About

I'm Jordan Madison, grew up in McDonough, GA, and graduated from Georgia Tech with a Bachelor's in Computer Science with a focus in Artificial Intelligence & Cybersecurity and Privacy. My primary research focus for the last year was post-training open-source LLMs for autonomous materials discovery. Looking for high-ownership, high-iteration places to continue strengthening my post-training knowledge. Specifically, new grad roles in Research Engineering, Machine Learning Engineering, and Applied AI.

Bit of a backstory, I have experienced a lot in my life, but the void years (shoutout One Piece) from 2021-2024 deserve an explanation. I left Georgia Tech in Spring 2022 to help my family back home and deal with burnout. Money going towards my family over paying tuition was a no-brainer.

While at home (remote since 2020), I used a portion of my funds to dive into the world of investing and finance. I built my own algorithmic automated trading systems in cryptocurrency markets where I was active across Asian, European, and US equity markets. This experience exposed me to the world of order flow analysis, risk management, market making, information asymmetry, delta hedging, perpetual swaps, and much more.

On the investing side, I spent time combing through SEC company filings (S-1, 10-K, etc.) and a personal RSS feed of 300+ info sources spanning multiple industries and locations around the world to identify M&A and develop personal investment theses. This independent experience epitomizes the type of person I am. I love numbers, sifting through disparate sources to surface underlying patterns, and challenging myself in domains I am not familiar with. As long as there is liquidity, there's opportunity, which is something I now live by.

Although I had a great time exploring investing and finance, I ended up changing pace. Don't get me wrong, I love thinking streams of numbers and thinking about systems where information is incomplete, but an experience brought me back down to earth causing me to shift my focus.

Closer to 2024, I wound down my trading setup and started to think about what's next. I interviewed at a couple places, made it to the final rounds, but was met with the "lack of experience" to push me past the finish line. Additionally, I needed a degree to go work for the government or go to jail (my mother wouldn't approve of this) so I kept thinking. Around Fall of 2024, a friend of mine nearly had their bank accounts drained by a phishing scam and I saw "Investigating Cyber Pirates", an episode of Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller. Both showed how easily unseen systems and adversaries can harm people. Given things at home were stable, I took this as a sign to re-apply to GT and finish my degree.

Life since January 2025 has been a whirlwind. Returning to university after a couple of years forced me to relearn everything. While taking my course, I had to revisit pre-requisites (Discrete Math, Combinatorics, Probability & Statistics, etc.) I hadn't touched in years to keep up and adapt to the new environment. Although demanding (30 hrs / week in reverse malware engineering anyone?), the chaos brought me joy because it reminded me of how much I love learning and pushing myself further than I thought possible. I ended up walking across the stage in May 2026 and as a cherry on top, I made the Dean's list in Spring 2025, Summer 2025, Fall 2025, and Spring 2026.

So, my life is very non-traditional and I do not know where I'll end up next. All I know is that my insatiable curiosity to develop deep intuitions about the world and love of people will drive me to a beautiful place, so I'm just along for the ride and looking forward to what's next. No matter what, I am proud of myself. I went through my personal hell at times and came out victorious. It's just good to once again smell the roses.

• Education: Georgia Tech, coursework, and graduation timeline.
• Experience: Product, engineering, and leadership (HackGT).
• Research: Reasoning and Learning Group, CPSec, Infrastructure Tooling, and skills.
• Writing: Debugging notes from my research journey and more.