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The best technology often hides in plain sight. It lives in the invisible systems that make a rental application painless, in the workflows that shave hours off a developer’s day, or in the quiet intelligence of a security platform that spots threats before they spiral. When these systems feel seamless, most people never think about the design choices behind them. But every invisible detail has someone’s fingerprints on it.
For Akash Singh, those fingerprints have always been guided by one principle: accessibility is not just a moral imperative, it serves as the foundation of great design. His career demonstrates that when software is built to be inclusive: anticipating the needs of all kinds of users, it becomes not only fairer but more efficient, more resilient, and more widely adopted.
“The best interfaces don’t make people adapt to them,” Singh says. “They adapt to people.”
From startup grit to seamless living
Singh’s philosophy was put to the test early in his career at Belong Home, a property management startup where he was the fifth employee. Belong would go on to reach a $330 million valuation by 2022, but in its early days it relied on Singh to engineer the digital backbone of its business.
He created an industry-first automated renting flow, bringing together 3D virtual tours, background checks, and instant lease signing in one seamless experience. What once required piles of paperwork and endless phone calls collapsed into a process that could be completed without human intervention. Singh’s work was accessible. Through removing barriers in the rental process, he made it easier for more people to find a home quickly and safely.
The pandemic underscored just how vital that accessibility was. In under ten days, Singh designed and shipped a self-service showing tool that let tenants safely view homes without an agent. What began as a crisis solution became a permanent feature, reflecting his ability to anticipate user needs and transform them into long-term value.
Building trust in AI at Splunk
Today, Singh applies those same principles on a much larger stage at Splunk, a global leader in security and data analytics. Since late 2023, he has been the senior-most engineer on a groundbreaking project: integrating large language models into Splunk’s security products. The goal is an AI assistant that helps analysts identify threats in real time, a task where trust, clarity, and usability are non-negotiable.
Singh leads the interface design for this assistant, ensuring that the technology is not just powerful but approachable. “AI doesn’t work in a vacuum,” he explains. “If the interface isn’t intuitive, people won’t trust the system. And if they don’t trust it, they won’t use it even if it’s technically powerful.”
His impact goes beyond design. Singh has saved Splunk an estimated $500,000 annually by streamlining automated testing with Docker and has improved developer workflows to reclaim hours of productivity across teams. These improvements may seem technical, but they all stem from the same core insight: reducing friction whether for a security analyst or a developer makes systems more usable and more valuable.
The enduring principle of accessibility
What distinguishes Singh’s career is the consistency of his approach. At Belong, his automated leasing system still runs smoothly years later. At Splunk, his AI assistant project is shaping the future of enterprise security. Even his earlier work with Knowbility, where he trained clients in accessible interface design continues to ripple outward in products built by others.
The thread that ties it all together is his conviction that accessibility leads to better UX for everyone. By designing for edge cases, Singh consistently finds solutions that benefit the majority. By anticipating points of friction, he builds systems that endure. And by prioritizing usability, he ensures adoption at scale.
For Singh, technology is about dignity. His career shows that when accessibility is treated not as an afterthought but as the foundation of design, the result is not just inclusive software. It is software that works better, faster, and more humanely for all.
