kckaowei.dev

KAO-WEI CHEN / AI ENGINEERING LEADER

From models
to meaningful
products.

I build the systems and lead the teams that turn AI into something people can use. From the first data pipeline to the product in production.

Explore my work Let’s connect
HANDS-ON ENGINEERING.
HUMAN-CENTERED LEADERSHIP.
LLM application pipeline
0102030405PlannerRetrieverExecutorReviewerEngineeringData scienceLeadershipPartners

Agents Planner · Retriever · Executor · Reviewer

People Engineering · Data science · Leadership · Partners

Agents application flowPeople shared ownership

Good systems start with good inputs.

Turn messy source material into structured, traceable data. Define the task, the constraints, and what a useful answer looks like.

Agent
Planner · breaks the task into explicit steps.
People
Engineering + leadership · scope, data contracts, and success criteria.

An illustrative workflow. Human judgment at every handoff.

01 / People & systems

Great systems.
Connected teams.

Models are one part of the work. I connect engineering, data science, and partners around a shared outcome—with clear ownership, useful evaluations, and room to learn.

01

People set the direction.

Define the problem, constraints, and what success means.

02

Agents carry out the work.

Plan, retrieve, and execute through bounded tool interfaces.

03

Teams close the loop.

Review quality, own the release, and act on feedback.

18+

Technical Staff Members

A global team of data scientists, engineers, and vendor partners across three enterprise LLM products.

McGraw Hill Engineering Manager, AI20+

Engineers. Five workstreams.

Clear ownership across teams and their dependencies.

Carnegie Learning Engineering Manager$1M+

Annual cost avoidance.

Generative-AI initiatives with a measurable business return.

Carnegie Learning Engineering Manager
02 / The toolkit

Models & tools
I’ve used.

Hands-on across language, images, video, and sound. Different tools for different kinds of work.

Language & reasoning

Language models

  • Anthropic Claude
  • OpenAI GPT
  • Google Gemini
  • Mistral
  • DeepSeek
  • Qwen

Image generation

Visual exploration

  • Seedream
  • Midjourney

Video & creative platforms

Motion & storytelling

  • Seedance
  • Runway
  • Higgsfield
  • Kling

Audio, voice & music

Sound & synthesis

  • Stable Audio
  • Chatterbox
  • ElevenLabs
  • Suno Labs

Built with

  • Python
  • Rust
  • TypeScript
  • React
  • MCP
  • Vite
  • Cloudflare
03 / Experience

Built on experience.

ENGINEERING → LEADERSHIP → AI
  1. – Present

    Lead Software Engineer, AI Platform

    DIA Design GuildCurrent
  2. –

    Engineering Manager, AI

    McGraw Hill
  3. –

    Engineering Manager

    Carnegie Learning
  4. –

    Senior Software Engineer

    Carnegie Learning
  5. –

    Software Engineer

    Flipgrid (Microsoft)
04 / Community

Volunteer.

– Present

DIA Design Guild

Board AdvisorNonprofit

Board advisor for the nonprofit design guild — guiding technology strategy and infrastructure.

05 / Selected builds

Ideas, shipped.

Agent frameworks, useful tools, and a few side quests. Built hands-on, from start to finish.

Explore GitHub