Connor McGowen
CTO & Co-Founder, Kiro Money · San Francisco, California
Summary
AI engineer and technical co-founder. CTO of Kiro Money, the embedded agentic intelligence layer for banks and credit unions — backed by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Founders Factory and Aviva. 5+ years in AI and machine learning across startups and enterprise, built on a foundation in site reliability engineering.
Experience
CTO & Co-Founder
2026 – Present
Kiro Money · San Francisco, CA
- Lead engineering and own the multi-agent architecture: routing, tools and guardrails.
- Ship it into institutions through a REST API, a white-label embed and a retail-banking MCP connector.
- Responsible for the security and data model that institutions’ compliance teams review.
- In 2026: demoed live on stage at FinovateSpring, launched with Heritage Hub Federal Credit Union, and announced partnerships with Quiltt, Spinwheel and Eko.
AI Software Engineer
Nov 2023 – Apr 2026
HIVE TA Technologies · Remote
- Built AI software at a startup for two and a half years.
Machine Learning Engineer, QA
Mar 2022 – Apr 2023
Levi Strauss & Co. · San Francisco, CA
- Machine learning engineering inside a global enterprise.
Site Reliability Engineer
Jul 2020 – Mar 2022
Blackhawk Network · Pleasanton, CA
- Site reliability engineering for a global payments company.
Site Reliability Engineer Intern
Jun 2019 – Jun 2020
Blackhawk Network · Pleasanton, CA
Education
San José State University · B.S., Network & System Administration · Dean’s Scholar
2015 – 2020
Skills
- Agents
- LangGraph · LangChain · Multi-agent orchestration · Supervisor & sub-agents · Parallel tool calls · Durable execution · Long-running agents · Proactive agents · Human-in-the-loop approvals
- Protocols
- MCP servers · Remote MCP with OAuth · Tool calling
- Models
- Gemini · OpenAI · Claude · Qwen · Gemma · DeepSeek · Open-weight models · Model routing · Fine-tuning (LoRA) · Structured outputs
- Retrieval
- RAG · Embeddings · Vector search · Web search · Hybrid search & reranking · Long-term memory · Document understanding
- Reliability
- Guardrails · Context engineering · LLM tracing · Eval suites in CI · Prompt-injection defense · Audit trails
- Engineering
- Python · FastAPI · Pydantic · SSE streaming · MongoDB · Pinecone · TypeScript · React · Next.js · Google Cloud · Site reliability · Observability · Networking