Ashfaque Rifaye

The path to AI products

I trained as a mechanical engineer, wrote production software for aircraft maintenance, ran commerce experiments at Verizon, and now own an enterprise AI product at AT&T. Each step added a layer the next one needed.

Career story

  1. 2012 – 2016

    Mechanical engineering

    Velammal Engineering College, Anna University

    A B.E. with distinction. It taught me to think in systems, constraints and failure modes before I wrote a line of production code.

  2. 2016 – 2020

    Software engineering

    Infosys, for Boeing

    I modernized Boeing's Work Statement Requirement Database for 1,200+ maintenance engineers across five facilities: REST integrations across disparate data sources, six major releases in 18 months, 99.2% uptime after launch, and incident response that cut average downtime by 40%.

  3. 2020 – 2022

    Digital product and consulting

    Verizon

    I moved closer to customers and revenue: funnel analysis, A/B tests and market research across retail, consumer and B2B, written into requirements for 15+ features. The work contributed $1.5M+ in incremental revenue in FY21.

  4. 2022 – present

    Enterprise AI product

    AT&T

    I own a GenAI virtual assistant end to end: conversation design, retrieval, telephony and CRM integration, the KPI framework and the roadmap. It handles 1.5M+ customer interactions a month.

  5. Next

    AI product leadership

    The role I am building toward

    Owning AI products from the problem worth solving to the metric that proves it. The innovation work, an Innovation Jam Best in Show and an invention disclosure, is the evidence that I can create products as well as run them.

By the numbers

Seniority at a glance. Savings are estimates.

Years in engineering, product and AI
9+
Monthly AI interactions owned
1.5M+
Estimated annual savings
$4.2M
Incremental revenue influenced
$1.5M+
Developers across two squads
18
AI containment
55%

Skills

Grouped by the job they do, and limited to what I use in AI product work.

AI / GenAI
RAG · LLMs · Conversational AI · Agentic AI · NLP · Google CCAI · Dialogflow CX / ES · Genesys Cloud CX
Product
Product strategy · Product ownership · Roadmaps · Discovery · Experimentation · Agile / SAFe
Technical
Python · SQL · REST APIs · Azure · React · Java · Data systems
Analytics
Power BI · KPI frameworks · Funnel analysis · A/B testing
Business / Domain
Telecom · Retail · E-commerce · Customer experience · Omnichannel

Education and certifications

Education

B.E., Mechanical Engineering

Velammal Engineering College, Anna University

2012 – 2016 · Distinction, CGPA 8.596

Certifications

  • SAFe 6 Lean Portfolio Manager2024
  • SAFe 6 Agilist2023
  • SAFe 6 Product Owner / Product Manager2023
  • Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals2023
  • Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)2022

Building an AI product, scaling an enterprise AI experience, or figuring out where AI actually creates value?

I work at the intersection of product strategy, AI systems and execution.

Let’s talkOther ways to reach me

Direct