Engineering portfolio

Build what matters.

Neil Kwon — Engineering leader for AI, data, and product platforms

01Cogitatio · Quis

About Neil

I turn ambiguous business problems into products, platforms, and teams that can operate at scale — from the first technical decision to production delivery.

It began the day my father brought home an old, unused AT-X computer — GW-BASIC came pre-installed, and one line of code turned curiosity into the joy of making new things and solving hard problems. That joy has powered 16+ years of building without pause.

My work spans the full arc of product engineering: primary mobile developer at Daum; Hadoop and Presto pipelines processing billions of daily ad events through an IPO-scale growth phase; a digital asset exchange; a TIPS-selected R&D program; and engineering teams built from zero.

Most recently, I led enterprise AX work: an agent-based AX platform, the AI renewal of Incheon International Airport's collaboration portal — unified search and AI document analysis over fragmented business data, including CAD drawings. The common thread is practical range — connecting product strategy, architecture, data, and the people who ship it.

Seoul, South Korea · Neil Kwon · Korean (native) · English & Japanese (conversational)

16+

years in product engineering

₩20B+

cumulative platform revenue

×2

CTO roles

B+

daily ad events processed

02Opera Probata

Selected proof, not just a timeline

Five representative engagements show the kinds of complex product, data, and infrastructure problems I have owned end to end.

Enterprise AI · 2025–2026

Turned fragmented enterprise data into one knowledge system

Development Team Lead

LLOYDK

Challenge

Project knowledge lived across fragmented historical documents and repetitive communication workflows.

Ownership

Led product architecture, technical roadmap, delivery priorities, and quality alignment — spanning the agent-based AX platform, the AI renewal of Incheon International Airport's collaboration portal, and enterprise PoCs.

Proof of impact

Unified search and natural-language Q&A over consolidated business data — including CAD drawings recognized by AI; an agent platform with MCP·A2A, per-step model routing, and a governed self-evolution loop; multi-day document research compressed into a few conversations; PoCs delivered for Incheon Airport, Goyang City, KOEN, Kiturami, Samsung, LG, and Kakao Entertainment.

Agentic AIMCP · A2ASemantic SearchDocument AIEnterprise PoC

Content Platform · 2023–2024

Designed the creator-to-reader business platform end to end

Engineering Lead

Dillyhub Inc.

Challenge

A global creator-content platform needed coherent publishing, viewing, and commerce — digital publications and physical goods, sold across markets.

Ownership

Led engineering across publishing, subscriptions, community, and reading — plus the Dilly View commerce service, access control & DRM, admin console, and the legacy-to-modern stack migration.

Proof of impact

Shipped purchase and subscription reading in app and web viewers, global payments via Stripe and PayPal with multi-language·multi-currency support for Korea and France, and an AWS migration with standardized deploys.

Content CommerceViewerDRMPaymentsLegacy Modernization

Data & AdTech · 2015–2023

Built the data and real-time foundations behind advertising products

Developer → Co-founder & CTO

FutureStreamNetworks → FSN + GazetFactory

Challenge

Advertising systems needed to reliably ingest, analyze, and activate massive event streams — then bid on them in real time within milliseconds.

Ownership

Built Cauly's data ecosystem and mobile SDKs through FSN's IPO, then co-founded GazetFactory as CTO — GazetM (NCPI platform for Nexon·Netmarble·Kakao Games·NC campaigns) and WidenAd (OpenRTB 2.3–2.5 DSP).

Proof of impact

Hadoop·Presto pipelines processed billions of daily events; the DSP handled tens of billions of daily bid requests on Spring WebFlux + Aerospike hybrid-memory clusters; selected for TIPS 2020 (final success) and grew from ~₩1B first-month to ₩20B+ cumulative revenue.

Hadoop · PrestoOpenRTB DSPAerospikeAttributionTIPS 2020₩20B+ revenue

0→1 Systems · 2018–2020

De-risked new ventures by building the hard parts first

Technical Lead / Principal Developer

HopeHash · PionChain · Pion Corporation

Challenge

New AI and Web3 ventures needed working product and infrastructure before their markets could be validated.

Ownership

Built the hard cores directly: a Scala·Akka actor-based exchange engine with a separated asset ledger, cross-chain transaction verification (UTXO vs account models), multi-sig wallet and full-node operations, an ASIC fleet-control system — and in 2019, a GAN ad-creative platform (Vispot, now Vcat) before generative AI was mainstream.

Proof of impact

Converted early-stage ideas into launch-ready systems: a live digital-asset exchange, cloud-mining operations with real settlement, and an AI creative MVP whose lineage continues as a flagship commercial product (Vcat.AI).

0→1Scala · AkkaExchangeGAN · Generative AIDevice Fleet

Game Platforms · 2011–2015

Shipped cross-border game platforms in the early smartphone era

Platform & Client Developer

Daum Communications + AltPlus + AZAGames

Challenge

Global titles and platforms — DeNA's Mobage, Japanese live games — had to combine with Korean accounts, billing, and market environments when mobile expertise was scarce.

Ownership

Primary developer for Daum Mobage (SSO, sessions, platform APIs, purchase verification with double-payment prevention) and the MyPeople messenger game platform; later led Unity client localization/optimization at AltPlus and PHP·Laravel game-server porting and Korea-exclusive live ops at AZAGames.

Proof of impact

Launched a global game platform with DeNA and multiple Japanese titles for the Korean market — 'Gundam Area Wars', 'Castle', 'Dragon Tactics Infinity', 'Spirit Fantasia' — while leading technical communication with overseas studios.

DeNA MobageSSO · BillingUnityPHP · LaravelLocalization

03Modus Operandi

How I can help

I work best where product ambiguity, technical complexity, and delivery pressure meet — especially in AI and data-intensive platforms.

Shape the right technical bet

Clarify users, business constraints, technical risk, and the smallest credible MVP before the roadmap hardens.

Typical outcomesProduct/technical strategy · MVP scope · roadmap

Design platforms that can grow

Connect data flows, service boundaries, operational tooling, and quality standards into an architecture that supports the next stage of scale.

Typical outcomesSystem architecture · integrations · reliability

Put AI and data into useful workflows

Move beyond demos by grounding AI in retrieval, document pipelines, measurement, and the real actions people need to take.

Typical outcomesAI workflows · search · data pipelines · analytics

Align a team around delivery

Translate goals into technical decisions, priorities, quality bars, and working practices that let a team ship with confidence.

Typical outcomesEngineering leadership · delivery process · team building

Operate reliably at massive scale

High throughput and short response times under real load — designing for fault tolerance, scalability, and cost efficiency together, from billions of daily ad events to millisecond bidding.

Typical outcomesHigh-throughput systems · low latency · HA/DR · cost efficiency

04Curriculum Operis

Experience

The full record: 16+ years across games, mobile, big data, AdTech, blockchain, and AI — from prototype to IPO-scale systems.

Apr 2025 — PresentCurrent

Development Team Lead · Technical Leader

LLOYDK · Full-time · Seoul · On-site

Leading an enterprise AX platform, the AI renewal of Incheon International Airport's collaboration portal, and custom AI PoCs for major enterprises.

Designed an agent-based AX platform automating recurring work per department — recruiting screening, RFP analysis & estimation, meeting-note-driven customer-needs analysis — with standardized agent lifecycle: task specialization, auth, permissions, context, and tool calls separated as common processes.
Built the orchestration core: user intent analysis → agent selection → conversion of natural-language requests into executable task specs, with per-step optimized model routing (intent, response, task-spec, codegen) for token efficiency and accuracy.
Implemented MCP & A2A integration plus a Self-evolution Loop that generates, verifies, and registers needed capabilities as code — governed by policy and executed safely in sandboxes, isolated containers, and AWS Lambda.
Led the AI sub-project of Incheon International Airport's full collaboration-portal renewal: consolidated business data scattered across legacy systems and per-person PCs into a unified knowledge base — ingesting by file & metadata hashing, recognizing CAD drawings and other unstructured data with AI, and enabling integrated search and natural-language Q&A.
Deployed AI agents over the knowledge base that compress multi-day document exploration and regulation review into a few conversations.
Ran custom AI PoCs end to end — requirements, architecture, delivery, validation, and demos — for Incheon Airport, Goyang City, KOEN, Kiturami, Samsung, LG, and Kakao Entertainment, designing scenarios around real pain points so results convert into main projects.
Embedded coding agents (Claude Code, Antigravity, Codex) across design, development, testing, and documentation to raise platform delivery velocity.

Agentic AIMCP · A2ASemantic SearchDocument AISpring AILangGraph

Aug 2024 — Feb 2025

Chief Technology Officer

Empire Music Studios · Full-time · US-based · Remote

CTO of a global performance-trade platform connecting musicians with overseas venues, event organizers, and booking agencies.

Balanced product and technology decisions in a US-based remote organization, setting early development direction and managing technical risk.
Built a business-network environment exposing musician profiles and performance content across countries and regions — enabling proposals, booking, and negotiation beyond personal networks.
Structured the data of the trade — conditions, schedules, venues, fees — converting a process that ran on personal contacts and one-off communication into a platform workflow.
Designed the end-to-end service from artist discovery and matching through proposals, scheduling, contracts, and transaction management.

MarketplaceGlobal PlatformNext.jsExpress.jsGCP

Feb 2023 — Jul 2024

Lead Developer

Dillyhub Inc. · Full-time · Seoul, South Korea

Led engineering for Dillyhub's creator content platform and built Dilly View, a global content-commerce service for digital publications and physical goods.

Built a mobile/web content-commerce platform where creators promote and sell digital publications and physical goods — individual purchase or subscription, then reading in app and web viewers.
Integrated global PGs (Stripe, PayPal) for payment, subscription, and refund flows, supporting multi-language and multi-currency operation for the Korean and French markets.
Designed access-control and DRM logic against unauthorized copying and leakage of digital content, plus an integrated creator console for content, orders, subscriptions, and revenue.
Modernized the legacy stack — Vanilla JS front / Node.js·Java back — into Next.js + Spring Boot·Kotlin, migrating screens and APIs in phases to minimize downtime and migration risk.
Moved small-scale hosted services to AWS — restructuring application, database, storage, and deployment for scalability — and standardized per-service deploy/ops with separated dev, staging, and production.

Content CommercePayments · DRMNext.jsSpring Boot · KotlinAWS

Mar 2020 — Jan 2023

Co-founder & CTO

GazetFactory · Full-time · South Korea · On-site

Co-founded an Ad-Tech company and led all technology — building GazetM (global NCPI ad platform) and WidenAd (OpenRTB DSP) from first commit to ₩20B+ cumulative revenue.

Started as the sole founding developer — infra, MVP, first launch, operations — then scaled the organization to 15 people (6 engineers), establishing the core stack, agile process, and engineering culture.
GazetM powered mobile UA campaigns for Nexon, Netmarble, Kakao Games, and NC, expanding inventory and revenue through global ad networks and a 2nd/3rd-tier sub-publisher distribution structure.
Standardized attribution across TUNE, adbrix, AppsFlyer, Adjust, Singular, Airbridge, and Kochava — unifying tracking links, click IDs, attribution windows, dedup, postback reprocessing, and settlement reconciliation into one event model; adapted measurement for iOS ATT / SKAdNetwork.
Adopted Aerospike multi-cluster as the real-time ad datastore — Hybrid Memory Architecture keeping primary indexes in RAM and bulk data on SSD for low-latency reads at a fraction of in-memory cost — and split storage by data lifetime across shared memory, Redis, Kafka, and RDBMS.
Built WidenAd, an OpenRTB 2.3–2.5 DSP bidding into ad exchanges and SSPs: Spring WebFlux + Reactor Netty non-blocking bid servers handling tens of billions of daily bid requests within exchange tmax budgets, an adapter layer normalizing per-exchange protocols, and real-time bidding logic across budget, targeting, frequency capping, and PMP/Deal terms.
Developed an ML-based fraud detection & prevention platform that flags anomalous traffic and invalid ads, protecting ad quality and operating efficiency.
Selected for TIPS (2020 H1) on the strength of the technology and business — completing the R&D and commercialization program with a final 'success' verdict; revenue grew from ~₩1B in the first month to ₩20B+ cumulative.

AdTechDSP · OpenRTBAerospikeKafkaML Fraud DetectionTIPS 2020

Jul 2019 — Feb 2020

Development Lead

Pion Corporation · Full-time · Seoul, South Korea

Built the early MVP of Vispot (now Vcat) — a GAN-powered ad image/video generation platform, in 2019, before generative AI went mainstream.

Product-page URL in, ad creative out: built the content pipeline that collects and refines product images, names, prices, and descriptions, then feeds them into model input and creative-generation workflows.
Designed GAN model operations end to end — training/validation/deployment environments, training-data preprocessing, model versioning, inference runs, and artifact storage/delivery.
Stabilized costly AI workloads with an async serving workflow separating inference, video rendering, validation, and delivery.
Automated campaign execution by integrating Facebook Ads and Google Ads — registering, submitting, and tracking generated creatives — and closed the loop by feeding exposure/click/conversion metrics and A/B results back into model training data.

Generative AIGANMLOpsAd AutomationReactSpring Boot

Oct 2018 — Jul 2019

Principal Developer · Dev Lead

PionChain · Full-time · Seoul, South Korea

Researched cross-chain transaction verification across heterogeneous blockchains, then served as main developer building and launching a digital asset exchange.

Analyzed UTXO-based (Bitcoin, Litecoin) vs account-based (Ethereum, Ripple) transaction and balance models, designing a verification process that interprets per-chain data in a common form.
Implemented validity/finality verification from block height, transaction ID, addresses, amounts, fees, and confirmation state — with per-network criteria covering block cadence, finality differences, and reorg risk.
Built the exchange trading engine on Scala + Akka actors — order intake, quote management, matching, execution, and cancellation — with actor-per-order message processing that minimizes shared-state access and safely serializes concurrent trading.
Separated the Akka-based ledger server (balances, frozen amounts, executions, deposits/withdrawals) from the trading engine via message passing — isolating responsibilities and guaranteeing data consistency.
Ran full nodes and wallet infrastructure per chain — deposit-address issuance, deposit detection, confirmation checks, withdrawal approval, transaction creation and network propagation — plus Spring Boot business services, Angular web clients with WebSocket market data, and integrated ops tooling.

BlockchainDigital Asset ExchangeScala · AkkaDistributed SystemsSpring Boot

Apr 2018 — Oct 2018

Technical Lead

HopeHash · Full-time · Gyeonggi, South Korea

Architected a cloud-mining service and an integrated control platform for large-scale ASIC mining fleets.

Built the cloud-mining product: users rent hash power by product unit and track contracts, allocated hashrate, mined volume, projected returns, and settlement history — with revenue settlement tied to actual mining-pool results.
Operated Bitcoin/Ethereum full nodes and wallet servers over JSON-RPC — address issuance, balance queries, deposits/withdrawals, transaction tracking — with multi-signature withdrawal approval and an extensible per-chain wallet adapter design.
Designed a lightweight agent + TCP/UDP protocol between ASIC units and the central control server, streaming hashrate, temperature, fan speed, power draw, network, and fault state in real time.
Integrated per-vendor RPC interfaces for remote control — restarts, mining-config changes, pool switching, worker updates — hardened with heartbeat, timeout, reconnect, and command-retransmission logic for unreliable networks; grouped monitoring/alerts by center, zone, rack, and unit.

BlockchainCloud MiningDevice Fleet ControlNode.jsAngular

Jan 2015 — Apr 2018

Developer → Part Lead

FutureStreamNetworks → FSN · Full-time · Seoul, South Korea

Joined FutureStreamNetworks — which rebranded to FSN as the business expanded — and built the Cauly ad platform's serving, SDK, and data foundations through the company's IPO.

Developed the Cauly Ad Network's serving, tracking, aggregation, and analytics systems handling billions of daily ad requests and behavior logs, plus Android/iOS/Web ad SDKs covering banner, interstitial, native, and video (MRAID rich media, VAST video).
Designed the Hadoop·HDFS·YARN data platform — ETL/batch pipelines with log cleansing, dedup, anomaly filtering, and late-data correction — and a Presto·Hive distributed SQL layer enabling near-real-time analysis over massive ad data.
Solely owned the Cauly Tracker SDK (Web·Android·iOS): multi-platform attribution linking ad clicks to installs, first runs, revisits, and in-app conversions via GAID, Google Play Install Referrer, IDFA, cookies, and tracking pixels — with lifecycle-aware local storage, async batching, retry, and dedup to minimize data loss.
Led Cauly Retargeting 2.0 — standardizing per-advertiser behavior events into a common model, building segment generation from recency/interest/frequency/purchase criteria, and applying inclusion/exclusion, frequency caps, priorities, and deep-link policies.
Drove the Ads Center 2.0 renewal — advertiser accounts, campaigns, creative review/approval, budgets, billing policies, tracking URLs, and dashboards with automated reporting — migrating the legacy system in phases without service interruption.
Integrated 3rd-party trackers and MMPs (Adjust, TUNE, adbrix) — standardizing tracking URLs, click IDs, attribution windows, and S2S postback formats, with dedup, delayed-event handling, and settlement reconciliation across advertisers, publishers, and partners.
The platform carried the company through its hyper-growth phase to a successful IPO, meeting listed-company reliability and data-compliance standards.

AdTechBig DataHadoop · PrestoMobile SDKAttributionIPO

Oct 2014 — Jan 2015

Dev Lead

AltPlus Korea · Full-time · Seoul, South Korea

Korean-entity founding member for the Japanese publisher AltPlus — leading mobile game localization and Unity client engineering for the Korean market.

'Gundam Area Wars': developed the Korean service of the IP-based strategy RPG — localizing Japanese text, UI, and game data; fixing layout/readability issues from translation length differences; and profiling Unity memory, frame drops, resource loading, and screen transitions to remove mobile bottlenecks.
Improved the shared Unity client framework — commonizing screen transitions, network requests, resource management, UI handling, and error recovery — and fed validated optimizations back to the Japan HQ codebase.
'Castle': completed the Korean launch of the in-house-IP siege-strategy fantasy RPG — localization structure for text/voice/UI resources, rendering and memory optimization for battle scenes with many simultaneous units and effects, and Android build/compatibility/release management for Korean app markets.

Unity · C#Game ClientLocalizationPerformance

Jan 2014 — Oct 2014

Dev Lead

AZAGames · Full-time · Seoul, South Korea

Localized and live-operated Japanese mobile games for Korea on a shared PHP·Laravel game-server engine — porting original APIs and logic while extending Korea-specific live content.

Rebuilt member/billing/game-data/event/ops systems for the Korean service environment beyond simple translation, integrating with domestic publishing platforms — and modularized per-title features so multiple games run efficiently on one engine.
'Dragon Tactics Infinity' (mobile TCG by enish): ported and advanced the card collection/growth/guild and 3×3 MDS battle systems — server-verifying battle state and results so card stats, skills, and placement effects apply consistently — and managed 800+ knight cards' master data localized for Korean ops; integrated Daum accounts, data migration, payment verification, and item delivery.
'Spirit Fantasia' (card-battle RPG by AltPlus): ported spirit collection/growth/affinity/deck battle logic to the Korean engine with server-side verification of stage dialogue, stats, and rewards; added Korea-exclusive attendance, ranking, and limited events wired into the reward pipeline; and data-driven event configs minimized live code deploys.
Built ops/analytics features tracking content progression, event participation, item consumption, and payment metrics from service logs and user data.

Game ServerPHP · LaravelLive OpsLocalizationIAP

Jan 2011 — Jan 2014

Software Engineer (Open Recruitment)

Daum Communications · Full-time · Seoul, South Korea

Joined the Social Mobile Platform team via open recruitment — primary mobile-client developer for SNS, messenger, and social-game platform services in the early smartphone era, spanning full-stack.

Daum game business platform: consolidated auth, users, billing, game launch, notices, events, and ops into a common platform, abstracting per-game SDK/API differences to shorten new-title onboarding — with ops tooling and unified log analytics across app/server/web.
MyPeople messenger × games: built game discovery/install/launch inside the messenger, no-friction auth linking Daum accounts with MyPeople users, iOS Custom URL Scheme / Android Intent flows across messenger, web, app markets, and games, and friend-context data for invites, recommendations, and events.
Daum Mobage with DeNA: core developer launching the Korean mobile-game platform combining DeNA's global social platform with Daum accounts, mobile services, and local billing — SSO, user sessions, per-game permissions, platform APIs, purchase request/verification/delivery flows with double-payment prevention, and led technical communication with DeNA and overseas studios (spec alignment, SDK support, pre-launch inspection).
Built the foundational range — mobile apps, game platform, auth/billing, ops systems, and data analytics — that later carried into game and Ad-Tech platform work.

Mobile PlatformiOS · AndroidSSO · BillingGlobal IntegrationDeNA Mobage

Nov 2010 — Jan 2011

Research Assistant

KETI (Korea Electronics Technology Institute) · Contract · Research · Mapo, Seoul

Validated emotion-based content recommendation for open smart-TV — turning an academic concept into a working hardware+software prototype.

Connected physical emotion-sensing devices to Android set-top boxes, receiving users' emotional-state readings and linking them with watched content and session data.
Built per-content emotional-response profiles from normalized, outlier-filtered, time-series-aggregated signals — selecting recommendations from similar emotional states and viewing patterns, beyond genre/preference matching.
Customized the AOSP set-top environment for large displays and remote-first interaction, and integrated Android OS, set-top hardware, sensing devices, and multimedia playback with hardware researchers — validating the paper's core hypothesis as a PoC.

Android · AOSPSmart TVRecommendationR&D

Jan 2010 — Oct 2010

Project Trainee · Dev Lead

Wipro Software · Internship · Exchange · Bangalore, India

KRCF international technology-exchange program: built a distance-learning system delivering video lectures and digital materials to low-access regions of India.

Led Android implementation in the platform's earliest days — porting Android OS to target tablet hardware, building AOSP images, and verifying device compatibility for affordable tablets.
Optimized app start time, memory, content loading, and video performance for constrained CPU/memory/storage devices, with a client resilient to poor networks — request/download/streaming switching, playback-state management, and error recovery.
Built the Spring-based content/metadata/streaming API server and integrated Darwin Streaming Server (RTSP/RTP) so remote lectures play reliably on Android tablets — proving the end-to-end public e-learning model.
Collaborated with Indian engineers and public-sector stakeholders across requirements, design, verification, and demos — early global engineering experience across cultures.

Android · AOSPE-LearningVideo StreamingSpringGlobal

05Architectura Systematum

System Blueprints

The structures behind the case studies, redrawn as living blueprints — layers, services, and the flows between them.

Agent-based work automation at LLOYDK — reconstructed from the shipped system (2025–).

Reconstructed from shipped systems — code-accurate, repo-linked diagrams will follow as sources open.

06Ars & Scientia

Domains & Skills

A cross-disciplinary stack, grounded in products, platforms, and systems that reached real users and operations.

AI & Knowledge Systems

Generative-AI workflows, semantic enterprise search, document analysis, and ML-driven targeting.

Generative AISemantic SearchDocument AIML Targeting

Data Platforms at Scale

Pipelines ingesting billions of daily events; real-time distributed analytics.

HadoopPrestoHiveYARNKettle

Real-time AdTech & MarTech

High-throughput ad platforms, Mobile Ad SDKs, targeting & analytics.

Ad platformsMobile Ad SDKReal-time bidding

Blockchain & Web3

Crypto exchange, wallet infrastructure, BTC/ETH nodes, cloud mining.

Crypto exchangeWalletsSmart-contract infra

Full-stack, Mobile & Content

Native Android & iOS, Unity3D games, and server↔client across the stack.

AndroidiOSUnity3DPHPWeb

Technical Leadership

CTO, founding engineer, and team lead — aligning architecture, roadmap, quality, and delivery.

Technical StrategyArchitectureTeam BuildingAgile Delivery

Toolbox16+ years, consolidated

JavaKotlinSpring BootSpring AISpring WebFluxPythonFastAPILangGraphLangChainMCPA2AvLLMPgVectorLLM EvaluationClaude · Claude CodeTypeScriptReactNext.jsAngularReduxFlutterAndroidiOSUnity · C#PHP · LaravelScala · AkkaNode.jsApache KafkaRedisAerospikeElasticsearchPostgreSQLMySQLHadoopPrestoHiveDockerAWSGCPTerraform

07Disciplina & Honores

Education & Recognition

Where the engineering started — and the research that was recognized along the way.

Mar 2003 — Jan 2010

Soongsil University

B.S. in Computer Science

Undergraduate researcher in AI pathfinding for real-time game environments.

Selected as an excellent paper — KIISE Fall Conference 2009

Hierarchical pathfinding based on abstraction clusters for real-time game environments

Eunseok Seo · Kang Han · Daehwa Kwon · Young-Tack Park (Soongsil Univ.)

DBPIA

Korean (native) · English & Japanese (conversational)

08Ratio Operandi

Development Philosophy

I don't chase technology trends — I work to understand a technology's essence and limits, then convert it into value for the organization and its customers. Across sixteen years a consistent way of working emerged: robust design and strong execution, with agents, knowledge, and evidence fitting together.

Harness-first engineering

I build the operating layer before the feature. A reusable harness injects knowledge (RAG) and exposes tools (MCP), so an agent does real work on a lean context — what it knows and what it can do, kept cleanly apart.

Evolve with evidence

No skill ships on a hunch. Every change must beat the previous baseline on replayed history — improvement you can measure and audit, not conviction without proof.

Intent → running system

I treat the agent as a builder. Specs become running code through autonomous, event-driven execution — prototyping at conversational speed, with every step traced and reproducible.

Engineer the context, not just the prompt

A model's output is only as good as what it's given. I design what the model sees — retrieval, memory, and tool surfaces — so the right knowledge arrives at the right moment.

Robust design, strong execution

Design documents don't ship products. I stay hands-on — writing code when it matters, digging into performance issues and failure root causes — and hold responsibility until the project becomes a real result.

Technology, tied to business outcomes

From founding a startup to national R&D, I weigh technical completeness against business viability — validating new models fast without mortgaging the traffic, data, and organization the service will need after it grows.

Let's connect

Devise something together.

Building something at the intersection of AI, scale, and good engineering? I'd love to hear about it — reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

Connect on LinkedIn Email me GitHub

Neil Kwon · neil@excogitar.com