Bran Kop

Bran Kop is a Toronto-based Senior AI Platform Engineer, Digital Architect, and cofounder of AI HQ and Conformal Cloud where he designs and operates enterprise-grade AWS, Kubernetes, and data/AI/ML platforms. He specializes in bringing order to complex estates—standardizing GitOps, hardening security and IAM, and turning scattered DevOps/DataOps/ModelOps efforts into one disciplined delivery pipeline. Bran has led large SAS Viya on AWS EKS programs, unified Python/R/SAS model factories for 100+ practitioners, and implemented resilient architectures with rigorous reliability, controls, and cost governance. He is known for pragmatic fixes to thorny platform issues (including a widely adopted autoscaling correction for Viya on EKS), decisive cloud cost reductions, and uptime-centric designs in regulated environments. Earlier work spans public-sector health, banking, and enterprise data platforms. A hands-on architect and mentor, Bran pairs traditional engineering discipline with forward-looking platform strategy to deliver AI-enabled workflows and infrastructure that is predictable, auditable, and fast.