Hi, I'm Ishan. I turn strategy and data into products, and chaos into consensus.

I love building cool stuff with cool people.

Ishan Kunkur

I started in data and never really left. I just kept trading up for bigger problems to solve, which pulled me from SQL and dashboards into Python and machine learning, and eventually into a seat where I had a say in what we built and who we brought in to ship it. These days I'm building AI agents and products that make sense of payments risk at Walmart. AI is a great equalizer: it knocked down the wall between having an idea and actually shipping it.

Lately that same curiosity has me poking under the hood, into how systems scale and stay secure, learning each new piece as the work demands it. The constant across all of it: build things people love, not just things that work.

I'm an introvert who learned to love a full room of people. When I'm not building, you'll find me on a trail, in a video game, watching anime, or lost in a book. I also take food and coffee far too seriously. And I'll happily talk your ear off about any of it.

Multi-Agent AI Credit-Risk System · Walmart

I handed a team of AI agents a job I used to grind through by hand: dig through credit risk, surface what actually matters, and recommend a move. They run on their own now, and have already flagged dozens of high-risk sellers before things got expensive.

Multi-agent AI · Python · LLMs · Payments risk

Production ML Risk-Scoring Model · Walmart

Led a risk-scoring model from blank page to production, shoulder to shoulder with data scientists and a lot of AI. It catches high-risk sellers about 77% of the time, and its calls now drive real decisions: credit limits, funding, suspensions.

Product leadership · Machine learning · Data Science partnership

AuditBoard (Optro) Product Ownership · Delta

Owned Delta's rollout of AuditBoard (now Optro) across five functions, from Finance to Internal Audit. Automated 45 SOX control tests (there went 700+ hours of annual busywork) and shipped 33 analytics products that took reporting from weeks to nearly real time.

Product ownership · GRC · SQL · Power BI

Fraud & Recoupment Analytics · Deloitte

Built the analytics that caught what people missed: payroll fraud, money worth clawing back, and compliance risk buried in large loan portfolios. The findings didn't sit in a deck, they shaped what leadership did next.

Analytics · Power BI · Risk · Automation

Agentic Trading

An ongoing exploration of how agentic systems can reason about markets, weigh ideas, and act with a human in the loop. Mostly an excuse to learn how autonomous agents actually behave when the stakes feel real.

LLM agents · Python · Claude API

TasteGraph

An AI app for people who take food too seriously (guilty). It learns your palate, the cuisines, flavors, and vibe you actually go for, turns it into a food personality, then points you to restaurants worth your time.

Next.js · Claude API · Supabase · Personalization

SnoutSketch

A playful web app that turns a close-up of your dog's snout into one-of-a-kind art, reading the unique ridges of their nose and rendering it in styles from vibrant to surreal to line art. Dheera was the first model.

JavaScript · Generative AI · Web · GitHub ↗

Ten years, three chapters, each building on the last: from data, to machine learning, to AI and product.

2017
Data & BI
Turning raw data into decisions leaders could act on.
SQL Power BI Data Governance
2021
Programming & ML
Finding the patterns humans were missing across risk data.
Python Tableau Machine Learning
2024
AI & Product
Shipping production ML and multi-agent AI, and going deeper on the craft of product.
Claude API Multi-agent AI Product AWS / GCP

Beyond the day job, the ideas I happily fall down rabbit holes on, the ones that genuinely bring me joy.

Financial Products Fintech Payments Risk Management Data Analytics Product Management AI Machine Learning LLMs Agents Agentic Frameworks Agentic Commerce Blockchain Stablecoins Tokenization
Senior Manager, Data Analytics · Payments & Risk
Walmart · USA. Building the Marketplace Payments credit-risk function from the ground up: strategy, production ML, a multi-agent AI system, and leading AI enablement for the Payments org.
Oct 2025 – Now
Digital Analytics Program Manager
Delta Air Lines · USA. Product Owner for the rollout of AuditBoard (now Optro) across Finance, IT, ERM, SOX and Internal Audit, plus 33 analytics products and ML-driven audit analytics.
Oct 2021 – Oct 2025
Senior Consultant
Deloitte · USA. Fraud, recoupment, and compliance analytics from problem definition through delivery, with automated BI that leadership used to act.
Jul 2016 – Oct 2021
Systems Engineer
Tata Consultancy Services · India. Translated supply-chain and telecom client needs into technical solutions, optimizing procurement and expanding accounts.
Feb 2012 – May 2014
MBA
NC State University · Jenkins Graduate School of Management
2015 – 2016
MS, Supply Chain Engineering & Management
North Carolina State University
2014 – 2015
BE, Electronics & Communication
Gogte Institute of Technology, Karnataka, India
2007 – 2011
AIProductBuilding

AI Is a Fast Track to Average

The wall between having an idea and shipping it just came down. What it was hiding is the whole game.

Jul 2, 2026 · 7 min read