Andy Kish
Director of Technology | Full-Stack & IoT Platform Engineering | AI/ML Systems

About

Technical leader, engineering polymath, and systems architect with proven experience scaling products from inception to millions of users. Over 20 years of experience accumulating a rare combination of deep technical knowledge across the entire technology stack; from bare metal to cloud infrastructure to user experiences, and everything in between. Adept at architecting modern GenAI capabilities (LLMs, RAG, agentic workflows) while providing the rigorous technical governance required to validate, refactor, and harden AI-generated code for enterprise production.

Core competencies:

  • Systems Architecture
    Designed and implemented scalable distributed systems supporting 1M+ concurrent devices
  • Full Stack Development
    Extensive production experience with modern JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystems (Node.js since 0.4, React, Modern frameworks), Rust, Python, and C/C++
  • Mobile app development
    Android, iOS, and Hybrid (react-native, Cordova, Capacitor)
  • Hardware and Firmware
    Embedded Linux, Real-time systems, MCU development, Edge AI, optimized machine learning models (ONNX, TinyML) deploying directly to edge IoT devices and bare-metal hardware for low-latency, localized inference.
  • AI Development
    Architecting bespoke generative AI solutions, agentic workflows, and autoregressive LLMs at scale. Extensive tooling experience including TensorFlow, PyTorch, Jupyter Notebooks, coding automation tools, AWS SageMaker/Rekognition, and MANY more.
  • Infrastructure
    Cloud, on-prem, and hybrid architectures, CI/CD pipelines, developer tooling, database migrations at scale
  • Protocols & Standards
    Creating and maintaining REST APIs that other developers love, MQTT, CoAP, BLE, WiFi, NFC

Recent focus areas:

  • AI development, autoregressive LLMs, agentic workflows, bespoke AI solutions
  • Rust-based systems programming
  • Modern JavaScript run-times (Deno, Bun)
  • Edge computing, distributed systems, AI implementation at scale
  • Hardware-software co-design
  • IoT Secure device provisioning and fleet management
  • Cybersecurity and compliance standards

I thrive on solving complex technical challenges that span multiple domains. My background allows me to bridge gaps between hardware and software teams, architect cohesive solutions, and build systems that scale. While I'm comfortable across many technologies, I focus on selecting the right tool for each specific challenge rather than forcing particular solutions.

Work Experience

SkyBell Technologies Inc
https://skybell.com
August 2020 - now
Director of Technology
At SkyBell I've been able to truly exercise my full stack skill-set, all the way down to the hardware. While most of my work has centered around web technologies (AWS ECR/ECS, Fargate, EC2), I've been able to make great contributions to the other facets of the SkyBell platform including firmware (Buildroot embedded Linux running on ARM and MIPS) for our doorbells and with our mobile apps (Android specifically, Kotlin, Java) used to interact with them. While most of the SkyBell stack is in Node.js, a language I am an expert with, I have been able to further develop experience with other languages like Rust, Erlang, and Elixir that parts of the SkyBell platform are written in.
Highlights
  • Architected and scaled IoT platform supporting 1M+ devices, reduced infrastructure costs by 80% while maintaining 99.9% uptime
  • Built and deployed an internal AI-driven conversational copilot that became the primary interface for Customer Success operations, reducing average ticket resolution time from days to minutes, and streamlining daily workflows
  • Managed relationships and technical oversight for distributed development teams across 6+ countries, conducting code reviews, and guidance for outsourced development work
  • Engineered highly optimized Embedded AI/ML solutions for resource-constrained IoT Edge devices using weight pruning and quantization on ONNX/TinyML models for direct bare-metal deployment and low-latency on-device inference
Gun.io Technical Talent
https://gun.io
December 2019 - August 2020
Senior Software Engineer
Gun.io is a fantastic boutique technical talent agency. I took many contracts there and was able to contribute with projects of all different kinds. Many contracts had a heavy emphasis on mobile apps (both iOS and Android) using development technologies like Cordova, and React Native (using Expo.io). Often I was hired for a specific role or technical development task, but was frequently asked to stay on to improve DevOps, monitoring, and infrastructure scaling.
Highlights
  • Delivered 12+ client engagements end-to-end across mobile (iOS/Android, Expo, Cordova), web, and infrastructure while consistently completing on time and within scope
  • Retained beyond original contract scope by a majority of clients, expanding engagements into DevOps, monitoring, and infrastructure scaling work
Wirkn Inc
https://www.linkedin.com/company/wirkn/
February 2016 - December 2019
Head of Engineering
Hired as a Senior Developer and promoted to Head of Engineering, I owned Wirkn's platform architecture and engineering organization end-to-end; from backend re-architecture through cloud migration, CI/CD, and building out the development team itself.
Highlights
  • Led a complete re-architecture of the core Node.js backend for scalability, fault-tolerance, and full AWS deployment, supporting the platform's growth from early-stage startup through enterprise clients
  • Designed and implemented a zero-downtime blue/green CI/CD deployment pipeline (Jenkins, AWS), taking releases from manual to fully automated
  • Built and operated a customized ELK stack providing company-wide metrics, analytics, and observability
  • Hired, mentored, and grew an engineering team from 2 to 6 members; established code review standards, security reporting practices, and overall technical governance
Tribal DDB (now "TBWA")
https://tbwa.com/
January 2014 - August 2015
Full-Stack Senior Developer
I was hired on a contract basis to maintain and enhance McDonald's award winning "Our Food, Your Questions" campaign (Node.js, MongoDB), after my contract was up Tribal/DDB came to see me as a well-rounded developer and offered me a full time web developer position. At Tribal I got to work with even more large well known brands (McDonald's, Subaru, Canadian Tire, Google ... many more) building everything from simple social media plays, to complex Arduino or Electric Imp based "connected objects" hardware projects. I also worked with a variety of languages and platforms, it was a rewarding new challenge every other week.
Highlights
  • Built digital campaigns for McDonald's, Subaru, Canadian Tire, and Google — from social activations to IoT 'connected object' installations (Arduino, Electric Imp)
  • Contract-to-hire: brought on for a single campaign, converted to full-time based on delivery
Viafoura
https://www.viafoura.com
September 2012 - November 2013
Full-Stack Senior Developer
Originally hired as a front-end JavaScript developer, I quickly began to fill gaps in areas well beyond just the client side. I was involved in almost every aspect of the IT operations; from back-end (a mix of PHP frameworks, Node.js and Python), to sysadmin (in the Amazon cloud), to QA (building a rudimentary Jenkins CI system) and beyond. Wrote and documented the login integration and data migration pipeline (users and comments), including the CBC.ca comment system migration.
Highlights
  • Great exposure to the heart of Canadian start-up culture
  • Incubated in the Ryerson DMZ
  • Migrated entire CBC.ca comment system to Viafoura
The Globe and Mail
https://www.theglobeandmail.com
January 2012 - August 2012
Front-end Web Developer
Enterprise web development at its finest. The Globe and Mail's development team is strictly by-the-book agile programming using an enterprise Java backend. I was on a front end team developing with HTML/CSS/JavaScript using JSP and JSLT templates for their proprietary Java CMS (Escenic). I was integral in building the new "Dashboard" web app addon for TGAM subscribers. This app uses real-time communications implemented with CometD (Bayeux server). I also helped maintain their only Python/Django app, a URL shortener for tgam.ca
Highlights
  • Built the real-time 'Dashboard' subscriber web app using CometD (Bayeux) push messaging
  • Delivered front-end features within a strict enterprise agile process (Java/Escenic CMS, JSP/JSTL)
Trapeze Media
https://www.trapeze.ca/
December 2010 - January 2012
Web Application Developer
At Trapeze, I was on the front-end team working with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In addition to my standard front-end duties, I worked with our backend team extensively honing my Python skills into mastery (mostly using the Django framework). I worked on many major brands including Canadian Tire, Kraft Peanut Butter, Shoppers Drug Mart (and Pharma Prix), Oreo, Maxwell House, Tassimo and many others. Trapeze used to encourage their developers to work on research projects, thanks to that perk I am now well versed with upcoming technologies and methodologies like responsive design, WebGL, NFC and Node.js.
Highlights
  • Strong development team taught me how AGILE works
  • Had strong recognizable brands as clients
BlueBand Media (now "Blueband Digital")
https://x.com/bluebanddigital
August 2008 - November 2010
Director of Technology
Leading a small team of developers we built end-to-end solutions for our clients mostly with a LAMP software stack. ExpressionEngine and Wordpress were our go to frameworks for PHP development. Working at BlueBand Media allowed me to garner a deeper understanding in many aspects of the consumer packaged goods industry. I worked on many projects from simple promotional draws and automated tweets all the way up to nationwide pin collection and entry contests that featured interactive social media content and technical treats like augmented reality. Being the go to guy to get anything technical done was my calling card here. I loved learning new technologies and seeing where I could mesh them with old ones I already knew, this comes in very handy in agency environments.
Highlights
  • Learned all the ins and outs of Consumer Packaged Goods marketing
The Best Media
https://thebestmedia.com/
August 2005 - February 2008
Front-end Web Developer
At The Best Media, I was responsible for everything IT related. This spanned from ensuring our Linux server was still serving our hosting customers, to developing and maintaining client websites. I worked with many older web technologies including HTML4/XHTML, PHP, Flash Actionscript, ASP, eRuby, and Perl. I got professional experience with ones I still use to this day like Javascript and Python.
Highlights
  • No 'chosen' language here, fixed, or added to many different types of projects.
ICA Microsystems
http://icamicrosystems.com/
January 2004 - August 2004
Hardware Technician
At ICA Microsystems I built, repaired and serviced all types of systems ranging from desktop PCs all the way up to the servers from our rack mounted server farm.
Highlights
  • Helped administer the hosting co-location and p2p wireless internet provider services

Volunteer

OpenVoiceOS (formerly MyCroft AI)
https://github.com/OpenVoiceOS
July 2017 –
Open Source Contributor
Open Source Contributor to the MyCroft.ai project (now "OpenVoiceOS"), an open-source, privacy-first conversational AI assistant. Contributed to the development and optimization of local machine learning (ML) models, gaining deep, hands-on experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP), speech-to-text pipelines, and autonomous vocal agent architectures.

Contact

Toronto , Ontario Canada
+1 (647) 746-4566
akish@kishcom.com
Github
LinkedIn
Mastodon
PGP Key
PDF Download
https://kish.is

Skills

Frontend Web Development 20+ years
HTML CSS LESS SASS JavaScript TypeScript CoffeeScript React Next.js Vue Svelte Koa Socket.io D3 Three.js Chart.js Chai/Jest/Mocha Websockets Tailwind Bootstrap
Backend Web Development 20+ years
API development Node.js Rust Python PHP PostgreSQL MongoDB MySQL Redis/Valkey Memcached NGINX ElasticSearch Cassandra JWT oAuth Passkeys
Mobile Apps 15+ years
Android Kotlin Java React-Native Cordova Capacitor Google Play Store XCode iOS
DevOps 15+ years
Continuous Integration Blue/Green Deploys Docker Ansible VM/container orchestration Proxmox AWS Cloudflare Azure Hetzner Digital Ocean Github Actions Chat Ops Grafana Developer Environments OPNSense Shell Scripting Linux Windows OSX
Hardware 5+ years
Embedded Linux Embedded Rust FreeRTOS Edge AI IoT interfaces (CoAP, MQTT) Mobile app interfaces (WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC) Electronics/PCB design 3D Printing CNC CAD/CAM Overseas manufacturing
AI, Data Science 4+ years
Agentic workflows TensorFlow PyTorch ONNX Coding automation tools Jupyter Notebooks autoregression based LLMs AWS SageMaker, Rekognition Vector DBs

Education

Humber College
September 2004 – June 2006

Diploma

Computer Programming and Analysis

Publications

shortyio
Github
https://github.com/KishCom/shortyio/

A very small multiplatform Rust GUI app to quickly create new short URLs using the Short.io service.

shorten-node
Github
https://github.com/KishCom/shorten-node

A Node.js powered URL shortening web app with Heroku deploy instructions.

Languages

  • English Native speaker

References

I have had the pleasure of working with Andy for over five years. As a truly full stack developer, Andy has contributed to firmware, mobile, web, operations, and more, all while leading support of our legacy cloud infrastructure and owning development of our new and next gen cloud systems. With Andy's efforts, we now have a world-class solution supporting hundreds of thousands of devices, engineered for reliability, and able to scale effortlessly. Beyond Andy’s technical talent and dedication is comradery the entire team appreciates.

I've had the pleasure of working with Andrew at Viafoura. Not only is Andrew a passionate, innovative , and, fearless coder -- he's a rare breed of swiss army knife technologist. He has an in depth knowledge of hardware, networking, software development and systems administration skills that put him in a category that few developers occupy. Andrew has a very curious mind and genuinely loves to experiment and contribute to cutting edge technologies and tools. He'd be an asset to any organization -- and he has my complete endorsement.

Andrew is a true full stack developer. For him it's equally easy to debug a cross browser CSS issue, refactor some backend python code or setup a new Linux server. This rare understanding of all layers of the application give him a clear advantage over his peers.

Andrew worked as a senior developer on our highest priority projects for us, in frontend, backend as well as dev ops. Andrew has a keen sense of detail in his work always taking pride in things like proper coding standards, automated testing, continuous integration as well as using relevant and modern technologies which reflected in the top notch quality and performance of his work. Andrew is a very skilled developer.

Andrew comes with a large depth of experience, knowledge and great ideas to any development team. He has the intuition around scale, infrastructure that every team should relish. You'd be lucky to have him as part of your team. Get em!

Andrew has a lot of passion and is not afraid to experiment with new technologies. He will move fast and get you a working version of a concept in no time. Andrew also brings a lot of energy to any team he is a part of, and a great socializer.

Andrew is a great technical expert who helped Wirkn build an amazing product!

Interests

Motorcycles
Super Sport MotoGP
Video Games
Kerbal Space Program Factorio Simulation FPS
Community Building
FOSS contributions Unyielding optimist