Rhushik is the CEO of Cognitive Design Systems, a technology company focused on accelerating product development through advanced computational engineering. A mechanical engineer by training, he brings over 12 years of industry experience working in Japan and France, where he developed deep expertise in product development and industrial engineering. He specializes in manufacturing-driven design, combining generative engineering, simulation, and AI to create products optimized for performance, cost, manufacturability, and sustainability from the earliest design stages. Passionate about product design, he is dedicated to bridging design, engineering, and production to enable faster and smarter industrial innovation.
For decades, mastering the software interface was enough. AI will automate 80% of what simulation engineers actually do, and exposing a divide that was always there: engineers who understand the physics, and engineers who understood the menus. This talk explores what comes next, and how CDS is already building it.
For decades, engineering software complexity became a career moat. Mastering the interface was enough. AI is dissolving that moat overnight, automating the 80% of engineering work that is repetitive and procedural.
What emerges is a clear divide: engineers who formulate problems from first principles, interpret results critically, and exercise judgment across thousands of design variants, and engineers whose primary skill was navigating menus.
This talk explores what happens when AI handles the mundane and enables superhuman design space exploration. Drawing on deployments across aerospace, defense, and automotive programs, it presents the engineer of 2030: a data-driven analyst whose value lies in asking the right questions, not clicking the right buttons.
At CDS, this future is already being built. The closing section draws on recent R&D advances to show what engineering practice looks like when the procedural layer disappears entirely.