About Jiggy

I am Jignesh Kakkad, though most people know me as Jiggy. I am a Principal AI Engineer in Sydney, and for 21 years I have built software across telecommunications, banking, venture building and data science. My career includes Quantium, x15ventures, Commonwealth Bank and Telstra, where I have worked from software engineering through to technical leadership.

My work has evolved from Java and Kotlin systems to cloud engineering on AWS and Azure, large language models and agentic platforms. At Telstra, I was principal engineer for AskTelstra, a production GenAI and RAG application built on Azure with Microsoft ISE. Today, I lead AI engineering while continuing to write and review code, including agents built with Microsoft Foundry.

Security is part of how I design and deliver software. My experience includes secure SDLC, DevSecOps, API security, identity and data boundaries, application testing with OWASP ZAP and Burp Suite, and production monitoring with Splunk and New Relic. In AI systems, this means designing for threats such as prompt injection, sensitive data exposure, unsafe tool use, hallucination and excessive agency.

I am particularly interested in how agents change both software products and the way software itself is built. I build agents for production use and use coding agents to plan, implement and review work within clear boundaries. Engineers remain accountable for architecture, judgement, security and production outcomes.

My standard is simple: software should remain secure, understandable and dependable after launch. That is what separates an interesting prototype from a product that delivers lasting value.

Formal study has continued alongside my career. I returned to university as data, security and leadership became more important to my work. I am now completing a Master of Research in AI and psychology, researching multimodal modelling of live speech performance in real time using physiological, vocal, behavioural and audience signals.