Kevin Safford

About Kevin Safford

I love the intersection of technology and business. To that end, I enjoy collaborating with diverse teams, building consensus, and then executing toward a shared vision. I believe that technology is best when it is built in service to humans and not as an end in itself. And therefore I believe the best, most effective, and most useful technologies are built by happy people who understand how the technology will be used and care deeply abut the users\' experiences.

Experience

1. Founder & Principal Consultant

   Budgie

   Jan 2023 — Present · Austin, TX, US

   At Budgie, I help organizations turn complex, high-friction processes into scalable, automated systems using AI, machine learning, and human-in-the-loop design. My focus is on delivering technology solutions that achieve measurable improvements in speed, accuracy, and customer engagement. Selected projects:Shipping Invoice Automation - Designed and deployed a multi-agent AI with human-in-the-loop oversight to extract and audit data from complex, multilingual shipping invoices. Processed over invoices per month, increased throughput by a factor of ten, and reduced errors by 30 percent.Conversational AI for App Recommendations – Built a domain-specific RAG-powered chatbot to guide customers through the Atlassian marketplace, recommend relevant third-party apps, and identify qualified sales leads. The chat page captured 5 percent of all search traffic for Atlassian Marketplace Apps within one quarter of launch.Forecasting MLOps Deployment – Created a CI/CD pipeline for model training and deployment that enabled a SaaS client to deliver customer forecasts within two weeks of onboarding. This unblocked a feature that had been delayed for three years.Real Asset Data Extraction – Developed a multi-agent AI with human-in-the-loop workflow to extract structured data from deed and title contracts for an oil and gas firm. The extracted data powered complex chain-of-title validation, enabling the client to be first to market on new opportunities by increasing data processing speed by 100 times.I work with private equity firms, growth-stage companies, and enterprises to design and implement AI solutions that are deployed, adopted, and delivering impact.

Education

• Clark University

  Masters Thesis, Physics

• The University of Texas at Austin

  BS, Physics

Skills

• Time Series Analysis
• Chickens
• Apache Spark
• Statistics
• Matlab
• Mapreduce
• Predictive Modeling
• R
• Java
• Linux
• Algorithms
• Software Development
• Python
• Hadoop
• Handsome
• Physics
• Data Science
• Hdfs
• Mathematics
• Data Analysis
• Machine Learning
• Big Data
• Mahout
• Strategy
• Scala
• Data Mining
• Postgresql
• Idl
• Research
• Apache Pig
• Analytics
• Software Engineering