AI Strategy & Transformation
Helping organisations identify where AI can create real business value and move from experimentation to production.
Sydney, Australia
Kanishka
Mohaia
VP of AI & Engineering · Acting CTO, Sonder
I build production-grade AI systems, scale engineering organisations, and help companies turn AI strategy into production systems.
I am an AI executive based in Sydney, shipping production AI in regulated healthcare — with depth across platform engineering, real-time machine learning, and responsible AI.
About
AI executive. Engineering leader.
I am an AI and engineering executive based in Sydney. I work at the intersection of production AI, platform engineering, and technology leadership — across machine learning, data platforms, distributed systems, and the operating discipline needed to ship reliably in high-trust environments.
Today at Sonder, I lead engineering, platform, data, and AI — responsible for technology strategy, architecture, engineering culture, and AI governance. I have launched production AI for care specialists, rebuilt customer reporting and insights platforms, and am helping Sonder move toward an AI-first healthcare platform with safe, scalable, human-centred systems.
Before Sonder, I spent ~8 years at Rokt scaling engineering and production machine learning — scaling my own org to 80–90 engineers across seven teams and standing up Rokt's first New York machine-learning team — alongside real-time recommendation and decisioning, ML infrastructure, and global engineering across Sydney, New York, and Seattle. Earlier roles at Appen and Datalicious grounded my work in NLP, data platforms, and engineering leadership through company growth.
I share what I learn through speaking and mentoring, and I care about strengthening Australia's technology sector — especially responsible AI, health technology, and the craft of building systems that earn trust in production.
Areas of Focus
Where I create the most value.
Four areas where technology strategy meets production delivery.
Engineering Leadership
Building lean, high-performing engineering teams — a clear hiring bar for ML and AI talent, flat structures, and engineers who own customer outcomes end-to-end.
Production AI Systems
Designing and leading machine learning, recommender, LLM, RAG, and agentic AI systems that operate reliably in production.
Responsible AI
Applying AI safely in high-trust domains using evaluation, governance, human-in-the-loop workflows, and operational guardrails.
What Drives Me
Beyond the day-to-day.
I care about building technology that works in production, sharing what I learn, and helping raise the standard of AI and engineering practice in Australia.
AI for Health and Wellbeing
I am passionate about the role AI can play in improving access, quality, safety, efficiency, and personalisation across healthcare and wellbeing.
Talent is the Strategy
Talent is the strategy. I believe who you hire shapes what you can ship — especially in ML and AI, where the gap between a strong hire and a weak one shows up quickly in production. I've scaled large engineering orgs and, more recently, run leaner teams with higher output; both taught me that team design, hiring bar, and end-to-end ownership matter as much as tooling. I keep structures flat, minimise handoffs, and look for engineers who start from the customer and work back to the product.
Mentoring & Ecosystem
I believe Australia's technology sector becomes stronger when leaders share knowledge, mentor others, and help create higher standards across engineering, product, data, and AI.
Selected Experience
15+ years of building production systems.
From early-stage engineering to running technology at an AI-first healthcare platform.
Sonder
Acting CTO · VP of AI & Engineering
I lead Sonder's engineering organisation across product engineering, platform, data, and AI — technology strategy, architecture, engineering culture, AI governance, and delivery of systems used in regulated healthcare at scale.
Conceived and pitched Sonder's AI Copilot for care specialists — including its human-in-the-loop strategy — and led it from idea to production: fine-tuned models, RAG, evaluation, safety review, and human oversight in live workflows · Built a new customer reporting and insights platform from scratch in a single quarter · Increased engineering output ~5x by giving teams end-to-end ownership of delivery, minimising cross-team dependencies, introducing AI tooling, and upskilling the team through training while bringing in new talent
Established shared AI platform capabilities, model governance, and engineering standards across product and platform teams · Built evaluation frameworks and release practices for clinical-adjacent AI use cases · Leading Sonder's transition into an AI-first healthcare platform
Rokt
VP of Engineering, AI/ML
I joined Rokt shortly after its US$26M Series B and spent ~8 years there, during which the company grew to a ~US$7.2B valuation. I scaled my own engineering org from four engineers — two teams of two — to 80–90 people across seven teams, established Rokt's first New York machine-learning team, and hired across both the Sydney and New York markets.
Scaled real-time machine learning and decisioning from millions to billions of transactions across global digital marketplaces · Named inventor on machine-learning patents for contextual prediction and content ranking (US 11,776,013)
Built platforms for experimentation, feature stores, ML deployment, and monitoring
Datalicious
Head of Engineering
I led engineering through company growth — data engineering, full-stack product development, DevOps, web analytics, attribution products, and cloud data platforms.
Appen
Software Developer / Senior Engineer
Early-career ML and NLP engineering at Appen, building language and data platforms for global technology clients. I joined before the company's ASX listing in January 2015.
Built NLP, translation, transcription, and voice processing pipelines for major global clients
Contributed to data collection and processing platforms used in production ML workflows
- 15+ yrsin AI, data & engineering leadership
- $26M → $7.2BRokt's valuation during my time there
- 4 → 80–90engineers I scaled my Rokt org to, across 7 teams (Sydney & New York)
- Millions → billionsreal-time ML transactions scaled
- Patentsnamed inventor — ML & contextual prediction (US 11,776,013)
- Production AIcopilot shipped in regulated healthcare
Speaking & Thought Leadership
Sharing lessons from production AI.
I regularly share practical lessons from building AI systems, scaling engineering teams, and leading technology transformation in operating organisations — with a focus on responsible AI, health technology, data platforms, and engineering leadership.
Guest Speaker
UNSW Engineering Graduation Ceremony
Guest speaker at a University of New South Wales engineering graduation ceremony, sharing career lessons and encouragement with graduating engineering students.
AWS Summit Sydney
Building Scalable AI Systems
Panel discussion on building scalable AI infrastructure, high-performance computing environments, model development pipelines, and production AI systems.
DataEngBytes
RAG or Fine-Tune? Customizing LLMs with LoRA
A technical session exploring when to use retrieval-augmented generation, when to fine-tune, and how LoRA can be used to customise large language models efficiently.
DataEngBytes 2023
Unleashing the Power of Real-Time Machine Learning
A talk on Rokt’s journey building web-scale real-time machine learning systems, and how machine learning helped drive business outcomes.
AWS for Software Companies Podcast
Accelerate Machine Learning
Podcast conversation sharing lessons from developing AI and machine learning teams, platforms, and production systems.
Listen →Industry & Ecosystem Events
Responsible AI & Health Technology
Sessions on responsible AI, governance, and building AI capabilities in healthcare and wellbeing — with a focus on production delivery.
Open to selected conversations.
I am open to selected conversations on AI strategy and transformation, health technology, and advisory, board, cofounder, CTO, or Chief AI Officer roles — where production AI, governance, and engineering leadership matter.
Contact
Let's start a conversation.
For selected speaking, advisory, or AI leadership conversations: