.

AI LEADERSHIP ON DEMAND

AI strategy, fractional CTO, and technology leadership for venture-backed companies

Jamie Bernardin, Ph.D.

Contact:

Head of AI & Strategic Advisor
  • Founded AI practice from zero; first engineer to production
  • Nearly 1M automated agent sessions to date
  • Grew engineering org and hired technology leadership at every stage
  • $2B valuation, 500+ employees
Co-founder, CTO, and President
  • 0 to $40M+ in revenue in 7 years
  • Innovated best-in-class distributed computing and cloud infrastructure
  • Built and led engineering, product, marketing, customer support
  • Industry awards, multiple patents, acquired by TIBCO Software
CTO
  • $100M+ revenue, leading provider of media quality measurement
  • Led big-data platform, product engineering, and global technical operations
  • Drove re-engineering in scalability, reliability, and agility
  • Scaled team from 50 to 120 engineers in 18 months
VP Technology
  • $4B global leader in integration and analytics
  • Drove cloud integration strategy post-acquisition
  • Created and built Silver Mobile Platform
  • Led development, product management, and go-to-market

Use Cases

AI Practice Launch

You know AI should be central to your business but don't know where to start — or who should lead it. I'll propose the roadmap, hire the team, build the first systems, and ship production AI agents that create real business impact. From zero to nearly 1M automated agent sessions at Vestwell.

Enterprise AI Adoption

Your company has AI tools but adoption is uneven and the ROI isn't visible yet. I'll build a structured program — champion networks, agentic workflows, and tool evaluation — to turn AI into a company-wide competitive advantage that every team actually uses.

Fractional CTO & Interim Leadership

Every company needs strong technical leadership — and the right fit changes as you scale. As a fractional CTO or senior technology advisor, I work alongside your existing team to upgrade capabilities, mentor leaders, fill gaps, and position you to make the right permanent hire for the next phase.

Engineering Organization Transformation

Shipping has slowed, the team is misaligned, and you suspect the problem is leadership — not people. I'll conduct an honest assessment, make the hard calls on structure and personnel, and install the right leaders to get you back on track. Done for Threat Stack, Olo, and others.

Executive Technology Recruiting

Finding a great CTO, VP Engineering, or CPO is one of the highest-leverage decisions you'll make — and the easiest to get wrong. Drawing on a deep network of tested technical leaders, I'll help you define the role, qualify candidates, and land the right hire.

Technology Strategy & Architecture

Your platform wasn't designed for where you're going and technical debt is becoming a business risk. I'll assess your architecture, competitive positioning, and team capabilities to give you a clear, honest picture of what needs to change and in what order.

Methodology

AI-First Thinking

AI is not a feature — it's a capability that needs to be built deliberately, from the team up. Whether launching a new AI practice or integrating AI into existing products, I bring production experience building data-aware agentic systems — voicebots, email automation, workflow orchestration — that go beyond information retrieval to drive real business outcomes.

Business Planning

All technology plans are predicated on hitting future deliverables on time and on budget. I take an honest and thorough approach to analyzing market requirements, timelines, engineering resourcing, and infrastructure to ensure realistic planning that executives and investors can rely on.

Organization Design

The most common and costly mistake in scaling companies is promoting or tolerating the wrong managers. I've assessed and rebuilt engineering and product organizations at companies from Series A through public-market readiness — and I know how to make the hard calls quickly and respectfully.

Rapid Prototyping

I've been coding continuously for 30 years — from distributed systems to production AI. When strategy needs to become reality fast, I can move from whiteboard to working software — building proof-of-concepts, AI prototypes, or production systems from first principles.