Hi, I'm Joseph Gitonga
Based in Nairobi, I consult with founders, operators, and enterprise teams who want to ship AI-enabled software without the drag of building a large engineering department. You might know me as Jay Kiharani elsewhere on the internet - same builder energy, now paired with fractional CTO support when your roadmap needs sustained leadership.
Over the past eight years I've helped launch insurance portals, accounting automations, and customer-facing products that blend modern web engineering with trusted AI platforms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Gemini. My role flexes from architect and product strategist to engineer, coach, and fractional CTO - whatever gets your initiative into the hands of customers faster.
What You Can Expect
I join each project with a bias for clarity, measurable outcomes, and strong communication across technical and non-technical teams.
Global collaboration
Partnered with teams across Kenya, Europe, and North America to launch AI-enabled products and customer experiences.
Hands-on delivery
Comfortable writing the code, designing the workflows, and working directly with stakeholders to hit deadlines.
Operator mindset
Treat every engagement like an in-house lead - aligned with revenue, retention, and customer satisfaction.
Fractional leadership
Step in as an embedded product and engineering lead, keeping AI strategy and delivery on track without a full-time hire.
Operating Stack
Opinionated choices across AI, data, and product engineering so your teams inherit maintainable systems.
AI & ML Tooling
- LLMs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Mistral)
- RAG pipelines & agent workflows (LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex)
- Vector DBs (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector)
Data & Analytics
- Modern ELT (dbt, Airbyte, Dagster)
- Warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, Postgres)
- Metrics layers & BI (Mode, Metabase, Looker)
Product Engineering
- TypeScript, React/Next.js, Node.js
- Laravel, Express.js, Python (FastAPI)
- Event-driven & microservice architectures
Cloud & Platform
- AWS, GCP, DigitalOcean, Vercel
- Container orchestration (Docker, ECS, Kubernetes)
- CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI)
DevEx & MLOps
- Feature stores & model monitoring
- Experimentation frameworks
- Infrastructure as code (Terraform, Pulumi)
Security & Compliance
- PII governance & access controls
- Threat modelling & secure SDLC
- Audit-ready documentation
Let's ship your next milestone
Ready to explore where AI and software can unlock leverage?
I partner with founders, product leaders, and data teams to deliver production-grade solutions, from focused delivery sprints to ongoing fractional CTO support. Tell me about your goals and we'll design the most impactful path forward.
Typical engagements run 4-12 weeks with optional fractional CTO coverage for longer-term leadership support.