Based in Nairobi, I'm remote-first with 6 years of experience working with distributed teams. 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.
Over the past 8 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 and coach - whatever gets your initiative into the hands of customers faster.
I join each project with a bias for clarity, measurable outcomes, and strong communication across technical and non-technical teams.
6+ years working with distributed teams across Kenya, Europe, and North America to launch AI-enabled products and customer experiences.
Comfortable writing the code, designing the workflows, and working directly with stakeholders to hit deadlines.
Treat every engagement like an in-house lead - aligned with revenue, retention, and customer satisfaction.
Step in as an embedded product and engineering consultant, keeping AI strategy and delivery on track without a full-time hire.
Every engagement is tailored to your stage, from launching a first website to integrating AI copilots across global teams.
From solo operators in Nairobi to enterprise teams across North America and Europe, I tailor AI and software support to match your goals, pace, and risk profile.
Lightweight engagements to get you online quickly with future-proof foundations.
I become your remote product & technology partner so you can stay focused on customers.
Hands-on execution plus leadership to align AI initiatives with retention and revenue goals.
Strategic consulting and delivery sprints that respect complex stakeholders, security policies, and scale.
A glimpse into recent projects and the outcomes we achieved together.
Engagements that combined AI, data, and product engineering to unlock measurable impact.
A Nairobi-based founder needed to validate a micro-insurance idea without hiring full-time engineers.
An accounting firm with cPanel mailboxes was losing thousands of client emails to spam and outages, costing revenue and trust.
A Kenyan D2C retailer wanted to scale personalized support across email, WhatsApp, and web chat without ballooning headcount.
A logistics team expanding across East Africa needed a single source of truth for fleet telemetry, finance, and customer SLAs.
Opinionated choices across AI, data, and product engineering so your teams inherit maintainable systems.
Consultant-level software engineer specialising in production-ready AI systems. Blend full-stack delivery, ML research, and systems architecture to help distributed teams ship resilient products. Comfortable leading discovery, architecting cloud and data platforms, and implementing LLM-powered workflows that drive measurable business lift.
18+
AI-native initiatives shipped
RAG copilots, automation pipelines, and ML-driven SaaS launches since 2020.
20M+
Transactions secured monthly
Payments infrastructure hardened across high-volume, regulated environments.
45 days
Speed-to-impact
Average time from discovery to production rollout on net-new client engagements.
Turing
Palo Alto, CA, USA (Remote)
Nov 2025 – Present
Build custom reinforcement learning training environments for enterprise clients, combining FastAPI backends with React frontiers to accelerate RL model development cycles.
Turing
Palo Alto, CA, USA (Remote)
Sep 2024 – Oct 2025
Engineer within an applied research pod translating LLM breakthroughs into production-grade developer tooling.
MjengoSmart
Nairobi, Kenya (Hybrid)
Jan 2023 – Present
Own the entire technology stack - from cloud infrastructure and security to business email suites and developer tooling - while scaling SaaS for construction project operations, payments, and supplier collaboration.
BSc. Electrical and Electronics Engineering
University of Nairobi
Nairobi, Kenya • 2014 – 2019
Five years inside labs and control rooms that demanded systems thinking, fault-tolerant design, and optionality across hardware and software - discipline that still shows up in every production launch.
Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education
Siakago Boys' High School
Mbeere, Kenya • 2009 – 2012
Balanced maths mastery with national science congress wins to graduate with an A, earning admission to the prestigious University of Nairobi Dental School - then chose engineering for the bigger systems puzzles.
Let's ship your next milestone
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.
