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Open to AI and Software Engineering roles

Utsav Kumar · AI Engineer in Vancouver, Canada

I build AI agents that hold up in production.

AI Engineer with 10+ years of full-stack software experience, now building with AI at the core. I work on the hard part of production AI: latency, cost, context, grounding, and reliability, so people actually trust what the model says.

  • LLMs
  • AI Agents
  • Multi-agent orchestration
  • RAG
  • Embeddings
  • Vector search
  • Hybrid search & re-ranking
  • Tool calling
  • MCP
  • Structured outputs
  • Context engineering
  • Conversation memory
  • Grounding & citations
  • Token optimization
  • Inference latency
  • Semantic caching
  • Cost optimization
  • Streaming (SSE)
  • Prompt design
  • Workflow routing
  • Guardrails
  • Human-in-the-loop
  • Evals & rubrics
  • LLM observability
  • RLHF training data
See my workLinkedInDownload Résumé

Previously at

Based in Vancouver, BC

  • Highspot2023 – 2026
  • Mercor2025 – 2026
  • Splunk2018 – 2023
Years building full-stack products
10+
p95 time to first tokendown from 8s
0.8s
Agent task successup from 78% · 500 eval cases
91%
Agent workflows completed per month
12k
Lower AI compute costwith result caching
~80%
Faster deal preparation15 min → 5 min
3×
Weekly adoption among eligible usersup from 35% in 3 months
60%
ARR enabled by a critical release
$10M

AI projects

AI Agent and LLM Projects

AI products I've designed, built, and shipped.

Highspot

Deal, Rep & Manager Agents

A family of AI assistants for sales teams: deal-level answers, portfolio-wide insights, and coaching prep for leaders, built on one shared agent platform.

  • AI-driven workflow selection, business tools, and conversation memory
  • Live token streaming over SSE with human approval for sensitive actions
  • Permissions, tenant controls, and feature flags on every data access
View project
weekly active reps across 10 customer orgs
150
agent workflows per month
12k
of first-time users return within 7 days
65%

AI & stack

  • AI Agents
  • LLMs
  • PydanticAI
  • Tool calling
  • Workflow routing
  • Conversation memory
  • RAG
  • Structured outputs
  • Result caching
  • SSE streaming
  • Human-in-the-loop
  • Evals
  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • React
  • TypeScript

Highspot

AI Sales Coaching & Role-Play

Real-time coaching, feedback, and practice conversations that help sales reps improve, grounded in trusted content and streamed as they are generated.

  • AI Sales Coaching with personalized, real-time feedback for reps
  • AI Role-Play practice conversations streamed live over SSE
  • Turned AI concepts into intuitive experiences with PMs and designers
View project
role-play sessions completed per month
2,000+
time to first streamed feedback token
<1s
average rep rating of AI feedback
4.5/5

AI & stack

  • OpenAI
  • LLMs
  • RAG
  • Grounding
  • Prompt design
  • Context engineering
  • SSE streaming
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • Python

Mercor

AI Model Evaluation

Expert Project Lead on AI training and evaluation, measuring how well models actually perform on complex software engineering and coding tasks.

  • Designed prompts, grading rubrics, and evaluation criteria for coding tasks
  • Graded model responses for correctness, missing requirements, and reasoning errors
  • Led reviewer calibration sessions and quality-checked expert submissions
model-response evaluations completed
1,200+
reviewer agreement after calibration
95%
engineering experts calibrated and reviewed
25+

AI & stack

  • Evals
  • Rubric design
  • Prompt design
  • Model grading
  • RLHF training data
  • Reviewer calibration
  • Code review

Side project

Building

Raven

AI-powered, grounded code intelligence. Answers about a codebase that stay transparent and tied to reliable sources instead of confident guesses.

  • AI search, retrieval, and grounding end to end
  • Taking an AI idea from concept to a working system

AI & stack

  • RAG
  • Vector search
  • AI agents
  • MCP
  • Grounding

About

About Utsav Kumar

Taking AI from a great demo to a dependable product. That's where I do my best work.

Utsav Kumar, AI Engineer in Vancouver, Canada

Utsav Kumar

AI Engineer · Vancouver, Canada

LinkedIn profileDownload Résumé

I'm Utsav Kumar, an AI Engineer in Vancouver, Canada, with 10+ years of full-stack software experience. My career in Canada began with a Master's in Applied Computing from the University of Windsor, and I've been building products here ever since.

At Splunk, I worked across Splunk Enterprise, Data Stream Processor, and the Edge Processor UI, building the tools customers use to collect, transform, and route their data.

At Highspot, I spent more than three years as a project lead, taking projects end to end, from the first idea all the way to the finish line.

Today my focus is AI: building AI agents and LLM-powered features in Python and TypeScript that people can trust every day. I also use AI almost every day in my own work, with Cursor, Claude Code, and Codex as part of how I plan, write, and review code.

Outside work

  • Squash
  • Travel
  • Pool

Education

Education: Applied Computing and Information Technology

Grounded in computing, sharpened in production.

Experience

Software Engineering Experience: Highspot, Mercor, Splunk

A decade across startups and large enterprises.

  1. Jun 2023 – Aug 2026

    Vancouver, BC

    HighspotSenior Software Development Engineer

    • Built and shipped the AI-powered Deal Agent, Rep Agent, and Manager Agent with React, TypeScript, Python, FastAPI, PydanticAI, and LLMs, used by 150 weekly active reps across 10 customer organizations and completing 12,000 workflows a month.
    • Improved agent task success from 78% to 91% across 500 evaluation cases, and reduced p95 time to first token from 8 seconds to 0.8 seconds.
    • Used React Query and caching to cut unnecessary AI requests, reducing AI compute costs by 80% and improving UI response times by 90%.
    Show 10 more
    • Reduced deal preparation time from 15 minutes to 5 minutes.
    • Grew weekly adoption among eligible users from 35% to 60% over 3 months, with 65% of first-time users returning within 7 days.
    • Connected agents to internal services through async FastAPI APIs with validation, permissions, tenant controls, and feature flags.
    • Deal Agent: an assistant for individual opportunities using AI-driven workflow selection, business tools, conversation memory, and live streaming.
    • Rep Agent: analyzes many deals and accounts, retrieves trusted business data, and gives sellers prioritized insights and coaching.
    • Manager Agent: built on the shared Rep Agent platform to help leaders review pipelines and spot deals and reps needing attention.
    • Added monitoring and human approval for actions requiring confirmation, keeping customer data access controlled.
    • Instrumented AI experiences with Amplitude to surface friction and guide product priorities.
    • Partnered with PMs and designers on reusable components, reducing development time by 20%.
    • Contributed to architecture, roadmap planning, estimation, code reviews, and mentoring junior engineers.

  2. Feb 2025 – Jul 2026

    Remote · Contract

    MercorSoftware Engineering Expert · Expert Project Lead

    • Completed 1,200+ evaluations of model-generated responses on complex software engineering and coding tasks against rubrics and reference answers.
    • Designed prompts, grading rubrics, and evaluation criteria that were clear, verifiable, and consistent across reviewers.
    • Led calibration sessions with engineering experts and quality-checked their submissions before acceptance.

  3. Feb 2019 – Feb 2023

    Vancouver, BC

    SplunkSoftware Engineer

    • Led front-end development for the Edge Processor team, building real-time data processing and transformation experiences.
    • Parallelized GitLab CI/CD pipelines, reducing job runtimes by 80%.
    • Helped the Data Manager team ship a critical release on time, contributing to $10M in ARR, and earned a SPOT award.
    Show 6 more
    • Built features for Data Stream Processor so customers could visually configure, transform, and route data streams.
    • Improved the Pipeline Canvas Builder with reusable components, cutting pipeline setup time by 30%.
    • Sped up Edge Processor pages by optimizing asset delivery and removing unnecessary API calls.
    • Reached 95% coverage with Cypress and Jest, and introduced Mock Service Worker for backend-independent development.
    • Documented reusable components in Storybook with Splunk's UI Design System.
    • Led frontend knowledge sharing through tech talks, code reviews, and team syncs.

  4. Sep 2018 – Dec 2018

    Vancouver, BC

    SplunkAgile Full Stack Developer Co-op

    • Built frontend features and reusable Storybook components for DB Connect, Splunk's enterprise data source integration.

  5. Jun 2015 – Aug 2017

    Gandhinagar, India

    Cybage Software Pvt LtdSoftware Engineer

    • Built features for Turn Campaign Suite, a platform for managing digital advertising campaigns, alongside onshore teams.
    • Reached 90% unit test coverage with Jasmine and expanded Selenium coverage for critical workflows.
    • Ran root cause analyses for production issues and organized team retrospectives.

  6. Dec 2013 – Jun 2015

    Ahmedabad, India

    WeblineindiaJunior Web Developer · Web Developer

    • Built responsive client websites and custom WordPress themes from PSD designs using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, LESS, SASS, and AngularJS.

Toolkit

Skills: AI Agents, LLMs, React, TypeScript, and Python

From the React frontend to the agent layer.

AI layer

  • OpenAI
  • LLMs
  • AI Agents
  • PydanticAI
  • LangChain
  • RAG
  • Embeddings
  • Vector search
  • Pinecone
  • pgvector
  • MCP
  • Tool calling
  • Structured outputs
  • Prompt engineering
  • Context engineering
  • Conversation memory
  • SSE streaming
  • Guardrails
  • Evals

Frontend

  • React
  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript
  • Next.js
  • React Query
  • Redux
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Sass
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Storybook
  • Design systems
  • Responsive design
  • Web performance

Backend

  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • Pydantic
  • Node.js
  • Ruby on Rails
  • REST APIs
  • Async APIs
  • PostgreSQL
  • Caching
  • Auth & permissions
  • Multi-tenant systems
  • Feature flags

Quality & delivery

  • Cypress
  • Jest
  • Jasmine
  • Selenium
  • MSW
  • GitLab CI/CD
  • Code review
  • Root cause analysis
  • Amplitude
  • Agile
  • Technical planning
  • Mentoring

AI tools I use daily

  • Cursor
  • Claude Code
  • Codex
  • ChatGPT
  • Claude
  • AI-assisted code review
  • Agentic coding

Contact

Building something with AI? Let's talk.

I'm open to software engineering roles on AI products and full-stack teams. Send a message and it comes straight to my inbox.