# Jake Spillane

> AI engineer building agents people can actually trust. From train controllers overseeing GE’s routing AI to enterprise agents at Hivemind Labs, I build the systems and the oversight that decides when they can act alone.

- Status: Available for 3–6 month contracts
- Location: Melbourne or remote, Australia
- Email: jake@jakespillane.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-spillane-a22873bb/
- CV: https://jakespillane.com/cv (PDF, available after leaving an email)

## About

Every project I’ve worked on comes back to one question: when should a person trust the machine? In 2017 I led research and interface design for ARTC’s Hunter Valley network control program, giving train controllers oversight of GE’s routing AI. With Adobe’s XDI team I ran enablement for 30+ enterprise teams across APAC. Today I’m technical co-founder of Hivemind Labs, a research-first AI lab, building enterprise agents and the framework that decides how much they’re allowed to do.

I work deep in agent code and in front of stakeholders, which helps with the two hard parts: working out what to build, then getting people to rely on it.

## Capabilities

### Agentic development

Agents that work in production, not just in demos. Tools, memory, orchestration and evals, from the prompt down to the infrastructure.

Stack: Python, TypeScript, AWS serverless · Claude, OpenAI, DeepSeek, GLM · Claude Agent SDK, OpenAI Agents SDK, MCP, LangGraph, or a custom engine when it’s leaner

- Production agents and the runtime under them
- Tool design, memory and multi-agent orchestration
- Evals and test suites that catch regressions before customers do
- Serverless delivery on AWS, in Python and TypeScript

### Human–AI interfaces

Where people review, steer and approve what AI does. More than a decade of designing that handover, from a neural-net routing console to agent approval queues.

- Review, approval and exception-handling interfaces
- Operator research with the people who supervise the system
- Visual, voice and agentic interfaces
- Design systems that hold up as the product grows

### AI safety & governance

Oversight that lets AI move fast without losing control. With Earned Autonomy, agents prove they’re safe through checks and evidence before they’re allowed to act alone.

- Risk, governance, oversight and compliance design
- Pre-send checks, tested like code
- Earned Autonomy: statistical evidence before an agent acts alone
- Audit trails people can actually read
- Working knowledge of ISO/IEC 42001 and ISO 27001

## Selected work

- [Earned Autonomy](https://jakespillane.com/work/earned-autonomy.md) (Hivemind Labs, 2025 – now): A framework where agents earn the right to act alone, one proven action at a time, built on more than a decade of lessons in how people come to trust automated systems. Now open on GitHub.
- [Fine Print: an AI analyst on every listing](https://jakespillane.com/work/fine-print.md) (Microburbs AI Hackathon, 2026): A Chrome extension that turns any realestate.com.au or Domain listing into an investor’s brief, with an AI analyst you can question. Led a team of three and shipped it in a day.
- [A property document portal](https://jakespillane.com/work/buildcert-document-portal.md) (Buildcert (Digitise), 2021 – 2025): Set strategy with the CEOs to turn an internal document cost into a product. When strategy shifted, re-scoped and still shipped; it grew into one of NSW’s leading document providers.
- [Voice and language interfaces](https://jakespillane.com/work/xdi-voice-interfaces.md) (XDI, with Adobe, 2021 – 2023): Discovery and enablement for 30+ enterprise teams across APAC, including Transport for NSW and David Jones.
- [Oversight for a routing AI](https://jakespillane.com/work/artc-routing-ai.md) (Mudbath · ARTC / GE, 2017): Led research and interface design for ARTC’s Hunter Valley network control, moving train controllers from manual routing to supervising GE’s routing AI.

## Writing

- [Trust makes agents fast](https://jakespillane.com/writing/trust-makes-agents-fast.md) (Oct 2026): Why earned autonomy beats blanket approvals, with the numbers.
- [Prompt less, check more](https://jakespillane.com/writing/prompt-less-check-more.md) (Sep 2026): Code checks on what an agent is about to say or do, and when they backfire.

## Contact

Open to one 3–6 month contract. Melbourne or remote, Australia. Email jake@jakespillane.com.