acker01Kainos
Enterprise AI Engineering
Making applied AI operational with agents, MCP, and enterprise-grade architecture.
Zac AckerAI Engineering & Systems
Engineering systems.Building organizations.Turning ambition into execution.
I lead AI engineering at Kainos, connecting enterprise architecture, applied AI, and technical leadership to build software that works beyond the demo.
acker.cloud is the working record of one engineering leader: the systems, the teams, the writing that came out of both, and the products built alongside.
- in enterprise technology
- 10+yrs
- of Workday integrations
- 7+yrs
- delivery disciplines shipped
- 10
- independent ventures running
- 5
01Where I focus
Four disciplines, one job: make complex systems work.
Applied AI
Agents, MCP, enterprise tooling, and production architecture.
Enterprise Systems
Integration, data movement, automation, and platform reliability.
Engineering Leadership
Teams, operating models, technical standards, and delivery.
Independent Products
Applications and infrastructure to explore ideas and stay close to the craft.
Shipped to production across
- Enterprise systems consulting
- Managed services
- Full-stack application development
- AI software engineering
- Website development
- DevOps
- Security and authentication
- iOS apps
- Progressive web apps
- Hardware and networking
02Selected work
Proof over promises.
Three bodies of work. Client specifics stay under NDA; the engineering does not.
02Appirio · Alight · Kainos
Enterprise Integration & Modernization
Connecting critical systems, improving reliability, and leading technical delivery.
03Self-directed
Independent Engineering
Building products, tools, and infrastructure to test ideas firsthand.
03Philosophy
Complexity is inevitable. Confusion is optional.
The best engineering organizations make difficult systems understandable, difficult decisions explicit, and difficult work repeatable.
- Architecture
- An architecture is a set of decisions someone will have to live with. Write them down, argue about them in the open, and name an owner, so the team that inherits the system inherits the reasoning too.
- Leadership
- The same discipline, applied to people: clear ownership, honest timelines, standards that hold when nobody is watching. Most process is a symptom of missing trust. Fix the trust and half the process goes away.
- Applied AI
- AI does not change any of that. It raises the stakes. The model is the easiest part of the system to swap; integration, evaluation, the security boundary, and the team that operates it decide whether it survives production.
04Writing
Ideas worth examining.
Written from practice: leadership learned the hard way, and the platforms the work runs on.
Coaching
Managing is making sure the train runs on time. Coaching is making sure the conductor can drive without you standing over their shoulder.
Leadership
Your goal as a leader is to build something that doesn't need you.
05Built alongside
Independent work keeps the judgment honest.
Shipping your own software, with your own deadlines and nobody to escalate to, is the fastest way to remember what engineering teams are up against.
- zckr.devLive labThe AI engineering playground. What is being built, what shipped, and what died trying.
- thrivecmd.comPublishingThrive Culture Media: five editorial verticals run end to end on Notion and Super.so.
- collect.Public betaNative iPhone and iPad cataloging. No accounts, no servers: privacy as an architecture decision.
- StaggerPrivate, invite-onlyA realtime, offline-tolerant tournament PWA with a deadline that does not move.
Build something worth operating.
I'm interested in the intersection of AI, engineering leadership, enterprise architecture, and ambitious technical ideas.