# Ijlal Ishaq

> Production AI & backend systems, Voir Labs

URL: https://www.voirlabs.io/team/ijlal
Works at: Voir Labs (https://www.voirlabs.io/)
Profiles: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ijlalishaq/, https://x.com/ijlalishaq, https://github.com/ijlalishaq
CV (PDF): https://www.voirlabs.io/assets/cv/ijlal-ishaq.pdf

Builds production AI: agents that act on real systems, retrieval and RAG, voice, and natural-language interfaces over company data.

Senior AI engineer leading AI products at Voir Labs: LLM integrations, agents, RAG and voice. Five years building production systems, including the backend and data systems for real-time trading.

## What Ijlal builds

- **AI agents with guardrails**: Agents that act on real systems, with the limits enforced in code rather than the prompt: task scope, a named owner, an off switch and a handoff to a person.
- **RAG and natural-language interfaces**: Plain-English questions over a company's own data, answered from real pipelines: indexing, embeddings, vector search and retrieval, not guesses.
- **Voice and conversational AI**: Live AI conversations with voice and avatars, and the consent and compliance checks that come before an agent ever dials.
- **LLM integrations built to change**: Model calls behind one config and one interface, so switching model or provider over price or quality is a setting, not a rewrite.

## Experience

### Senior AI engineer, Voir Labs (Nov 2024 to now)

Leads AI products end to end, from the agent design to the backend that runs it.

- Builds AI agents and automated workflows for data analysis and real-world actions, with guardrails in code.
- Builds the backend services behind AI pipelines, analytics and integrations.
- Writes Voir Labs Insights: each article takes a piece of AI news, builds the fix and runs it on sample data.

### AI & full-stack engineer, Xord (Nov 2021 to Jan 2025)

AI interfaces over large, fast-moving datasets.

- Built natural-language interfaces that let users ask questions of blockchain data in plain English.
- Worked on AI systems that analyse activity data and surface insights automatically.
- Built backend services and APIs for analytics, trading tools and data-intelligence platforms.

### Blockchain & full-stack engineer, Xord Solutions (Nov 2021 to May 2024)

Financial platforms, smart contracts and the data pipelines behind them.

- Built smart contracts, backend APIs and full-stack interfaces for DeFi platforms.
- Built data-indexing and analytics pipelines and monitoring tools.

## Selected projects

- **AI Shark Tank**: A live pitching experience where AI investor personas hear and question startup pitches in real time, with voice and avatars. Case study: https://www.voirlabs.io/work/ai-shark-tank
- **HashHunter**: AI trading system run from Telegram: an AI decision layer reads market and on-chain signals, then executes trades automatically across Solana and more than ten EVM chains.
- **Spock Analytics**: Growth analytics with natural-language search on top. Its data layer ingests on-chain and off-chain data through Apache Airflow, dbt and BigQuery. https://spockanalytics.xyz/
- **ToDaMoon AI**: An AI-generated TV show: AI storytelling, with viewers predicting what happens next.

## Works with

- AI: LLM integrations (OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Gemini), AI agents, LangChain, LangGraph, RAG, Embeddings and vector search, Context engineering, Voice and video APIs (ElevenLabs, Hedra)
- Backend: TypeScript, Node.js, NestJS, REST, GraphQL
- Data: PostgreSQL, MongoDB, BigQuery, Apache Airflow, dbt, Indexing pipelines
- Frontend: React, Next.js
- Web3: Solidity, Rust, Solana, EVM

## Education

- BS Computer Science, University of Karachi (UBIT)

## Articles

- [New York proposes fines for support bots with no way out. Here is the handoff.](https://www.voirlabs.io/insights/support-bot-human-handoff) (2026-10-29)
- [Under US law, an AI voice agent's calls need consent. Build the consent gate first.](https://www.voirlabs.io/insights/ai-voice-agent-consent-gate) (2026-10-28)
- [Anthropic's own agent went past its task. Here is the guard.](https://www.voirlabs.io/insights/anthropic-agent-scope-guard) (2026-10-28)
- [SK Telecom gives its AI agents employee IDs. Yours need an owner and an off switch.](https://www.voirlabs.io/insights/ai-agent-employee-id-owner-off-switch) (2026-10-27)
- [The morning after PHP2Shell, your sheet says patched. Ask the server.](https://www.voirlabs.io/insights/php2shell-patch-triage) (2026-10-26)
- [Replit moved its default AI model over price. Make sure yours is a config change.](https://www.voirlabs.io/insights/replit-model-switch-config-change) (2026-10-26)
- [Schwab is blocking AI agents that log in as you. Here is one it won't.](https://www.voirlabs.io/insights/schwab-blocks-ai-agents-password) (2026-10-26)

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