What I'm looking for next

The shape of role I want

What John is looking for next is a senior operator role where AI is part of the work — either deploying it into an operational environment, or running the operating layer around an AI product. Two flavors fit:

• Industrial / regulated / safety-relevant AI deployment — manufacturing, process industries, defense, healthcare ops. The work is shipping AI into environments where the failure mode matters and the operator on the night shift has to trust it.
• AI company operator role — head of operations, head of platform, ops lead, PM-of-systems, where the company already has an AI product and needs someone who can run the surrounding operational fabric. Customer onboarding mechanics, eval pipelines, deployment posture, the human procedures around the system.

I am not interested in pure ML research, pure model training, or pure prompt-engineering-as-a-job. I am the person who makes the model actually work in an environment, and the operating discipline around it.

Scope I want

• A team I can shape. Five to thirty people, give or take. Big enough to ship; small enough that I can keep the operating principles intact.
• Real budget authority over my surface — model spend, tooling spend, the headcount needed to actually ship.
• A direct relationship with whichever C-suite role owns the outcome. Whatever the title is, the reporting line matters.

Where I’ll work

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Eastern time. US-eligible, no work-authorization complication. Open to remote-first with travel; open to a hybrid pattern with a reasonable cadence to an east-coast hub. Not relocating unless the role is exceptional and the timing fits a family with two young kids.

Comp expectations

Senior-operator level. Reasonable. I am happy to talk specifics on a call. I do not lead with comp, but I also do not pretend it does not matter.

What I do not want

• A role whose first ninety days are “AI strategy” with no plant, customer, or operational system attached.
• A culture where the model is the marketing and the operations are an afterthought.
• A role that exists because the board wants someone to put on an investor slide.
• Any role where the success metric is a tweet count.
• Pure consulting. I want to own the outcome inside the company, not advise from outside it.

Why I might be a fit

I run a multi-agent ops system on myself in production. I ship AI in manufacturing into the hands of operators who have run a process by feel for thirty years. I came out of twenty years of Army aviation where standardization, evaluation, and operational discipline were the job. Those three things compose well into the kind of role I want next.

If you are hiring for a role where “make this AI actually work for the people who have to run the system” is the job description, that is the conversation I want to have.