I build things,
write the code for them,
& run from the
resulting explosion.
Engineer · Speaker · Guitarist
A short bio.
The longer story is below — the short one is on the cover.
Right now I'm a Forward Deployed Engineer at Quarterzip AI, where we build customer onboarding and activation software for B2B teams. Before that I was at Redactive AI working on semantic security for enterprise AI, until Recordpoint acquired the team.
Earlier in my career I was a Cloud Architect at Amazon Web Services, designing public-sector solutions for universities, government, and not-for-profits — and before that a Software Engineer at Localz, building last-mile delivery software for retailers around the world.
I'm a Monash graduate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Maths. While I was there I ran wired, the IT society, as president in 2017, and helped organise UNIHACK Melbourne — student hackathons across Australia.
Through 2025 I served on the national committee at Young Engineers Australia, after co-chairing the Victorian chapter — both roles spent running events for engineers early in their careers.
Outside work, it's running and bouldering around Melbourne, plus gaming, karate, biking, and tinkering with electronics — at least one of those most days. If you want to see what I've built, my projects are below and my resume is a click away.
Get in touch.
Best by email — calendar second, ravens third.
Drop a line at robert@kochie.io or .
Sporadic notes, sent occasionally.
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Stickers from the internet.
A small board of badges and recognitions, courtesy of Holopin.
Some recent things I've built.
A handful of projects, some shipped, some still warm.
No. 01MetaFixer
Adds missing metadata to photos exported from Facebook so they import into photo apps with the correct date and location.
No. 02Touch Typer
Open-source typing tutor for Linux, Windows, and macOS — improves your typing skills without nagging you.
No. 03Contact Tracing
Technology demonstration of a contact-tracing application built on the AWS Cloud Development Kit.
No. 04Space
A small webapp that follows the mouse.
No. 05Particlez
A real-time n-body particle simulator for the web.
No. 06Optimising Neural Networks for Embedded Systems
Final-year project — modifying the activation layers of CNNs to run better on embedded devices.
No. 07Stonks
A trading platform for crypto-currencies.
No. 08benchtop-js
A benchmarking tool for JavaScript projects.
On stage, occasionally.
When I'm not in front of a screen I'm sometimes in front of a room.
- 2024
- AI
- Product
- Engineering
What we learnt building our AI product
DDD By Night
Our company built an AI product and released it to customers — an immense undertaking that taught us a lot about taking an idea from prototype to the real world. The technical and business challenges, and how we solved them.
- 2025
- AI
- Security
- Engineering
AI Data Security Risks
Programmable
With generative AI tools rapidly integrating into every corner of the enterprise, security risks are evolving faster than ever. As developers, you're on the frontlines of this revolution — tasked with safeguarding sprawling, unstructured data that traditional security methods can't handle.
We'll reveal the hidden vulnerabilities that GenAI exposes — accidental data leaks, misconfigured permissions lurking in knowledge bases — share cutting-edge security strategies, and introduce tools that can fortify your data defenses.
- 2026
- AI
- Cloud
- Machine Learning
- Security
AI Agents That Don’t Suck
How to Build Ones That Actually Drive Business Value
NDC Sydney
AI agents are everywhere - but most of them don't work. They drain engineering time, frustrate end users, and burn budgets without ever proving their worth. The result? Shiny demos that impress in the boardroom but fail in production.
This session shows you how to flip that script. I'll share a practical framework for designing and deploying AI agents that create measurable business impact, agents that align with real workflows, integrate securely, and deliver results people actually care about.
If you want to stop wasting resources and start building AI agents that stick, this talk will show you how.
