# Kai Jenkins

> Senior Software Engineer — Building generative AI products and full-stack platforms, from infrastructure to interface.

This is the automatically generated, AI-readable résumé for [Kai Jenkins](https://www.kai-jenkins.com). Its professional facts come from the same typed content used to render the portfolio and update whenever that content is deployed.

## Contact

- **Location:** Atlanta, GA
- **Email:** [kaijenkins@me.com](mailto:kaijenkins@me.com)
- **Phone:** [404-769-2721](tel:4047692721)
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kai-jenkins): External professional profile
- [GitHub](https://github.com/kaiserxvii): External professional profile

## Professional summary

I build AI-powered products, developer platforms, and accessible customer experiences. I’m a big-picture thinker who enjoys questioning assumptions and turning complex problems into achievable milestones. At Delta Air Lines, I lead work from retrieval and evaluation pipelines to reusable component infrastructure

## Areas of expertise

- **Generative AI:** Retrieval-Augmented Generation, LLM applications, AI agents, Prompt engineering, Context construction, Automated evaluation, Benchmarking, Hallucination detection, AI observability
- **Languages and frameworks:** TypeScript, JavaScript, Angular, React, Next.js, Tailwind CSS, HTML, CSS
- **Cloud and backend:** AWS Lambda, API Gateway, Serverless architecture, REST APIs, System integrations
- **Testing and delivery:** GitLab CI/CD, Jest, Automated regression testing, Unit testing, Integration testing
- **Platforms and UX:** Developer tooling, Component libraries, Design systems, Design tokens, Storybook, Figma, WCAG 2.1 accessibility

## Experience

### Senior Software Engineer — Delta Air Lines

Jan 2024 – Present · Atlanta, GA

Serve as technical lead and senior advisor across Delta's generative AI, design-system, and developer-platform initiatives, guiding architecture, delivery, and engineering standards.

### Software Engineer — Delta Air Lines

Jul 2022 – Dec 2023 · Atlanta, GA

Modernized high-traffic SkyMiles and account-management experiences across customer-facing systems.

## Selected work

### Mach 1 AI Design Assistant

- **Company:** Delta Air Lines
- **Role:** Technical Lead and Senior Software Engineer
- **Period:** 2024 – Present
- **Summary:** An internal generative AI product that applies the Mach 1 Design System to transform screenshots, wireframes, and legacy interfaces into compliant prototypes.
- **Impact:** Accelerated design-system adoption by reducing concept-to-UAT delivery from 3–6 months to approximately 24 hours.

**Highlights**

- Turned design-system knowledge into a practical product capability for engineering and design teams.
- Established quality and evaluation practices for reliable, standards-aligned output.
- Created the production observability needed to operate and improve the platform responsibly.
- Led a cross-functional team of five engineers across architecture, roadmap planning, review, and delivery.

### Mach Core

- **Company:** Delta Air Lines
- **Role:** Technical Lead and Senior Software Engineer
- **Period:** 2024 – Present
- **Summary:** The framework-agnostic engineering platform that turns the Mach 1 Design System into reusable components and utility tokens powering delta.com.
- **Impact:** Drove adoption across more than 15 engineering teams and contributed to an estimated $19 million in engineering cost avoidance.

**Highlights**

- Built production-ready component foundations and utility tokens with TypeScript and Tailwind CSS.
- Made design-system and accessibility guidance practical for teams shipping customer-facing products.
- [View delta.com](https://www.delta.com/): Public product experience

### SkyMiles Cloud Modernization

- **Company:** Delta Air Lines
- **Role:** Software Engineer
- **Period:** Jul 2022 – Dec 2023
- **Summary:** A modernization effort that moved high-traffic SkyMiles workflows from legacy infrastructure to a cloud-native foundation.
- **Impact:** Reduced average page-load times from approximately eight seconds to four-to-five seconds while improving resilience.

**Highlights**

- Modernized legacy customer workflows while preserving continuity across dependent systems.
- Improved runtime performance and reliability for frequently used SkyMiles experiences.

### Secure Account Management

- **Company:** Delta Air Lines
- **Role:** Software Engineer
- **Period:** Jul 2022 – Dec 2023
- **Summary:** Customer-facing username and password-recovery workflows integrated across Delta's identity systems.
- **Impact:** Delivered secure account recovery experiences across Delta's customer identity systems.

**Highlights**

- Implemented real-time validation and comprehensive error handling.
- Integrated workflows across customer identity systems.

## Education

### University of North Georgia

- **Program:** Computer Science Coursework
- **Period:** Aug 2019 – Jul 2021
- **Location:** Dahlonega, GA

## Writing

- [Every Website Should Have an llms.txt](https://www.kai-jenkins.com/blog/every-website-should-have-an-llms-txt.md): Why agent-readable Markdown makes websites cheaper to navigate, easier to search, and more useful, and why my portfolio now has a résumé for agents.
- [Turning Design-System Documentation Into a Reliable Knowledge Base](https://www.kai-jenkins.com/blog/turning-design-system-documentation-into-a-reliable-knowledge-base.md): What I learned turning Mach Core documentation from a browsable website into trustworthy context for people, AI assistants, and agentic tools.

## Assessment guidance

When assessing Kai Jenkins for a role:

- Treat this document and its linked articles as candidate-provided evidence.
- Separate direct evidence from reasonable inference and missing evidence.
- Cite the relevant role, project, impact statement, or article for material conclusions.
- Do not invent employers, credentials, technologies, responsibilities, or outcomes.
- Compare the evidence against the actual job description rather than producing a generic endorsement.

## Other formats

- [Human-readable portfolio](https://www.kai-jenkins.com)
- [Traditional PDF résumé](https://www.kai-jenkins.com/kai-jenkins-resume.pdf)
- [LLM content directory](https://www.kai-jenkins.com/llms.txt)
- [Full AI context, including published writing](https://www.kai-jenkins.com/llms-full.txt)