Consulting

I work with executive teams on AI product delivery, technical strategy, and operating-model decisions for production systems. Engagements are selective and scoped around decision-critical outcomes.

My role is to diagnose what is blocking progress, translate that into a small set of decisions, and (when requested) provide architectural stewardship through delivery. Internal teams retain ownership.

How high-stakes engagements typically start

Engagements usually begin with one of the following situations:

• Launch pressure with a measurable bar: “We need to ship product X in K months with metric Y, but we don’t know if we can get there—or if we have the right team.” I help establish a credible plan to reach the bar, define the evaluation spine, and de-risk execution.
• Strong hiring, weak ROI: “We recruited top AI talent, but product impact is flat.” I help identify why effort is not translating into outcomes (evaluation, ownership, product coupling, incentives, or architecture) and what must change.
• GPU spend without throughput: “We have K GPUs but utilization is low.” I help diagnose the constraint (data, pipelines, training loops, evaluation cadence, deployment friction, or organizational bottlenecks) and recommend actions to raise ROI.
• Org design for applied science: “We have a VP Engineering and VP Product—how should science be set up, and what candidates do we need?” I help define the operating model, interfaces, and hiring profile that makes execution viable.
• Model strategy and defensibility: “We don’t own the model—what is our moat?” I help clarify where differentiation can realistically live (data, workflows, distribution, evaluation, systems, UX, or domain-specific assets) and how to avoid vendor panic.
• Agentic platform ambition: “We want to become an agentic AI platform.” I help assess feasibility, define the platform boundary, specify grounding, observability, and safety requirements, and identify the minimal architecture that can scale.

Engagement structure

Most work begins with a short assessment phase based on structured discussions with architects, engineering leadership, and product owners, plus review of architecture, evaluation practices, cost structure, and ownership.

The primary deliverable is a concise written executive document (memo or white paper) covering:

• where technical and organizational risk actually lies
• which decisions matter now (and which can wait)
• options, tradeoffs, and exit paths
• quality and rollback criteria required for control
• org and talent constraints that block execution

If requested, I remain involved during delivery as an architectural advisor—reviewing designs, pressure-testing assumptions, and keeping execution aligned with the original decisions.

Not a fit

• staff augmentation or team backfill
• open-ended exploration without decision authority
• RFP-driven bake-offs
• engagements where no executive owns outcomes

Contact

Email anjan@smartinfer.com. To keep things efficient, include the system/product under consideration, why this matters now, the expected timeframe, the decision owner, and what happens if nothing changes in the next six months.