AI is a means to an outcome — not the outcome itself.

I work with PE firms and technology leaders to turn AI initiatives into operational systems — aligning product intent, engineering execution, delivery, and long-term support.

Chief Engineer and Product Leader in mission-critical system delivery, with hands-on modern AI platform development experience.

When Delivery Risk Is Structural

In operational AI systems, the platform is the execution structure — the way data, models, workflows, infrastructure, and teams interact under real conditions.

I am typically engaged when team effort is high, yet confidence remains low.

Problems may not center on a single feature or component. They often reflect a lack of alignment between system design and execution.

  • Research never quite becomes production.

  • Integrations are brittle or tightly coupled.

  • Data quality or model behavior degrades at scale.

  • Service levels cannot be sustained.

  • Teams cannot reliably deploy, support, or evolve the system.

I work with leadership to examine the platform and its supporting processes as one system — clarifying where risk may reside and what is required for reliable delivery and sustained operation.

I work in defined, time-bounded engagements focused on convergence, not indefinite advisory roles.

Platform Assessment

A focused diagnostic of the platform and delivery structure under operational conditions.

Deliverables include:

  • Structural risk analysis

  • Integration boundary mapping

  • Research-to-production transition assessment

  • Delivery model evaluation

  • Clear convergence roadmap

Time frame: 2–4 weeks, depending on system scope.

Convergence Leadership

Time-bound fractional CTO or integration leadership during high-risk inflection points.

Focus areas include:

  • Architecture stabilization

  • Integration contract clarification

  • Execution model alignment

  • Scaling readiness

  • Measurable operational validation

Engagement continues through defined stabilization milestones

Technical Authority

Support for complex deals or internal technical inflection points.

Includes:

  • Technical due diligence support

  • Proposal architecture validation

  • Delivery risk articulation

  • Executive technical briefings

Structured participation aligned to transaction or program timelines.

  • Served as Chief Engineer on an architecture study within a formally governed enterprise program environment.

    Proposed and implemented a risk mitigation strategy centered on a thin-thread demonstrator: an operational carve-out with shared visualization and virtualized workstations built on realized mission management infrastructure integrating analytic data structures and geospatial systems.

    The demonstrator connected mission needs to resource allocation logic and provided real-time awareness of resource capacity and work de-duplication.

    Both hardware elements and thin-thread processes were transitioned into the enterprise environment, validating architectural coherence prior to full-scale implementation. The architectural model remains in operational use.

  • Modernized machine learning execution environments to support scalable, production-grade deployment.

    Refactored embedding-based classifier training pipelines from Mesos/Marathon-based execution toward containerized Kubernetes environments, improving reproducibility, scaling behavior, and operational control,

    Transitioned of a distributed cyber triage workflow back end from docker-swarm environment to Camunda/Zeebe-based orchestration running on Kubernetes, formalizing execution logic, state management, and integration boundaries across analytic services.

    Across these efforts, focus remained structural: aligning model training, workflow orchestration, and infrastructure execution into a coherent operational ML platform capable of sustained deployment.

    Result: Established a stable, orchestrated ML execution environment suitable for large-scale operational use.

  • Served as Chief Engineer for a C4ISR program of high operational consequence, responsible as prime contractor for delivery of an integrated sensor suite within a multi-contractor aircraft environment.

    Joined the program as risk concerns were emerging. The contractual structure placed full delivery accountability on the prime while authority and funding were distributed across a coalition-led customer, with embedded personnel directing engineering activity onsite.

    This imbalance produced expanding integration risk and unstructured technical direction.

    Introduced disciplined requirements management as a risk containment strategy and established clear process boundaries across customer and contractor interfaces. Formality was applied deliberately and with restraint — restoring clarity and accountability without impeding execution.

    Over the life of the program, more than 7,000 formal requirements were defined, reinforcing traceability and controlled engagement aligned to mission-critical performance.

    Result: Re-established delivery discipline, reduced program risk, and delivered multiple operational integrations of the sensor suite across aircraft platforms.

  • Worked within teams designing and operating distributed analytic systems serving operational users in petabyte-scale data environments.

    Experience included high-volume ETL pipelines and warehouse-scale platforms built on Accumulo-based infrastructure, with responsibility for development and operational integration within large data ecosystems.

    Designed and evolved Spark/Scala-based graph extraction and enrichment pipelines, including application of personalized PageRank algorithms and domain-specific graph construction derived from radio-communication patterns, geographic modeling, and translator-based data extraction processes.

    Transitioned analytic queries and processing workflows from focused investigative efforts into broader operational systems with expanding user reach.

    Focus remained on integration boundaries across data modeling, distributed compute frameworks, storage infrastructure, and orchestration components to ensure performance, reproducibility, and controlled evolution at scale.

    Result: Delivered scalable analytic capabilities aligned to expanding mission demand in high-throughput, multi-domain environments.

Selective engagements