Akash Renuka Ashok: Experience
Akash Renuka Ashok's experience spans founding and leading engineering at PawHealthAI, AI solutions engineering at Zipline.io, AI automation at Kodora.ai and teaching software engineering at the University of Melbourne.
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, PawHealthAI
Co-founded and lead technical direction for PawHealthAI, a pet-care platform with 189 registered users as of October 2026. Australia is the primary market; registrations do not measure active usage. Own the platform's product design, mobile, backend, AI and data architecture, and pair founder-level strategy with hands-on implementation and production support.
- Architected Evie, the platform's AI assistant, spanning conversational guidance, structured symptom triage, weekly wellbeing check-ins and longitudinal pet context
- Implemented multi-step agent workflows with context retrieval, custom tool execution, structured output schemas, validation layers and fallback handling
- Designed non-diagnostic safety controls including concern classification, urgency routing, prompt-injection checks, post-generation sanitisation and hard constraints against diagnosis or prescription
- Reduced pet-history retrieval latency from roughly 700ms to roughly 100ms through parallelised queries and backend optimisation
- Built backend services in TypeScript, Node.js, Firebase Cloud Functions, Supabase PostgreSQL and Vertex AI/Gemini; shipped mobile in React Native and Expo and web in React, Vite and Tailwind CSS
- Owned production infrastructure, release management, monitoring with Sentry, DNS/SSL configuration and incident response
- Authored PRDs, safety standards and operational runbooks, and coordinated two interns plus a social media manager through delivery
- Secured distribution via Beny, an employee-benefits platform, and built a dedicated KPMG employee pet-care benefit proposal and flow; completed the SMEC AI Accelerator and MEC Discover
AI Compliance Officer (AI Solutions Engineering), Zipline.io
Acts as the technical counterpart to enterprise customers of Zipline.io, an AI-enabled compliance platform for aged care providers, translating vague platform complaints into scoped, engineering-ready requirements and tuning the AI document-analysis system against real-world compliance data.
- Serves as technical counterpart to 6+ enterprise customers: joins calls, digs past the stated ask to the underlying business process, and turns vague platform complaints into scoped, engineering-ready requirements for the internal AI team
- Configured and tuned an AI document-analysis system across 1,000+ compliance documents, improving extraction and evaluation behaviour against inconsistent real-world formats
- Triages and resolves AI-output and escalation issues within a 24-business-hour target, driving root-cause fixes with engineering rather than customer-side workarounds
- Identifies recurring workflow failures across accounts and feeds them back to product, so a fix for one customer becomes a process improvement for all of them
AI Automation Engineer (Contract), Kodora.ai
Built AI automation for accounting, finance, document and operations workflows, translating manual business processes into scoped, reliable automation.
- Built Python components to extract, format and validate structured data from business documents
- Built an Azure-based invoice automation prototype and a Power Apps workflow to reduce manual processing
- Used Azure OpenAI, REST APIs, cloud functions and structured outputs across document and finance workflows
- Implemented reliability safeguards including retry logic, rate limiting, input validation and fallback handling
- Mapped manual business processes into scoped automation opportunities with stakeholders, weighing data availability, integration effort and operational value
Project Mentor (Casual Academic), University of Melbourne
Mentors postgraduate software engineering teams completing semester-long projects in COMP90082 Software Project, part of the Master of Information Technology program.
- Guides teams on project scoping, technical feasibility, architecture and iterative delivery
- Runs milestone reviews and reflective check-ins across mixed technical backgrounds
- Advises on risk management and delivery trade-offs throughout the semester
- Helps teams translate implementation work into clear academic deliverables aligned with subject outcomes
Academic Grader (Casual Academic), University of Melbourne
Assesses postgraduate coursework in SWEN90016 Software Processes and Management against formal rubrics, focused on software lifecycle models, agile practice and project governance.
- Evaluates student understanding of software lifecycle models, agile/Scrum practices and risk management
- Provides structured, constructive written feedback aligned to formal rubrics
- Maintains grading consistency, fairness and academic-integrity standards
Entrepreneurship Coach, First Pivot
Facilitated innovation and entrepreneurship programs for secondary school students, including work with Lauriston Girls' School and multiple student businesses.
- Led structured workshops in problem solving, technology concepts and early-stage business thinking
- Guided students through project-based learning with staged deliverables and feedback cycles
- Adapted explanations and workshop activities to varied confidence and technical ability
- Emphasised communication, ethical reasoning, reflection and practical action
Growth Strategy & Stakeholder Engagement Lead, Chrysaor Pty Ltd
Worked across growth strategy, virtual production, stakeholder engagement, sustainability and content partnerships.
- Contributed to growth strategy involving virtual production technologies and interactive media
- Worked with technologies and ecosystems connected to Unreal Engine and Unity
- Supported co-production and platform-oriented discussions involving major content environments
- Contributed to positioning around children's content, interactive media and carbon-neutral production
Software Intern, Ashok Leyland
Completed an internship connected to advanced driver-assistance and autonomous-driving work for commercial vehicles, gaining early exposure to the relationship between software, vehicle systems and sensing.
- Worked in a technical environment related to ADAS for trucks
- Gained early exposure to real-world engineering constraints connecting software and vehicle systems
- Built foundational experience later applied in university autonomous-driving and control-system projects
Independent Engineer, Self-Employed
Owned end-to-end delivery of custom software and AI solutions for early-stage teams and clients. Made independent technical and product decisions, balancing speed with long-term maintainability and reliability.
- Owned complete project lifecycle from requirements to production delivery
- Made independent technical decisions on architecture, tools, and implementation approaches
- Established development practices that balanced rapid delivery with code quality
- Delivered solutions that met client needs while maintaining long-term usability
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