For many people, tech starts in school. For Alexandre Genest, it started earlier. He began coding at 10, building small games and simple systems to understand how software behaves under real conditions. By his mid-teens, he was designing internal tools and automating operations for small businesses. A few years later, he moved into environments where performance and reliability carried direct financial consequences. Today, at 20, he serves as CTO of Hilt, via its Canadian entity, 17587597 Canada Inc., leading the company’s technical direction in cybersecurity and data infrastructure. The path moves quickly, but the pattern is clear. Start early, work on real systems, and stay focused on how things behave outside ideal conditions. Learning Early and Taking on Real Work Fast Alexandre Genest started programming at 10. Like many young developers, he began with small projects such as games and simple tools. Alexandre Genest Alexandre Genest What stands out is how he approached them. He focused less on finishing and more on understanding where systems slow down, where they break, and how they can be improved. That habit carried into his early work. At 15, he joined a small business with no internal engineering team. There were no systems in place and no one to pass work to. He had to solve practical problems in a live environment. He worked on digitizing operations, building internal tools, and setting up infrastructure that made daily processes more reliable. These systems were used every day, so failures had an immediate impact. By 17, he was supporting multiple businesses at once. The work included infrastructure, automation pipelines, and internal tools across different environments. Each business had different priorities. Some needed automation, others needed scalability. That forced clear trade-offs around reliability, cost, and maintainability. This kind of experience shifts how engineers think. The focus moves from adding features to building systems that hold up under real use. Moving Into Performance-Critical Systems in Finance After working with smaller businesses, Genest joined the National Bank of Canada in algorithmic trading. The environment changed, and so did the stakes. Systems had to process large volumes of data with strict latency requirements. Small inefficiencies could have a measurable impact. One example stands out. He identified and resolved a bug affecting hundreds of Kafka topics. Issues at that scale require understanding how systems behave under load and how failures spread across components. Work in this setting reinforces a key idea. Performance has to be considered during design, not added later. Alongside his professional work, Genest competed in hackathons and won eight international competitions. Hackathons reward speed and execution. With limited time and resources, there is little room for unnecessary complexity. You need to identify the core problem quickly and build something that works. He was also selected as a Z Fellow, a highly selective program with an acceptance rate below 1%, that supports early-stage builders working on new ideas. Leading Engineering and Building Infrastructure at Hilt Genest now serves as CTO at Hilt, a cybersecurity and data infrastructure company. He leads technical direction across architecture, platform engineering, and product development. He also defines the long-term roadmap and oversees engineering execution. His role is central to the development of Hilt’s core platform, which relies on the architecture and systems he designed. The systems he oversees are designed to secure environments used by organizations managing billions of dollars in assets while maintaining minimal performance overhead. Balancing security and performance is a known challenge. Security controls often introduce friction, slow systems down, or complicate development workflows. His approach focuses on integrating security into the infrastructure itself. Instead of adding it as a separate layer, it becomes part of how the system operates. This reduces friction while maintaining protection and connects directly to his earlier experience with performance-sensitive systems. Rethinking Trade-Offs and Focusing on Observability A consistent theme across Genest’s work is his approach to trade-offs. In many environments, complexity is treated as unavoidable. Systems become harder to manage, and inefficiencies are accepted over time. His approach is to revisit those assumptions. Instead of working around constraints, he looks for ways to redesign systems so those limitations are reduced. This thinking connects closely to his focus on observability. Modern systems rely heavily on data, yet many teams lack visibility into how that data moves across services, environments, and access points. As systems grow, that visibility becomes harder to maintain. When something fails, teams often struggle to identify where the issue began or how it spread. This affects both performance and security. Genest’s work focuses on making low-level telemetry more usable. The goal is to give teams a clearer view of system behavior in real time so they can respond faster and with better context. His long-term direction is to build a governance layer across observable systems, including endpoint, network, and cloud environments. The aim is to turn raw telemetry into information that can be understood and acted on more easily. Choosing Experience and Looking Ahead Genest chose to leave the university to focus on building Hilt.This was not due to academic difficulty. He maintained a strong academic record while working and building at the same time. His path reflects a consistent pattern of choosing applied, high-responsibility engineering environments over purely academic progression. Across startups, hackathons, and infrastructure-focused engineering work, he has repeatedly operated in environments that required ownership of technical decisions and exposure to systems under real operational constraints. These experiences provided continuous feedback loops and accelerated his development in tech. What stands out across his path is consistency. He started early, worked on real systems, and moved toward environments where technical decisions carry more weight. He also questions assumptions that others accept by default. Many constraints in engineering are treated as fixed, even though they often come from earlier design choices. He has worked across small business systems, financial infrastructure, and startups. He has taken on technical responsibility early and stayed focused on how systems behave under real conditions. For engineers and founders, the takeaway is simple. Work on real problems. Stay close to fundamentals. Revisit assumptions that others treat as fixed. This article is published under HackerNoon's Business Blogging program. This article is published under HackerNoon's Business Blogging program. Business Blogging program
