Santiago Villarreal
Fintech • Web3 • Stellar • AI enthusiast

Hey, I'm Santiago Villarreal

Software Engineer & Web3 Developer from Costa Rica

I build fintech and blockchain products in Latin America as an entrepreneur and developer. I started by solving specific money problems for real people and grew that into platforms teams rely on day to day—from KYC and analytics to Stellar-native payouts and open-source financial infrastructure at Oppia Labs.

Education

Bachelor, Computer Engineering

Technological Institute of Costa Rica (TEC), Cartago | GPA 3.7 · expected 2028

Computer engineering coursework; president of Zeek Blockchain; strong quantitative and systems foundation.

Bachelor, Data Science

Lead University, Cartago | GPA 3.8 · expected 2028

Data science undergraduate emphasizing analytical methods, modeling, and applying data to product and business questions.

Work Experience

Founding Full-Stack Engineer at GrantFox

Project: KYC, analytics & Stellar payouts | November 2025 – Present

TypeScriptNext.jsStellarPostgreSQL

Objective:

Early-stage fintech building verified onboarding, operational analytics, and cross-border stablecoin payouts on Stellar for a growing user base.

Key Achievements:

Led end-to-end KYC across both platform applications in about two weeks, reaching a ~98% successful verification rate while improving onboarding UX.

Built the core analytics system for the admin console for real-time insight into key metrics; analyzed production data to inform product and growth decisions.

Scaled acquisition to about 600 onboarded users in under two weeks.

Led business development with the Stellar Development Foundation, securing USD 60k for product development and contractual steps toward a follow-on agreement.

Owned Trustless Work payment infrastructure for USDC payouts on Stellar—about USD 12k distributed in three days across 10+ countries.

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</> Projects

Neko Protocol

Co-Founder & Backend Engineer · September 2024 – Present

Next.jsTailwindTanStack

Neko is a DeFi platform that connects real-world assets (RWAs) with on-chain financial infrastructure. Users access tokenized assets like bonds inside Stellar-native DeFi for liquidity, yield, and collateral—focused on reliable backends, integrations, and protocol-facing features.