Generative AI & Cloud Leader · 20+ years

AI does the heavy lifting. Humans keep the judgment.

I’m Darren — I help enterprises rebuild massive, painfully manual processes from first principles. Generative AI at the core, human judgment at the helm. That combination changes the math entirely.

Let’s talk → See the work
Currently · stealth
A.I. Engineering Lead
Private equity–backed company

Heads‑down and loving it — rebuilding a massive manual process from first principles. More soon.

Reston, VA · Washington, D.C.
20+
years building & shipping
Feb ’23
shipped my first GenAI app
3 clouds
AWS · Azure · GCP

What I work in

Generative AI Cloud Native Big Data Data Analysis Vector Databases Embeddings Digital Publishing DevOps Kubernetes Docker AWS · Azure · GCP SAML / SSO

Selected work

Full history →
PresentA.I. Engineering LeadPE-backed · stealth 2023—2025Director, Cloud Native & Generative AI LabsHCLTech 2021—2023Global Head, GSI Application ModernizationGoogle 2011—2015Director, Systems ArchitectureNational Geographic

Recent writing

All articles →
2025 · ESSAY
Introduction to Agentic AI

Autonomous systems that act and decide — and where humans stay in the loop.

2024 · ESSAY
Why Small Language Models win

Smaller, specialized models beat brute force more often than you’d think.

2024 · FIELD NOTE
Generative AI & the future of music

A musician’s honest take on what changes — and what never will.

“AI should be a tool for humans, not a replacement. It shouldn’t be implemented if it can’t be explained — ethics is the backbone of AI, not an afterthought.”
The Responsible AI Developer Framework radf.dev →