Engineering leader with 16+ years building distributed systems, developer tooling, and cloud-native platforms across financial services and fintech. One of a rare cohort of engineers with both deep infrastructure foundations and genuine production experience designing and deploying agentic AI systems. As CTO of MagiQ AI, built and operated autonomous AI agents for data enrichment, analysis, and workflow automation using LLMs, RAG pipelines, and LangChain/LangGraph patterns and pioneered AI-assisted software engineering with Cursor AI and Claude Code. Prior roles at DBS Bank, Standard Chartered, and Affinidi established strong fundamentals in SDLC tooling, CI/CD platforms, Kubernetes, and leading engineering teams at scale. Combines hands-on coding ability with proven people leadership across distributed, cross-functional teams.
Nilesh Kanawade
CTO & Co-Founder | MagiQ Al Pte Ltd
Summary
Education
- Mumbai University Master of Computer Applications, Computer Applications Jan 2006 - Dec 2009
- Mumbai University Bachelor of Computer Science, Computer Science Jan 2026 - Present
Experience
- CTO & Co-Founder MagiQ Al Pte Ltd Apr 2025 - Feb 2026 • 11 mos
Designed and deployed agentic Al systems for autonomous data enrichment, company intelligence generation, and workflow automation integrating LLMs (Azure OpenAl, Gemini), RAG pipelines, and LangChain/LangGraph patterns into production workflows. Pioneered Al-assisted software engineering as a solo engineer using Cursor Al and Claude Code, independently building and shipping a 12-microservice cloud-native SaaS platform a direct, practical analogue to the agentic SDLC systems this role will build. Designed agentic orchestration layers connecting Al models to business workflows via REST APIs, with automated routing, enrichment, and recommendation pipelines operating autonomously at scale.
- Head of Innovation – Al & Cloud TransformHub Pte Ltd Sep 2023 - Apr 2025 • 1 yr 8 mos
Led research, evaluation, and deployment of AI/ML and LLM-based solutions for enterprise engineering teams; established architectural patterns for integrating Al into existing development workflows. Delivered $1.2M in new contracts through technical pre-sales and POC delivery; presented Al engineering solutions to C-suite stakeholders across financial services and retail. Collaborated with cybersecurity and compliance teams to ensure Al-powered developer tools met enterprise policy and audit requirements. Mentored engineers on GenAl integration, cloud architecture, and DevOps practices - fostering a team culture of experimentation and continuous improvement. Built multi-tenant AWS infrastructure with CI/CD, observability, and security built in from day one; managed technical delivery across distributed freelance contributors.
Skills
- Agentic Al Systems: LLM orchestration, autonomous agent design, agentic workflow pipelines, LangChain/LangGraph, RAG, vector databases, prompt engineeringExpert
- Al-Assisted Engineering: Cursor Al, Claude Code - production experience using Al agents to accelerate software delivery end-to-endExpert
Certifications
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate AWS
- AWS Certified SysOps Administrator AWS