain - my own vertical: Web3 interfaces, wallet and DeFi integrations, on-chain indexing (Subgraph, Substreams), node operation
Enterprise, SaaS & industrial
Innometrix - AWS cloud infrastructure, a secure client portal and the backend behind an enterprise platform domain now hosts something else
Electro-Mech Scoreboard - LED scoreboards for a US manufacturer: content, CRM and funnel platform over 17 years
Scoreboards.net - direct-to-buyer storefront for the same manufacturer
Ultrasonic Technologies - RUV crack and flaw detection for wafers, ceramics and glass
Inframark - customer portals for a national water-infrastructure operator
E-commerce & marketplaces
SINGER22 → 22sGems - 10,000+ SKU fashion retailer, Shopify migration, then the owner's fine-mineral relaunch
Vejii - multi-vendor vegan marketplace for the US and Canada marketplace no longer trading
Vegan Essentials - vegan grocery e-commerce
RevitaLash - beauty brand storefront
Lieber Fine Wines - wine and spirits distributor
Charm Distributors - wholesale professional cosmetics
Media, tools & data
Cinema Playhouse TLV (Israel) - three properties for one film business: the arthouse cinema, the film distributor and the production company. Online streaming platform on an AWS backend, admin portal for content and users, scalable video distribution
MarkosWeb - AI agentic-readiness directory and startup radar
VirusWeather - WordPress plugin published in the official directory: IP-personalized local health stats
TraderShark - trading site startup closed, site offline
Real estate, wellness & civic
Tampa4U Search and Tampa MLS - MLS-driven search and luxury listings for the Tampa Bay market
U Derma Med Spa, U Derma Laser, Savage Yoga Studios - clinic and studio sites with booking and local SEO
SolarShades Florida - solar shading installer, local services site site offline
Look Ahead America and Equity Pledge - a civic non-profit and a commercial real-estate investment firm

What clients say

“

Great long-term relationship. DataSub has been working with Seamless Chex for over 5 years now. They have great work ethic and provide a full stack team with strong frontend skills as well as backend development. They can work with a variety of tools and software to get the job done and their expertise has allowed for us to scale and provide our clients with a wide range of features and solutions. Alex is an exceptional team lead whom I trust implicitly. I would highly recommend.

Evan Albert CEO & Co-Founder, Paynote & SeamlessChex · 2022 · via LinkedIn
“

I've been working with DataSub for over a decade now. They've built a custom PHP/Javascript e-commerce website singer22.com for me and supported it throughout the years. A year ago or so they also helped me move to Shopify platform using custom integrations and have been maintaining the store ever since. Passionate company with thorough knowledge in software engineering from inside and out, as well profound understanding of Google Ads.…

Jon Singer CEO/Founder, SINGER22 - now 22sGems · 2022 · via LinkedIn