Detroit, Michigan · Systems engineering
Payments, identity, biometrics, critical infrastructure. We architect and build the software layer where a failure is not an inconvenience — it is a breach, a fine, or a stopped production line.
Fifteen years of systems delivered into
Who we are
SilentTrust is a systems engineering firm based in Detroit, Michigan. We work with companies whose software carries real consequence — where an outage costs revenue by the minute and a security gap is a regulatory event.
The firm is built on fifteen years spent inside exactly those systems. Our founder has fifteen years of experience in systems development, including work at a digital certification authority, where every artifact shipped had to withstand regulatory audit, and later serving as CTO of a biometrics and payments company, delivering facial recognition and proof-of-life technology into banking, logistics, and large-venue access control.
That background shapes how we work. We do not ship a system and describe it as reliable—we instrument it, test it to failure, and hand over the evidence. Verification is the deliverable, not the marketing.
We work with U.S. companies modernizing legacy platforms, scaling infrastructure under real load, or entering markets where compliance is a precondition rather than a milestone.
What we do
Every engagement is scoped against a measurable outcome and led by the engineer who designed it. Some systems carry consequences past the organization that owns them. We work on those from both sides — public sector and private industry.
Agencies modernizing IT under security review, procurement rules and public accountability — treated as design inputs, not obstacles.
Companies scaling industrial capacity, competing beyond their region, and building teams that can maintain what we deliver.
Legacy platforms rebuilt into cloud-native systems, sequenced so the business keeps running.
Result: A system your team can change safely, with the reasoning behind every boundary written down.
End-to-end delivery — API, data, interface, pipeline — by one accountable team.
Result: Working software in production early, extended in predictable increments.
Facial recognition, proof-of-life and access control that hold under attack and peak load.
Result: Access that takes seconds and holds up against deliberate attempts to defeat it.
Payment flows, digital signature, PKI and timestamping built to survive audit and dispute.
Result: Transaction infrastructure that is defensible to an auditor and to a counterparty.
Machine learning that reaches production and keeps both its accuracy and its budget.
Result: A model that holds its accuracy and its budget after the launch.
AWS architecture, infrastructure as code and observability sized to real load and real cost.
Result: Infrastructure that scales on demand and is understood by the team that owns it.
Threat modelling, architecture review and audit readiness, with fixes delivered as code.
Result: A prioritized, fixed backlog and the evidence trail your auditor asks for.
Programs in architecture, secure development and testing that leave capability behind.
Result: A team that can maintain and extend the system without calling us.
Not sure which of these you need? That is what the first conversation is for.
Scope it with an engineerWhy us
Most firms learn compliance, scale and security on your project. We arrived with them — from a certification authority, a biometrics company and payment systems that had to clear an external auditor before they could ship.
Eight years inside a certification authority means compliance is how we already build. Audit trails, key management and evidence are part of the first design, not a retrofit after a failed assessment.
The engineer who scopes your architecture is the engineer who builds it. You are not sold a senior in the pitch and staffed with juniors in delivery.
Every engagement defines its success metric before work starts — latency, throughput, cost per transaction, time to recovery. We report against that number whether it flatters us or not.
Facial recognition, liveness, digital signature, timestamping and fraud prevention are not adjacent capabilities we are ramping up. They are the specialization the firm exists to offer.
Documentation, architecture decision records and enablement are deliverables, not extras. A successful engagement ends with your team owning the system outright.
Based in Detroit, with fifteen years of experience delivering into banking, logistics and public-venue infrastructure across a market of 200 million people.
How we work
No stage closes on a status update. Each one produces an artifact your team keeps — a document, a decision record, a deployable increment or a live system.
We map the current system, the constraints and the actual business objective — which is often not the one in the original brief.
Deliverable: Findings memo and prioritized risk register
Options are put on the table with cost, risk and timeline attached, so the decision is yours and it is informed.
Deliverable: Options analysis and recommended path
Boundaries, data flows, failure modes and security model are designed and written down before implementation begins.
Deliverable: Architecture blueprint and decision records
Delivery in working increments, each tested, reviewed and deployable. You see progress continuously, not at a milestone.
Deliverable: Production increments on a fixed cadence
Deployment, runbooks, monitoring and handover to your team — including the training needed for them to own it.
Deliverable: Live system, runbooks and enablement
Measurement against the metric agreed at the start, then the next increment of work prioritized against it.
Deliverable: Performance review and roadmap
Track record
SilentTrust is a new company. The experience behind it is not. Every result below was delivered by Daniel Fonseca, our founder — as Chief Technology Officer at Unike Technologies (unike.tech), and in systems development specialist roles at Certisign (certisign.com.br). Each figure is attributed to the organization where the work was performed.
R$23M
Revenue generated by a fraud-prevention program for Banco Santander
35→10 min
Access queue time cut at distribution centers serving up to 6,000 people daily
DHL Supply Chain / Mercado Libre · Daniel Fonseca, CTO — Unike Technologies (unike.tech)
25 min/day
Overtime eliminated per employee through hybrid biometric access
DHL Supply Chain · Daniel Fonseca, CTO — Unike Technologies (unike.tech)
15+ years
Building regulated systems in certification, biometrics and payments
Daniel Fonseca — Certisign (certisign.com.br) · Unike Technologies (unike.tech)
Led development of a proof-of-life SDK adopted for customer authentication at a major private bank, establishing the platform as a reference in an emerging category.
Delivered timestamp infrastructure certified by the national regulatory authority — a milestone requiring cryptographic correctness to be demonstrated to an external auditor.
Daniel Fonseca, Systems Development Specialist — Certisign (certisign.com.br)
Facial recognition access control deployed across distribution centers, stadiums, concert venues, shopping centers and amusement parks — throughput engineered for peak crowd load.
Contact
Send the problem, not a specification. We reply within one business day, and the first conversation is with the engineer who would lead the work.