I build production AI with an owner’s judgment.

I founded and operated my own businesses — Original Lumberjack, a men’s grooming brand I took from raw ingredients through manufacturing, packaging, brand, marketing, fulfillment, and support, and Precision Investigations before it — while holding a leadership role inside large, federally regulated operations. Both sides of the table at once: signing the front of a paycheck and the back of one.

That operations work was high-consequence and federally regulated: DOT and FMCSA oversight, zero-error standards, real liability. I was certified to train and sign off new operators to that standard, which is its own kind of engineering — documented process, repeatable judgment, and accountability when something goes wrong.

Software ran alongside all of it. I taught myself to build and kept going until I was shipping real systems — the applied-AI work here is what came out: local-first assistants, retrieval and agent pipelines, voice, evals, and the observability to keep them honest. I designed, wrote, and run every piece of it, and most of it runs every day. I build with AI as a daily partner, and I hold what it produces to the same bar as my own.

That range is the point. I’ve carried a P&L and answered to a federal regulator; I’ve set the standard a team is trained to and shipped product to customers myself. So when I build software for a business, I already know what it has to do for that business, because I’ve been the person accountable for it. I build the system and I understand the operation it serves.

I’m looking for senior applied-AI engineering work where the bar is real and the system has to hold up. Portland, OR Metro Area — remote, hybrid, or a short flight from anywhere on the West Coast.