Professional Summary
Principal-level AI engineer and cloud solutions architect with 30 years of enterprise delivery. I architect and deliver production AI and cloud systems with the judgment and pace expected at the principal level — compressing efforts that traditionally required a full engineering team into days, without sacrificing governance or auditability. Recent work includes architecting a multi-agent AI pipeline that reduced a 36-application clinical infrastructure assessment from a multi-week manual review to under five hours, and designing production-grade agentic systems across AWS, Azure, and GCP. The differentiator is pairing deep architectural judgment — governance frameworks, regulated-industry compliance, defensible audit trails — with delivery velocity most architects only advise on, not execute themselves. Advisory experience spans healthcare, financial services, telecom, and retail; engineering team leadership up to 40 reports; sales pipeline responsibility exceeding $5M annually. I bring the same enterprise-grade rigor to an AI deployment as to an FFIEC compliance assessment.
Thirty years in enterprise technology, the last several as a Principal-level pre-sales architect and trusted advisor inside Rackspace's Public Cloud practice, focused on the AWS and Private Equity portfolio of customers — with dozens of named pursuits across healthcare, financial services, telecom, retail, energy, and government, many SOWs personally authored. Beyond my own deals, I built tools and frameworks that scaled the team's capacity: a pre-sales intelligence agent that eliminated 4+ hours of manual research per account and was deployed across the practice; reusable solution patterns and discovery frameworks across six industry verticals; direct peer coaching on WAFR, MAP, and OLA program delivery. The AWS partner program toolkit I know hands-on: WAFR via MontyCloud with credit-maximizing remediation plans; OLA via Evolve for Microsoft, SQL Server, and Oracle licensing savings; MAP Assess via Flexera Cloudscape; MAP Migrate and App Modernization via Tidal Cloud. What I bring to a customer conversation is production-grade architecture, not slides. What I bring to the team is the ability to raise everyone else's game too.
Thirty years in enterprise technology, the last several focused on building and advising on production systems across all three major clouds, with Google Cloud as a consistent thread throughout. I established Rackspace's Google Cloud Center of Excellence and hold the GCP Associate Cloud Engineer certification. My data engineering practice spans BigQuery analytics pipelines, time-series forecasting (LightGBM, Prophet), and real-time data architectures at enterprise scale. On the AI side, I architect production agentic systems pairing GCP infrastructure with Vertex AI, multi-model orchestration, and RAG. Enterprise advisory covers the verticals Tridorian serves — healthcare, financial services, retail, and manufacturing — with cloud migration strategy, security-first architecture, and FinOps/TCO modeling as core practice areas. Architecture diagrams and technical case studies are documented at this site.
Thirty years in enterprise technology, most of it in roles where technical depth was the difference
between winning and losing. Grew the T-Mobile contract from $800K to $2.5M in three years by
finding the next problem before the client named it. Built RSM's Texas practice from $500K to $2M in
revenue in 18 months. At D+H, managed 20+ regulated-institution clients — 40% of annual revenue —
and closed $12M in renewal TCV over 18 months. At Rackspace: dozens of SOWs
scoped and authored, $57M+ in combined pipeline — 14 of the most noteworthy engagements documented
in detail, 10 SOWs closed in a single year. My approach has always
been architectural: knowing the solution cold before the first meeting means the technical objections
don't land. The AI and cloud engineering portfolio at this site is what I walk into a sales conversation
with — not slides, but working systems I built and operate.
Thirty years of enterprise technology experience, the last several spent architecting and operating
production AI systems at the principal level — multi-agent orchestration, RAG, agentic tool-use, LLM provenance and governance —
across AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, and Google Vertex AI. I bring deep, verifiable domain expertise for AI
evaluation, red-teaming, and training-data work: cloud architecture, enterprise software delivery,
regulated-industry compliance (HIPAA, NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, EU AI Act), and DevSecOps — the kind of
surface area that separates a plausible-sounding model output from a technically correct one. Every claim
on this site is backed by a documented, working system, not a slide — 25+ case studies with
architecture diagrams and verifiable delivery evidence. Comfortable with async, remote, deadline-driven evaluation and
labeling work, with hours scaled to the engagement.
Thirty years of enterprise technology experience, with a proven record of independently architecting and
delivering production AI and cloud systems end-to-end — the kind of work that typically requires a full
engineering team. Recent deliverables include a multi-agent enterprise application-rationalization pipeline
that compressed a 36-application healthcare portfolio assessment from a multi-week manual effort to under
five hours, and governance platforms built and deployed across both AWS and Azure with zero forked business
logic. I take contract and freelance engagements for
architecture reviews, governed AI builds, cloud migration and rationalization analysis, and hands-on
delivery — fully remote, async-first, and flexible on scope from a short fixed-price assessment to an
embedded multi-month build. Every engagement is backed by documented architecture and verifiable delivery
evidence, not a deck.
Thirty years of enterprise IT and cloud advisory consulting at the Principal level — cloud readiness assessments, TCO and business
case modeling, migration roadmaps, Target Operating Model design, and Value Stream Mapping across insurance,
financial services, energy, retail, and healthcare. $57M+ in savings identified and $45M+ in
follow-on contract value — dozens of SOWs scoped and executed across the practice, with 14 of the
most noteworthy engagements documented in detail. Where a business
problem calls for AI, I design and deploy AI solutions the same way I design any other system — as a means
to a measurable outcome, not an end in itself: a cloud migration analysis platform that turned a multi-day
manual portfolio review into a same-day automated one; a governance program that gave a regulated client an
audit trail their compliance team could actually defend; a pre-sales research tool that gave account teams
back four hours a week. The work at aipathfinderllc.com documents both sides of the practice — traditional
advisory delivery and the applied AI solutions built to extend it.
Professional Experience
Remote (US) · Independent AI Solutions Practice · Founder
Founder & Principal AI Architect
- Park Whisperer: Solo-designed, built, and operate a production 3-cloud AI platform (Azure, GCP, AWS) for theme park intelligence — 25+ deployed components, a six-model ML stack, an automated AI content pipeline, and a conversational agent, running for under $100/month. Published openly as a working example of agentic AI, forecasting, and RAG architecture patterns. Platform architecture →
- Historical-inator — AI Local History Platform: Designed a location-aware generative AI product that turns any GPS coordinate into a narrated historical brief, drawing on 60M+ digitized public-domain records (Library of Congress, National Archives, Smithsonian, DPLA) and serving 5 distinct audiences — consumers, K-12 educators, homeschoolers, tourism boards, cultural institutions — from a single platform. Solution overview → · Live demo →
- MemoryOS Enterprise Knowledge Pipeline: Architected a new enterprise data AI pipeline that connects to just about any enterprise data source — chat, ticketing, wikis, document repositories, email, or a custom pipeline — through an extensible connector library, then runs every document through a 4-stage Bronze→Silver→Gold enhancement pipeline: deterministic pruning, Bedrock Guardrails screening, tool-forced Claude classification (temp=0), and embedding into a hybrid search index. Architecture spec →
- Software Factory: Designed an AI code-generation pipeline — Ideation → Design → Development → Deployment → Operations — that writes application code against a build spec already encoding governance requirements, so the output is scanned-clean by construction, not by luck. Consolidates a 6R/7R rationalization engine with a discovery-to-audit build pipeline orchestrated with LangGraph; Refactor/Rebuild recommendations from the rationalization engine feed directly into the pipeline as its entry point. Architecture spec →
- AI Governance Platform — v3 Continuation: Independently continued development of the AI governance platform originally built during Rackspace advisory engagements — added a Framework Explorer, a Policy-as-Code engine, and a full runbook library (DevSecOps, PM/Scrum, Workshop Guide, Software Factory) so AI-generated commits are scanned against the same rule set as human-written code. Open live dashboard →
- This work is independent of my advisory role at Rackspace — different audience (builders and business owners vs. enterprise clients), different purpose (product R&D vs. paid delivery). Full portfolio: 25+ documented systems →
Remote (US) · Rackspace Professional Services · Public Cloud Advisory
Professional Services Principal Advisory Consultant
AI Solution Design & Deployment · Multi-Cloud Migration & Modernization · DevSecOps · FinOps · Well-Architected
- AI-first solution delivery: Applied AI-driven development tools to give enterprise clients working systems in days instead of quarters — turning what used to be multi-quarter technical initiatives into rapid, iterative delivery clients could see and react to in real time.
- Cloud Migration Analysis Platform: Solved a healthcare client's application rationalization bottleneck — a 36-application, 408-VM clinical portfolio that would have taken a team days to review was scored and disposition-ready in under 5 hours, for $24 in compute, with governance rules enforcing that every recommendation was traceable and defensible.
- AI Governance & Compliance Platform: Gave regulated-industry clients the audit trail they need before an AI system touches production — a platform scanning codebases against 10 regulatory frameworks (NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, EU AI Act, HIPAA, SOC2, FedRAMP), generating 9 compliance artifact types, and enforcing 5 SDLC approval gates. Independently continued post-Rackspace via AI Pathfinder LLC (see below).
- Pre-Sales Intelligence Agent: Solved the pursuit team's research bottleneck — turned 4+ hours of manual pre-call research into an ~8-minute, 13-section intelligence briefing, deployed across the practice.
- Datacenter Migration Simulation (Digital Twin): Gave infrastructure teams a way to see migration risk before committing to it — a dual-cloud (AWS + Azure) simulation modeling enterprise application dependencies and producing 6R disposition recommendations with confidence scores and TCO estimates, used directly in cloud migration advisory engagements.
- Cloud-Portable Governance Platform (AWS + Azure): Removed the cloud-preference objection for prospective clients — deployed an existing governance platform to both AWS (5 CloudFormation stacks, 17 API routes, 7 DynamoDB tables) and Azure (4 Bicep modules, 7 Cosmos containers) with zero forked business logic, so the solution isn't limited by which cloud a client is already on.
- Cloud business case & readiness assessment: Multi-cloud TCO and migration-readiness engagements informing $10M–$20M+ transformation decisions — Specialty Insurance Holding Co. ($16M+ program, AWS vs. Azure vs. multi-cloud), International Cargo Airline (3-platform TCO comparison), Regional Financial Institution (5-week CRA, dual AWS/Azure pricing), Global Consumer Products Company (2,600+ VM dual-cloud model), Luxury Hospitality & Gaming Resort, and Latin American Retail Chain (Oracle Cloud selection).
- Migration & data center exit: Global Commercial Real Estate Co. (100% data center exit, ~$15.9M 5-year savings), Global Internet Technology Company (DC exit value acceleration across 60K+ servers, $2B+ in cloud commitments), Global Aerospace Manufacturer (GCP foundation and Terraform-based migration design), and Specialty Retail Jeweler (AWS Hadoop/EMR migration, $500K+/yr automation savings identified).
- DevSecOps maturity & value stream mapping: Scorecard-based platform-engineering maturity assessments and VSM workshops for a Digital Media & Publishing Group, and a global cloud migration assessment for a Global Risk & Professional Services Firm.
- FinOps & cost governance: $700K–$900K in AWS savings identified within 90 days for an Education Technology & Publishing Co., and a post-M&A Azure tenant consolidation with a dedicated FinOps workstream for a Global Healthcare & MedTech Company.
- Disaster recovery & business continuity: Improved a Government Workers' Safety Agency's recovery time objective from 4–10 weeks to under 3 hours, and led a two-phase DR assessment and strategy for a Global Reinsurance Company.
- Full engagement library — 16 documented case studies: clients.html → · pursuit briefs with quantified deal metrics: selling.html →
AWS Pre-Sales & Partner Program Delivery
- Dozens of enterprise pursuits — many SOWs authored, $57M+ combined opportunity value across healthcare, financial services, telecom, retail, energy, government, and hospitality.
- Sales team enablement: Pre-sales intelligence agent deployed team-wide — eliminated 4+ hrs/account of manual research; reusable solution patterns across 6 verticals; peer coaching on WAFR, MAP, and OLA delivery; AWS field and pursuit team collaboration.
- AWS programs: WAFR via MontyCloud (credit-maximizing remediation plans) · OLA via Evolve (Microsoft, SQL Server, Oracle licensing savings) · MAP Assess via Flexera Cloudscape · MAP Migrate & App Modernization via Tidal Cloud.
- Complex AWS advisory: Energy sector AWS strategic account program (dependency mapping, right-sizing, solution mapping) · Capex vs. Opex TCO for global insurance (datacenter refresh vs. cloud) · LATAM multi-workload cloud platform design.
- Full pursuit and architecture library: engagement briefs → · 25+ solution case studies →
Google Cloud Architecture & Data Engineering
- Google Cloud CoE: Established Rackspace’s Google Cloud Center of Excellence within engineering leadership — advancing GCP practice capability, partner readiness, and internal technical standards.
- Park Whisperer platform (BigQuery · Cloud Run · Cloud Scheduler): Solo-built production multi-cloud system running under $100/month — BigQuery as analytics backbone, Cloud Run for containerized microservices, Cloud Scheduler for pipeline orchestration; 25+ deployed solutions with live demos at this site.
- Data analytics & ML pipelines: Architected time-series forecasting systems (LightGBM, Prophet) on GCP data infrastructure; vector search pipelines (pgvector) for RAG-powered AI applications; real-time and batch ETL pipelines for operational analytics.
- Multi-cloud portability (GCP + AWS + Azure): Designed production systems spanning all three clouds with zero business logic change — same governance platform on GCP Cloud Run, AWS Lambda, and Azure Functions simultaneously.
- Architecture case studies & live demos: Park Whisperer → · Weather ML Pipeline → · Full Portfolio →
Pre-Sales & Pursuit Record
- Dozens of enterprise pursuits led as principal solution architect over four years — SOWs scoped and authored across most, $57M+ combined opportunity value, across healthcare, financial services, telecom, retail, CPG, government, and hospitality.
- Pre-sales intelligence agent: Built an agentic research tool that produces 13-section company briefings in under 10 minutes — replaced 4+ hours of manual pre-call research per account. Used internally and demonstrated to clients.
- Architecture-led selling: Led technical discovery with C-suite and infrastructure teams across 16 named client sectors; translated environment complexity into phased delivery roadmaps and executive business cases that moved opportunities forward.
- Full pursuit library: 14 of the most noteworthy engagements, anonymized →
Applied AI — Business Problems Solved, Not Technology for Its Own Sake
- Cloud migration analysis: a 36-application, 408-VM clinical portfolio review that used to take a manual team days now runs as a multi-agent AI pipeline in under 5 hours for $24 in compute — same governance rigor the client required, dramatically faster time-to-decision.
- AI governance & compliance: built the audit trail regulated clients actually need before an AI system touches production — automated compliance artifact generation and SDLC gate enforcement across 10 regulatory frameworks, turning a multi-week manual compliance review into a repeatable, defensible process.
- Pre-sales research automation: an agentic research tool that turned 4+ hours of manual account research into an under-10-minute AI-generated briefing, deployed across the practice — a business-productivity problem solved with AI, not an AI showcase.
- Independent AI ventures via AI Pathfinder LLC: Park Whisperer, Historical-inator, MemoryOS, and Software Factory apply the same discipline — a business or consumer problem first, AI as the mechanism to solve it economically.
- Full pursuit library and applied AI portfolio: 14 of the most noteworthy engagements, anonymized → · applied AI solutions →
AI Evaluation, Model Assessment & Domain Expertise
- Hands-on builder, not just a reviewer: every system in this portfolio (multi-agent Bedrock pipelines, RAG architectures, agentic tool-use systems) was designed, coded, and operated personally — the judgment needed to evaluate whether an AI-generated architecture, prompt, or code diff is actually correct comes from having shipped the real thing.
- Deep domain coverage for AI training/evaluation tasks: enterprise cloud architecture (AWS/Azure/GCP), regulated-industry compliance (NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, EU AI Act, HIPAA, SOX, FFIEC), DevSecOps, FinOps, and infrastructure-as-code — a wide surface area for grading model outputs against real-world correctness, not just plausibility.
- Written communication as a work product: technical documentation, architecture rationale, and long-form analysis published routinely (Substack, 25+ documented case studies) — the same skill RLHF/evaluation work requires for clear, rubric-based feedback.
- Work model: async, remote, project-based, deadline-driven evaluation and labeling tasks; available to scale hours up or down per engagement.
- Live evidence of the work: working AI demos → · 25+ documented systems →
Available for Contract & Freelance Engineering Work
- Individual-contributor delivery at senior-architect depth: solo-designed and shipped a 3-cloud production AI platform (Azure + AWS + GCP) for under $100/month, and a multi-agent enterprise AI pipeline that processed a 36-app portfolio for $24 in total compute — the same scrappy, hands-on execution a contract engagement needs, without a team behind it.
- Full-stack cloud + AI skill set: Python, LangChain, AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Claude/GPT-4o, LangGraph, PostgreSQL/pgvector, Terraform/Bicep/CloudFormation, Docker, GitHub Actions — comfortable owning a project end-to-end from architecture through deployment.
- Governance and compliance fluency for regulated clients: HIPAA, NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, EU AI Act — able to build production AI systems for healthcare, financial services, and other regulated industries without a compliance team hand-holding the engagement.
- Engagement style: open to hourly, fixed-scope, and fractional/embedded engagements — flexible hours, fully async and remote-first, scales up or down per project.
- Start a conversation: contact page → · full portfolio →
Kirkland, WA / Texas Region (Remote) · IT Services & Consulting
Senior Program Manager
- T-Mobile (DevOps Scrum Master): Led 4 scrum teams across Customer Contact Center, Voice/IVR, and Social & Messaging products with 30+ offshore engineers. Contributed to Cisco UCCE deployment, 2 RPA projects, and technical debt backlogs. Toolset: Jira, Slack, Azure DevOps.
- Account Management: Grew T-Mobile contract from $800K to $2.5M annually over 3 years through opportunity identification and pipeline growth. Delivered monthly business reviews to 4 Senior Managers and quarterly reviews at VP level.
- Operations Manager / Service Delivery: Led offshore team across 300+ hours/week of operations coverage — alert management, Change Management, DevOps engineering, and monitoring optimization.
- RPA Program Architect: Created UiPath POC, stood up DevOps team to deploy RPA infrastructure, and achieved close to 4,000 hours saved annually through successful RPA implementation.
- DexYP / Thryv (Senior Program Manager): DevOps Scrum Master for Salesforce.com modernization and custom telephony application development. 8 onshore + 24 offshore engineers, $4.2M contract (annualized).
- Global Program Manager: Scrum-of-scrums across US, UK, India, Australia, China teams on a $5M annual software development initiative, including AWS S3 cloud migration and China-firewall software delivery.
- Cybersecurity Incident Response: Led recovery for a global non-profit that lost their entire Windows Domain to ransomware — stabilized network, recovered Domain Controllers, developed new architecture. ($800K engagement)
Houston, TX / Texas Region / National · Management Consulting
Manager, IT Infrastructure & Cloud
- Sales & Solution Architecture: Texas Region sales pipeline responsibility; grew regional revenue from ~$500K to $2M+ in 18 months through managed services solution design and sales engineering.
- National Financial Services SME: Principal engineer for financial services / community banking engagements — virtual CIO, IT Operations Manager, Strategic Assessments, ITSM Lead, Security/Cyber Advisor.
- Cloud / Hybrid Infrastructure Architect: Designed workload migration strategies for complex enterprise clients, determining cloud vs. on-premises disposition and building end-state architecture roadmaps.
- Management Consulting: Technology and process evaluations for C-suite audiences — viable cloud strategies, ERP/CRM recommendations, technical debt reduction, staffing decisions.
- Cybersecurity Architecture: Infrastructure expertise for incident response and cybersecurity initiative recommendations in collaboration with privacy/security teams.
Dallas, TX / National · Financial Technology
Client Technology Officer / Relationship Manager
- Cloud Services Architect / Operations Manager: Responsible for Citrix Private Cloud customers — all with strict regulatory requirements (banks & healthcare) — navigating multiple audit and exam events per year.
- Advisory / Virtual CIO: Assisted financial institutions with Technology Steering Committee decisions, reported to Executive Office, and went on record for audit/exam certifications and remediation.
- ITSM Program Manager: Assigned book of 20+ clients ($4.5M, 40% of annual revenue), monitoring SLAs, conducting monthly service reviews, and managing continuous project delivery. Delivered $12M in renewal TCV over 18 months.
- Sales / Account Management: Sales engineering for ITSM and Cloud solutions; contributed to channel engagement and industry events.
- Premier Account Management Program Architect: Established structured program including KPI measurement, continuous improvement framework, and "referenceable client" quality standard.
Houston, TX / Texas Region · IT Services
Director of Client Services
- Account Management Program Architect: Built relationship program resulting in a 27% increase in recurring revenue contracts, 40% reduction in issues escalated to management, and 100% YoY increase in project revenue.
- Engineering Manager: Responsible for ~25 engineers across the client base, including recruiting, performance reviews, and team satisfaction improvements.
- Cloud Services Architect: Designed and optimized Private Cloud and Hybrid Infrastructure solutions, evaluated real-time performance, and implemented continuous improvement strategies.
- Project Business Program Architect: Grew project revenue from ~$400K to $750K annualized within 2 years through structured opportunity identification and senior engineering support program.
- Sales Engineering: Solution architecture and scoping for top-tier customers and prospects, $20K–$2M contract range, engaged by VP of Sales.
Cloud Services Architect — designed and optimized Private Cloud and Hybrid Infrastructure solutions; Director leading ~25 engineers; selected for strategic solutions architecture engagements with top-tier accounts, $20K–$2M range.
Director of Client Services — built account management program driving 27% recurring revenue growth, 40% reduction in escalations, and 100% YoY project revenue increase ($400K → $750K annualized); sales engineering for top-tier customers and prospects engaged by VP of Sales.
Seattle, WA / San Francisco / Houston / National · Managed IT Services (11 years)
Multiple Roles: Manager → Principal Consultant
Program Architect "Project Desk" · Manager Training/Strategic Solutions · Engineering Manager (Central Region) · Principal Consultant · Senior Consultant
- National Project Desk Program: Architected and managed national Project Desk program — grew project revenue from $1.2M to $1.7M, maintained average pipeline of $2.7M (services) + $3M (procurement). 525 proposals per quarter.
- Strategic Solutions (Executive Office): Selected by Executive Office to head "Strategic Solutions" team of highest-level engineers, defining technology standards and best practices for 700 engineers companywide.
- Regional Engineering Manager: Dual-role with direct responsibility for regional project revenue (20% total) and engineering team across 8 markets, ~40 engineers / 4 Principal-level. National and Executive Office reporting.
- Principal Consultant Program (National): Chosen to develop and lead the national Principal Consultant Program — achieved $1.7M project revenue growth in year one.
- Training Program Architect: Inaugural national Training department member — defined technical and process training requirements, LMS selection and deployment, engineering round table leadership.
- Merger & Acquisition Integration: Served as first deployment team upon deal closing — HR onboarding, systems training, process documentation, and multi-month integration follow-through.
- San Francisco / Sacramento Market: Increased project revenue pipeline from 11% average to over 23% — largest market in the company.
Principal Consultant / Engineering Manager — led Strategic Solutions team defining technology standards for 700 engineers nationwide; architected national Principal Consultant Program ($1.7M project revenue growth, year one); Training Program Architect; managed regional engineering team across 8 markets.
National Project Desk & Principal Consultant Programs — grew project revenue from $1.2M to $1.7M (avg. pipeline $2.7M, 525 proposals/quarter); SF/Sacramento market pipeline from 11% to 23% (largest in company); $1.7M revenue growth year one on Principal Consultant Program launch.