Veteran AI Developer — U.S. Army Veteran, 25 Years, Single Principal
A veteran AI developer is a senior engineer with verifiable military service shipping AI systems for civilian buyers. I am a U.S. Army veteran (cannon crewmember), a B.S. Computer Science graduate from the University of Houston, and a 25-year computer scientist. I work as a senior AI developer building custom LLM systems, RAG pipelines, fine-tuning workflows, and self-hosted agent automation. Single principal, written specifications, verification before delivery — the operations posture is non-coincidental.
Why "veteran-led" matters in AI engineering
The brand voice is not decoration. Military operations posture maps directly to AI engineering discipline: written specifications before code, evidence over assertions, verification before delivery, after-action review on every deploy. Most AI engagements that fail did so because the team shipped a demo, called it production, and discovered weeks later that the eval criteria were never written down. The veteran posture rules that failure mode out at sprint zero.
What I ship
- Custom LLM systems. Self-hosted or cloud-deployed, fine-tuned on the buyer's corpus, with reproducible runs and signed model artifacts.
- RAG retrieval pipelines. Vector stores, citation-first answers, versioned source documents, audit trails.
- Agent workflows. Tool-use loops with eval harnesses, structured outputs, drift detection, cost telemetry.
- Production tooling. Monitoring, golden-set regression suites, A/B and shadow deployment, deploy / rollback runbooks.
The credentials, briefly
- U.S. Army veteran — cannon crewmember
- B.S. Computer Science, University of Houston
- 25+ years building production software
- Single-principal practice; no offshore, no junior team behind a senior closer
- Texas-based (Houston metro); remote nationwide, in-person discovery in Houston
Who hires me as a veteran AI developer
Veteran-owned businesses who want to keep the supply chain in-network. Government-adjacent buyers (Veterans Affairs partner programs, DoD contractor systems) whose vetting posture rewards verifiable veteran status. Founders who care about veteran hiring as a procurement value. Regulated-industry CTOs (healthcare, energy, financial services) whose compliance posture and risk posture are easier with a single-principal veteran than with an offshore contractor pool.
How I work
Scoping call, written specification, two-week sprints, Pest tests alongside features, handover with runbook and 30-day support window. The eval harness is sprint zero on every AI engagement. The deploy plan is sprint one. The first model is sprint two. No model ships to production until it clears the eval criteria the engagement scoped on day one.
How is your veteran status verified?
ID.me veteran verification badge is on the about page (with the caveat that the verification step itself is currently in progress on my account). DD-214 is on file and can be shared under NDA for buyers whose procurement process requires it. LinkedIn shows the military service entry publicly.
Do you take government / DoD-adjacent engagements?
I take government-adjacent commercial work — partner companies, contractor systems, civilian-facing surfaces. I do not currently hold an active clearance. If the engagement requires an active clearance, I will refer to a network contact rather than apply for one mid-engagement.
Are you available freelance?
Yes — one engagement at a time, fully present. AI engagements typically run 3-6 months.
What is your hourly rate?
Bespoke, scoped per engagement, written into SOW before contract. AI engagements are typically priced per-phase rather than hourly.
Do you do veteran-only engagements?
No — I work for any buyer whose engagement fits the practice. The "veteran-led" framing names the operations posture and the supply-chain credential; it does not gate the buyer pool.
Scope This Engagement
Single principal, plan first, working code on every checkpoint.
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