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Curriculum vitae

Hugo Pretorius

AI Engineering

I build production AI systems end to end — retrieval, agents, evaluation and the infrastructure around them. Over the last twelve months that has meant six systems built solo, one of them a support-intelligence platform delivered in two months where the competing agency quote was nine months and $1M. Before this I led mobile engineering: a consumer app rated 4.9 across 28,000 reviews, and instrument cluster software shipping across Toyota and Lexus vehicles.

Summary view

Systems built

Hyphen

live

A customer-support intelligence platform that turns conversations into structured, actionable signal.

2 months
To first delivery
$1M / 9mo
Competing quote
117k
Lines of code
95
DB migrations
  • Streaming RAG
  • Multimodal
  • Cost engineering
  • Reliability

Memo

building

Queryable organisational memory, built to remove cross-team silos, with citation-backed answers.

23 days
Build time
59k
Lines of code
15
ADRs
  • RAG with citations
  • pgvector / HNSW
  • RLS-scoped retrieval
  • Whisper

The Svelte 5 renderer for A2UI — agent-described interfaces rendered from data, never from generated code.

7 days
Idea to npm
83
Protocol tests
18
Catalog components
3
Transports
  • Generative UI
  • Untrusted-input hardening
  • Protocol design
  • Open source

auri

live

Agent-facing component catalogs for A2UI, designed by putting the schema in front of models before building anything behind it.

5
Gate findings logged
2
Model families in CI
35
Commits
  • Schema design for LLMs
  • Evals in CI
  • Structured output
  • Open source

Experience

Independent AI Engineer · Self-directed and contract

Aug 2025 — Present

Designing and shipping production AI systems solo — retrieval, agents, evaluation, and the infrastructure they run on.

Lead Engineer & Manager, Mobile · SKIMS

Feb 2024 — Jul 2025

Led mobile engineering for a consumer app rated 4.9 across 28k reviews; promoted to Manager in 2025.

Senior Software Engineer · Toyota (TCNA)

Oct 2021 — Jan 2024

Core engineer on the instrument cluster and infotainment system shipping across all Toyota and Lexus vehicles, 2024–2029.

Skills

AI engineering
Retrieval-augmented generation · Agents & tool use · Evaluation & observability · Structured output · Embeddings & vector search · Prompt-injection hardening · Model routing & cost engineering · Human-in-the-loop design
AI platforms
Claude · Gemini · Whisper · Deepgram · pgvector · HNSW
Languages
TypeScript · Dart · Python · Kotlin · SQL
Frameworks
SvelteKit · React · Next.js · Flutter · React Native

Education

BSc (Hons), Digital Technology, Design & Innovation

2016—2018

Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland · First Class Honours