Alex Afanasyev

2x Founder (2 Exits), Software Engineer, Team Lead, Builder

New York City Metropolitan Area

About

I am a builder, founder, and a software developer. I am in love with Python language and community. I greatly value clean and maintainable code, cutting edge software, but I did develop a sense of when the job would benefit from me being a perfectionist, and when it stands in a way of product delivery. I like to break things, to find new ways to break things, to solve hard problems, to put things under test and stress, and to have my mind blown by an interesting question. Some of my interests: Learning, Reading, Productivity, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, NLP, Space Exploration, Psychology, Psycholinguistics, Brain, DarkWeb, Counter-Fraud, Chess, BJJ. Some of my current and recent "heroes" aka people who shape "me" up: Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Jordan B. Peterson, Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Marcus Aurelius, Tim Ferris, Jim Kwik, Lex Fridman, Hans Zimmer, Max Richter, Amy Adams, Matthew McConaughey, Richard Feynmann, Derek Muller, Michael Tal, Daniel Naroditsky, Michael Stevens, Tim Minchin, Mr. Robot, Denis Villeneuve, Frank Herbert, Sonmi 451, and many many more. "Our lives are not our own, from womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future." "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire." "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." "I used to think this was the beginning of your story.., but now I am not so sure I believe in the beginnings and endings." "How you do anything is how you do everything"

Experience

  • Head of Global Collections at iCOUNTER
    Mar 2026 - Present · 5 mos

  • Founder at parseIntel
    Jan 2025 - Mar 2026 · 1 yr 3 mos

    * Threat Intel Data Feeds * Agentic Data Collections * Deep & Dark Web * Scalable APIs * Did I mention agents?

  • Software Engineering Manager at Open Measures
    Sep 2024 - Jun 2025 · 10 mos

  • Independent Contractor at Self-employed
    Jul 2020 - Dec 2024 · 4 yrs 6 mos

    * Building scalable APIs and Services * Cyber Threat Intelligence data feed development * Domain monitoring and network traffic analysis * Deep & Dark Web * Advanced Data Collections systems * Browser profiling and fingerprinting * OSINT * Computer Vision: Convolutional Neural Networks / OpenCV * Natural Language Processing: NER / Transformers / BERT / Stylometry / Spacy * Fine-tuned models for Cyber, Fraud and Physical crime use cases * Data-Driven Threat Hunting

  • Software Development Engineer at Amazon
    Jan 2020 - Jul 2020 · 7 mos

    AWS Fintech