David Beatty · Fractional AI Lead · New Braunfels, TX

5,000 employees on AI. 35 countries. Without a slide deck.

Fractional AI Lead for mid-to-large companies. Two weeks of discovery, then we build, with your compliance and security teams in the room.

Work With Me See My Track Record
$68.8M

in cost leakage found

5,000

users on enterprise AI, 35+ countries

60%

faster load times at Meta

Where I've built

The operating model

My day job: leading a Forward Deployed Engineering team at a Fortune 500.

We don't deliver decks. We sit with the business, understand what's broken, and build the AI that fixes it. That's the same operating model you get when you hire me.

Career, drawn to scale

Platforms people actually use.

Each bar is as long as the time spent there. The number under each company is the result it is best known for.

2014201620182020202220242026
25cloud products launched
$21MDell program modeled
4 moMeta launch on three platforms
5,000people on the AI platform

Proof, company by company

What changed because I was there.

Fortune 500 mfr

Director of Product for AI and Digital Foundry
Nov 2024 – now

An enterprise AI platform, from zero

How do we close the AI gap at a Fortune 500 manufacturer, inside a locked-down enterprise, and actually ship?

5,000users on the enterprise AI platform
35+countries on one governed platform
Meta Platforms

Senior Product Manager, Platform & Player Experiences
Jun 2022 – Jun 2024

Horizon Worlds on phones and the web in four months

How do we take a headset-only platform to phones and browsers in four months, against a fixed date?

World load time−60%
50 s
20 s
Max avatars per world+133%
30
70
Dell Technologies

Senior Platform Manager, Managed Cloud Infrastructure
Aug 2021 – May 2022

Moving a hardware company toward cloud services

$21Mmanaged services program modeled
Rackspace Technology

Director of Product, then Senior Product Manager, Cloud Transformation
Apr 2013 – Aug 2021

Cloud services across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud

25products launched globally
6,000employees on the HR system I owned

Services

I close AI gaps by shipping. The roadmap is a byproduct.

Start small. The Gap Scan fee credits toward whatever comes next.

Step 1Free30-minute call

No deck, no pitch. I tell you straight whether I can help.

Start here$1,500AI Gap Scan

One week, flat. 100% credited within 60 days.

Go deeper$7,500AI Assessment

A sequenced roadmap your board can read.

Solve one problemfrom $15kAdvisory / Project

One focused deliverable in 3–5 weeks.

Full engagement$20k/moFractional AI Lead

I own AI, ship it, and train the person who keeps it running.

Gap Scan and Assessment fees credit toward month one of a fractional engagement.

The full engagement

Fractional AI Lead

$20,000 / month

I drop in as your AI lead. Two weeks of discovery, then we build, with your compliance and security teams in the room from day one. You leave with working systems and a team that can run them.

  • Executive Claude CoWork. Leadership team set up and shipping daily, with their first Chief-of-Staff agent built around their actual workflow.
  • Internal AI build. Compliance and security built in from the first sprint.
  • Teams chat bot wired to your data. The answer shows up in the channel where people already work.
  • Long-term operator trained. One of your technical people is trained to run it after I step out.
  • Training plans and curated free resources. Your team levels up without paying per seat.
  • One client at a time. Full attention.
  • Gap Scan and Assessment fees credit toward month one.

Best for: companies that need someone to own AI, ship it, and train the person who keeps it running.

The 90-day shape

Weeks 1–2

Discovery

Systems and tools audit. I map what you have, what you're paying for, what's shadow-IT, and where the real AI gap is, before anyone signs another license.

Weeks 3–6

Onboarding + Training

Tool standup. Executive CoWork live. First Chief-of-Staff agent built. Team trained on the actual workflow.

Weeks 7–12

Build with Compliance

Internal AI shipped. Teams bot, custom agents, governed access. Your operator runs it. I hand off and step out.

Not ready to commit? Start here.

AI Gap Scan

$1,500 flat · one week

100% credited toward any engagement started within 60 days.

Two hours of interviews with your leadership, a pass over your tool inventory and AI spend, and a one-page scorecard: the three highest-value gaps, what each is costing you, and what to do first. It's the same discovery I run in the first two weeks of a fractional engagement, sold on its own.

  • 2 hrs of leadership interviews
  • Tool + AI spend inventory
  • One-page scorecard, top 3 gaps
  • 30-min readout call
Book a Gap Scan

Best for: finding out where you actually stand before spending real money.

Then go deeper. Your Gap Scan fee credits toward any of these.

AI Assessment

$7,500

Two to three weeks. I assess where you are, size the opportunities, and hand you a sequenced roadmap with a written deliverable your board can read. On-ramp to advisory or fractional.

  • Current state analysis
  • Opportunity identification
  • Written roadmap deliverable
  • Prioritized recommendations

Best for: companies that know the gaps and want the plan to close them.

Advisory / Project

Starting at $15,000

A specific problem that needs a result. Typical engagement: 3–5 weeks. One focused deliverable you can act on immediately. I bring the judgment and the output.

  • Cost leakage / opportunity analysis
  • AI platform evaluation
  • AI strategy deck for leadership
  • Governance framework
  • Product roadmap & sequencing

Best for: companies with a clear question and the data to answer it.

AI 101: Foundations

$5,000 / cohort

Half-day workshop. The foundation your team needs before touching AI tools. What AI actually is, what it can and can't do, where the value is in your organization. Designed for leaders and teams with zero AI background. Your team leaves with a shared vocabulary for AI decisions and 3 use cases mapped to your business.

FundamentalsPrompt BasicsUse Case ID

Best for: leadership teams and department heads.

AI 201: Builder

$8,000 / cohort

Full-day workshop. Agents, workflow automation, chat co-work (CoWork). Participants build with their own data. Walk out with a working prototype.

AgentsAutomationCoWorkHands-On

Best for: ops managers, analysts, and team leads.

Looking for advanced technical training? AI 301: Operator ($12,000/cohort) covers Claude Code, agent swarms, and MCP integrations for engineering teams. Email to inquire →

I also work with churches and nonprofits. Learn more →

Have a question? I'll tell you if I can help.Send an email. I respond within 24 hours. If it's a fit, we schedule a 30-minute call. A direct conversation about your situation.

Email Me Book a Free Call

How it works

01

30-Minute Call

No deck, no pitch. We talk about your situation and I tell you straight whether I can help.

02

Written Proposal

You get a scoped proposal in 48 hours, approach, timeline, and pricing.

03

Kick Off

We start within 2 weeks. First deliverable inside 30 days.

Case study

From Zero AI Capability to Enterprise Platform in 90 Days

Fortune 500 · Multi-Site Industrial · Global

AzureRAGClaude API

The Problem

A multi-billion-dollar industrial manufacturer was significantly over budget with no visibility into why. Plant managers were flying blind, cost variances buried in a data warehouse nobody could query. The company had no AI strategy, no AI governance, and no internal capability to build one. The CISO hadn't approved an AI tool yet. The legal team hadn't reviewed AI policy. Procurement timelines ran 6+ months. The board was asking questions the executive team couldn't answer.

The Friction

Azure was locked down beyond what rapid development required. Every tool needed CISO sign-off. Legal had never reviewed an AI acceptable-use policy. Procurement required a vendor onboarding process that took longer than the first sprint. The organizational instinct was to wait for a consultant to produce a strategy deck. The mandate was to ship instead.

What Shipped

Within 90 days: a cost intelligence platform that surfaced $68.8M in cost leakage across multi-site operations, variances that were invisible in the existing data stack. Within the same window: an enterprise AI platform, now 5,000 users across 35+ countries, with RAG-based knowledge retrieval, persistent memory, content filtering, SSO, and no-code admin. Plus the company's first AI governance framework: acceptable use, prohibited cases, regulated-jurisdiction alignment, data classification, negotiated through CISO and legal and published company-wide.

Outcomes

$68.8M

cost variance surfaced

90 days

zero to shipped platform

35+

countries on one governed AI platform

1st

company AI governance framework

About

Director of Product Strategy and AI Innovation

Product and AI executive with 12+ years driving product vision across Meta, Dell, Rackspace, and a Fortune 500 manufacturer. Build enterprise AI capability from zero across strategy, platform, governance, and delivery, then stand up the product organizations that carry it. Launched Horizon Worlds on mobile and web in four months with a 50+ engineer team across three countries; now own AI transformation and the digital commerce roadmap at a global industrial manufacturer.

I specialize in the hard version of AI adoption: real companies with locked-down infrastructure, CISO governance, procurement timelines, and organizational friction. Cloud-native at Rackspace, platform scale at Meta, and now AI transformation inside a Fortune 500 manufacturer. In each case, I built before most organizations knew they needed to.

Based in New Braunfels, TX. Available for fractional engagements and advisory projects.

Education

MBA

Liberty University School of Business · Lynchburg, VA

BA, Business

Pensacola Christian College · Pensacola, FL

locationNew Braunfels, TX

statusAvailable

capacityOne client at a time

Download CV (PDF)

AI and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence (AI/ML)machine learninglarge language models (LLMs)generative AILLM application architectureRAG and hybrid retrievalembeddings and vector searchvector databasesknowledge graphsagentic AIagent orchestrationmulti-agent systemsModel Context Protocoltool use and function callingprompt engineeringfine-tuningMLOpscomputer visiondigital twins

Models and Platforms

ClaudeOpenAI GPTLLaMAGemmaQwenSnowflake CortexAzure AIAWSGCPSnowflakePower BIPythonSQL

Evaluation and Reliability

Eval harness designLLM-as-judgeblind A/B scoringexperimentationhallucination and regression testingtoken and cost modelingprompt cachinglatency and throughput optimization

Governance and Responsible AI

Enterprise AI governanceresponsible AIEU AI ActNIST AI RMFdata governancedata classificationPII handlingprivacyguardrails and content filteringSOC 2SOX

Product and Leadership

Product strategyzero-to-one product organizationsplatform scalabilityroadmap ownershipagile and scrum deliverycross-functional leadershipstakeholder managementchange managementuser adoption and enablementdigital transformationB2B and e-commerceexecutive and board communicationvendor managementP&L alignment

Experience

Every role, straight from the resume.

Director of Product for AI and Digital Foundry

Fortune 500 Manufacturer · Columbus, OH (Remote)

Nov 2024 – Present
  • Enterprise AI Platform for 5,000 Employees. Selected, governed, and rolled out the internal AI platform (UnifyApps) across 35+ countries: RAG retrieval, persistent memory, CISO-approved filtering, SSO, no-code administration.
  • First AI Governance Framework. Authored it and drove it through CISO and Legal: EU AI Act alignment, data classification, model lifecycle. Chartered the Cloud and AI Product Council.
  • Enterprise AI Roadmap. Authored the multi-year AI roadmap for the executive leadership team: four pillars, maturity scoring, board-level narrative.
  • Organization Build. Built the digital product organization from zero across product, engineering, and data/AI, plus a six-pod AI delivery org and a four-tier upskilling curriculum.
  • Commerce Platform Strategy. Own the 2026–2027 roadmap for the company's first unified self-service ordering channel, targeting the majority of recurring global order volume.
  • Reusable AI Building Blocks. Shipped the data patterns, model templates, and safety controls that let plant and function teams build their own capabilities.
  • Executive Partnership. Partner with the CIO, COO, and business-unit leaders on portfolio strategy, capital planning, and M&A. Built the value-realization dashboards.
  • Plant-Floor AI at the Edge. Latency, bandwidth, and data sovereignty ruled out cloud inference, so designed for local execution: a conversational plant twin, plus computer-vision line inspection.
  • Cost Leakage Exposed. Shipped a plant-level analysis system surfacing margin variance to business-unit leaders and plant managers.
AzureClaude APIRAGUnifyAppsSnowflakeAI GovernanceProduct Strategy

Senior Product Manager, Platform & Player Experiences

Meta Platforms · Bellevue, WA

Jun 2022 – Jun 2024
  • Zero-to-One Launch, Three Platforms. Launched Horizon Worlds on iOS, Android, and Web in four months against a fixed external launch date, leading a 50+ engineer team across three countries.
  • LLaMA in Production. Integrated a LLaMA model into in-world agents, lifting session time and experience quality.
  • 133% Capacity Gain. Raised max avatars per world from 30 to 70 through architecture optimization, and validated a 10,000-concurrent-user architecture in a proof of concept.
  • 60% Faster Load Times. Cut world load from 50s to 20s while raising load reliability from 89% to 96%.
  • 20% Infrastructure Savings. Cut infrastructure cost through strategic GPU allocation, validated with A/B tests.
Horizon WorldsLLaMAPlatform InfraiOS/Android/WebGPU Optimization

Senior Platform Manager, Managed Cloud Infrastructure

Dell Technologies · Austin, TX

Aug 2021 – May 2022
  • Market Repositioning. Led an incubator initiative moving Dell from hardware vendor toward cloud services, including the case to reclaim outsourced managed-services revenue.
  • $21M Program Modeled. Proposed an on-ramp targeting Fortune 500 companies migrating from legacy data centers to private managed cloud.
  • Managed Services Framework. Architected Dell's standard for expressing managed services offerings in the marketplace.
Private CloudManaged ServicesFortune 500 Migrations

Senior Product Manager, Cloud Transformation

Rackspace Technology · San Antonio, TX

Jan 2018 – Aug 2021
  • 25 Products Launched Globally. Productized professional services across AWS, Azure, and GCP, unifying delivery across all three hyperscalers.
  • AWS Outposts. Led Outposts solutions for gaming studios and sports betting, influencing AWS on-premise private-cloud feature sets.
  • SOC 2 and SOX. Drove compliance and public-cloud support certifications across the managed cloud portfolio.
  • Scalable Product Framework. Created the methodology that let regional teams launch locally tailored products, and co-built the Azure Fanatical Support launch.
AWSAzureGCPSOC 2SOXProfessional Services

Director of Product

Rackspace Technology · San Antonio, TX

Apr 2013 – Dec 2017
  • Product Team Leadership. Led product managers and support analysts across a portfolio of in-house and third-party products.
  • HRIS for 6,000 Employees. Owned development and deployment with SOX and SOC 2 built in, integrating Workday, iCIMS, cFactor, and Cornerstone OnDemand.
  • 30% Efficiency Gain. Improved platform operations through CRM systems, lifting creator-management efficiency and performance tracking.
AWSAzureGCPSOC 2SOXProfessional Services

Synced from the resume source on 2026-10-14.

Featured projects

Things I've shipped.

Project 01

Enterprise AI Platform

Selected, governed, and delivered the internal AI platform for a Fortune 500 manufacturer: 5,000 users across 35+ countries. RAG retrieval, persistent memory, CISO-approved filtering, SSO, no-code administration. On a locked-down Azure stack, on deadline.

UnifyAppsAzureRAGClaude APISSO

Project 02

Cost Intelligence Platform

AI-powered plant-level cost analysis surfacing $68.8M in leakage across multi-site operations. Surfaces what was buried in the Snowflake data warehouse, delivered to plant managers and business-unit leaders.

SnowflakePower BIPythonClaude API

Project 03

Horizon Worlds on Mobile and Web

Launched Meta's Horizon Worlds on iOS, Android, and Web in four months with a 50+ engineer team across three countries. World load 50s → 20s, load reliability 89% → 96%, avatars per world 30 → 70, and a 10,000-concurrent-user architecture validated in POC.

Horizon WorldsLLaMAPlatform InfraiOS/Android/Web

WritingI write about AI transformation, enterprise product leadership, and what it actually looks like to build AI inside a 140-year-old manufacturer, with all the organizational friction that implies.

Read on Substack

Contact

Let's talk.

Available for fractional AI leadership and advisory projects. If your company is behind on AI and needs someone to own it end to end, reach out.

Email Me Book a Free Call LinkedIn Follow on X Download CV