Ph.D. AI consultant.
One build, $5,000 flat.

What $5,000 buys

One job, built and running on your data.

Most engagements take one of three forms. Each starts from a specific, repetitive task or a specific number, never from a vague goal, because AI pointed at a vague goal wastes money.

• An AI agent for the work done by hand

  The reading, checking, sorting, and drafting your people do every day: invoices keyed in from PDFs, intake routed by hand, reports rebuilt every Monday. The agent does that part and a person stays in the loop on anything consequential.

• An AI assistant for the blind spots

  Ask your own data a question in plain English, get warned about the orders in danger of slipping, or produce a forecast you can actually hand someone. Built on the systems you already have.

• Machine learning built to move a number

  Supervised models on your own history: win more quotes, ship more on time, buy better, spot trouble before it develops. The kind of edge nobody sells off the shelf.

Selected work

Production AI for enterprise clients.

A sample of the work from eight years at Oracle, the last three in its AI Center of Excellence, taken from customer discovery through to production.

• Manufacturing

  Predictive ML on sensor time-series, alerting operators before dangerous conditions develop on the production floor.

• Public sector

  GenAI that drafts structured reports from unstructured intake for a case-management team, cutting analyst time per case.

• Retail

  Natural-language analytics that lets non-technical staff at a specialty e-commerce retailer query sales data in plain English.

• Media research

  An AI agent with web search and other tools that automates ongoing data collection for downstream analysis.

Public demos, write-ups, and code are in the selected work section of the main page.

How it goes

Three steps, and you can stop after the first.

1. 1

   A conversation, free

   You describe the job. I tell you whether AI is the right tool for it, and if something off the shelf already does it, I point you there instead.

2. 2

   Scope, price, and the test, in writing

   One job, one number, and an agreed definition of what working means, including which of your real examples the result gets scored against. Nothing starts before you have all three.

3. 3

   Built, scored, handed over

   Running on your own data and inside the applications your team already uses, with the score in writing and a session so your people can operate it without me.

One scoped build is $5,000 fixed. Smaller jobs run at $250 per hour with no minimum; larger or less defined work also starts hourly and gets its own fixed quote once the scope is clear. Continuing work runs on a retainer from $3,500 per month. Full rates are on the engagements section of the main page.

Questions

What people ask before hiring an AI consultant.

• What does an AI consultant cost?

  One scoped build is $5,000 fixed: we agree the job and the price in writing before any work starts, and you get it running on your own data with a handover session. Smaller jobs run at $250 per hour with no minimum. Larger or less defined work also starts hourly and gets its own fixed quote once the scope is clear, and continuing work runs on a retainer from $3,500 per month. The smallest paid step is a $250 working session, credited in full against any engagement booked within thirty days.

• Strategy or implementation?

  Both, and that is the point of hiring one person for it. I can sit with leadership to decide which problem is worth solving, then build the system that solves it. Every engagement ends with something running on your data, not a slide deck recommending that someone else build it.

• Who am I actually working with?

  Me, directly. Ph.D. physicist, trained to take a hard problem apart and test whether the answer holds. Twelve years building production AI and machine learning, eight of them at Oracle, the last three in its AI Center of Excellence for clients in manufacturing, oil and gas, finance, public sector, and retail. There is no bench of junior consultants and nobody your project gets handed down to.

• Are you tied to a particular vendor or cloud?

  No. I am independent and have no product to sell, so the recommendation is whatever fits your data and your systems. My deepest platform experience is Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, with seven OCI certifications, and much of this work runs fine on the tools you already pay for.

• How do I know it actually worked?

  Because we agree the test before the build. Whatever gets built is scored against examples it never saw while being built, using the measure we settled on in advance, and you get that result in writing before handover. If the score does not clear the bar, you hear that from me rather than six months into relying on it.

• What if an off-the-shelf tool already does this?

  Then I will tell you that and point you at it. A meaningful share of requests are better served by a product that already exists for a monthly fee. Custom earns its keep when the work is specific to how you operate, when your data lives in systems no vendor integrates with, or when the advantage comes from doing it differently than your competitors.

• How long does it take?

  Weeks, not quarters. A scoped build is typically a few weeks from the first call to something running on your data. I build with AI coding assistants, which is a large part of why that timeline is realistic rather than optimistic.

• Do I need to be in Austin?

  No. Delivery is remote and most of this work does not require anyone in the room. I am based in Cedar Park in the Austin metro and spend part of the year in the Knoxville area, so on-site time is easy in either region and available elsewhere when a project genuinely calls for it.