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FRONTIER AI · PRODUCT · GO-TO-MARKET

Colin Baird

Product and operations leader with a technical background.

Most recently at Poolside, I built the initial prototype for what would become our Sovereign AI product line.

More about my background

I then moved into a product role reporting to the CPO and owned it end to end: roadmap, engineering priorities, pricing and packaging, partnerships, and enterprise delivery. It grew to roughly $3M ARR and 40+ deployments in about 14 months, with a significant share running in air-gapped and regulated environments. Before that, I was Poolside’s first Solutions Architect, where I helped define the function and grow the team to seven globally.

For Sovereign AI, that also meant sourcing hardware and cutting per-unit system costs by approximately 27%, negotiating contract scope with customers and partners, and aligning research, engineering, and sales priorities for the product line.

Earlier, at AWS, I focused on generative AI as the company built out its offerings, including a PR/FAQ and early prototyping that contributed to work on what became Amazon Q. At MongoDB, I reached Senior Solutions Architect in under two years. I started my career in IT and managed services.

Independently, I built Keel, an open-source, secure-by-design agent harness, and Pinpoint Alpha, an AI-native financial market analysis product with paying subscribers.

I’m a technical generalist who can prototype a system, work through architecture with engineers, or build a product myself, and am just as comfortable on pricing or a customer call. I do my best work where product, engineering, operations, and GTM overlap.

Experience across

PoolsideAWSMongoDBSolarWindsTexas A&M University
Colin’s pixel avatar against a twilight city. Same guy, less PowerPoint.

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Selected Projects

Independent SaaS · Market intelligence

Pinpoint Alpha

A financial market analytics product with paying subscribers, combining institutional flow, market structure and AI-assisted research.

Product & Engineering

Product development and launch

I owned product strategy, architecture and delivery across market-data pipelines, analytics, the web experience and subscriptions. I took the product from concept to production in three months; it now serves paying subscribers.

Market-data processing and analysis

Python computes and scores market signals before the model sees them. Options flow, dark-pool activity, open interest, volatility and dealer positioning feed a deterministic evidence layer; AI explains that evidence in plain English.

Data provenance and quality checks

The engineering work includes provenance, freshness checks and fail-closed quality gates. Regression tests cover stale data, mismatched contracts and incomplete evidence; quality gates block results that fail those checks.

Application architecture

Next.js on Vercel serves the product; Supabase provides the data and authentication layer; Railway runs Python pipelines. Massive supplies market data, Anthropic powers the explanation layer, Stripe manages subscriptions, and Resend delivers the briefs.

Research workflow

A personalized evening brief connects to supporting dashboards, institutional price levels, sector rotation and position tracking. Progressive disclosure keeps the first read concise while preserving the evidence underneath.

Intended use

Designed for financial market research and education.

Visit Pinpoint Alpha
Data engineeringApplied AIProduct & GTM

Open source · Agent infrastructure

Keel

An open-source, secure-by-design agent harness for governed tool execution, policy enforcement and audit evidence.

Product & Engineering

Product and architecture

I defined the architecture, threat model, contracts and evidence gates, using AI extensively for implementation, testing and documentation.

Enforcement outside the model

A separate Warden process owns policy decisions, sandbox execution and audit writes. The agent requests actions; it cannot approve itself or rewrite its hash-pinned policy.

Execution records and audit evidence

Side effects require a durable intent record before execution. Allowed and denied actions produce tamper-evident evidence; failed enforcement checks stop execution.

Tool permissions and approvals

Shell commands, typed file tools and reviewed local MCP tools share the same enforcement path. Publishing code and opening pull requests require separate, narrowly scoped approvals.

Project status

Pre-alpha, solo-maintained and AI-assisted. An unaudited learning project and executable security reference, not a production-ready security guarantee. Its boundary assumes a trusted kernel and OS account.

Source & architecture
AI agentsPolicy enforcementOpen source

Co-developed at AWS · Early GenAI

AWS RAG Chatbot

Early enterprise RAG work co-developed at AWS, with an open-source chatbot implementation connecting document retrieval, language models and support-center workflows.

Product & Engineering

Early enterprise GenAI

I co-developed the original work at AWS in February 2023, as teams were beginning to explore how retrieval-augmented generation could make language models useful with their own documents.

A customizable AWS architecture

The linked Bedrock implementation combines Amazon Bedrock for inference, Amazon Kendra for document retrieval and Amazon Lex for conversation. Python, LangChain and AWS Lambda connect the services; CloudFormation makes the environment repeatable.

Document retrieval and support workflows

Lex handles known intents directly and routes open-ended questions through retrieval and generation. Conversation history supports follow-up questions, while Lex integration with Amazon Connect brings the approach into support-center workflows.

Deployment and customization

Teams can replace the source documents and models, deploy a repeatable environment, and adapt the chatbot to their own customer workflows.

Explore the open-source project
Retrieval-augmented generationAWSOpen source

Career History

Select a role to explore

  1. Poolside

    Founding Product Lead, Sovereign AI & Strategic Partnerships

    Aug 2025–present

    Owned the Sovereign AI product line, helping grow it from prototype to roughly $3M ARR and 40+ global deployments in about 14 months.

    • ~$3M ARRSovereign AI product line, from prototype in about 14 months
    • 40+global Sovereign AI deployments
    • $44K → $32KSovereign AI system cost, through sourcing, quantization, and architecture
    • Helped grow Sovereign AI from prototype to approximately $3M ARR and more than 40 global deployments in roughly 14 months.
    • Reduced Sovereign AI system cost by approximately 27%, from approximately $44K to $32K, through hardware sourcing, quantization and architecture decisions.
    • Led product and go-to-market work for Sovereign AI with OEM partners including Dell, Supermicro, Nutanix, and Cisco, coordinating engineering priorities for the product line.
    End-to-end product ownership

    Owned the Sovereign AI product line end to end, reporting to the Chief Product Officer. Responsibilities spanned strategy, roadmap, engineering priorities, pricing and packaging, product economics, go-to-market, partnerships, and enterprise delivery.

    Platform development and deployment

    After building the initial prototype as Poolside’s first Solutions Architect, I led the work with engineers and Solutions Architects to bring Sovereign AI’s self-contained, single-node RKE2 platform into production, with STIG hardening and Ubuntu/RHEL support.

    Sovereign AI engineering and research priorities

    Set engineering and applied research priorities for the Sovereign AI product line, working across backend engineering, post-training, and inference. Championed FP8/INT4 quantization and support for next-generation GPUs and NVIDIA GB10 edge systems within that product roadmap.

    Customers and strategic programs

    Translated enterprise, regulated, and government customer discovery into Sovereign AI roadmap and go-to-market priorities. Separately led product strategy for Poolside’s $2M In-Q-Tel program spanning four government agencies.

    Regulated enterprise delivery

    A significant share of Sovereign AI deployments served air-gapped and regulated environments. Aligned contract scope, customer requirements and delivery commitments for the product line.

    Founding Solutions Architect & On-Premises Lead

    Sep 2024–Aug 2025

    Joined as Poolside’s first Solutions Architect, built the global team to seven, and developed the initial on-premises prototype.

    • Built the solutions architecture team from zero to seven, including hiring, onboarding, enablement and delivery practices.
    • Developed the first on-premises prototype in my home lab, moving from a cloud deployment to local GPU containers.
    • Led four engineers to deliver the first air-gapped, STIG-hardened, ATO-approved deployment within nine months.
    Solutions Architecture team

    Joined as employee #47. Established hiring standards, technical playbooks, deployment guides, architecture references and customer-facing runbooks.

    Early enterprise delivery

    Led hands-on architecture, integration and executive stakeholder engagement for the first Fortune 500 customers. Closed a marquee defense prime contract.

    On-premises prototype

    Moved the cloud deployment from Terraform and EKS to Docker Compose to make on-premises prototyping possible.

  2. AWS

    Enterprise Solutions Architect

    Oct 2022–Sep 2024

    Enterprise architecture, early GenAI prototyping, reusable RAG demos and strategic cloud migrations.

    • 225+AWS professionals adopted the enterprise RAG demo
    • $1.1MARR migrated from GCP to AWS
    • 4 → 19enterprise accounts in portfolio
    • Co-developed one of NAMER’s first reusable RAG demo environments in early 2023, subsequently used or adapted by 225+ Amazonians.
    • Led a competitive win that migrated $1.1M ARR from GCP to AWS.
    • Expanded coverage from four to 19 enterprise customers; mentored two new Solutions Architects and an SA intern.
    Early enterprise GenAI

    Authored a December 2022 PR/FAQ for an enterprise GenAI assistant, shared with AWS AI leadership, and contributed to early prototyping work that later fed into Amazon Q.

    Technical enablement

    Led and supported internal and customer-facing technical enablement sessions and demonstrated GenAI prototypes to strategic enterprise customers.

  3. MongoDB

    Senior Solutions Architect

    Feb 2022–Aug 2022

    Promoted to Senior Solutions Architect in under two years, connecting database architecture with enterprise business value.

    • 238% / 208%quota attainment across two periods
    • Achieved 238% quota attainment in H1 2021 and 208% in H2 2021.

    Solutions Architect

    Jun 2020–Jan 2022

    Advised customers on reliable, scalable application and database architectures.

    • Designed systems and application infrastructure for large software development initiatives using MongoDB.
    • Supported technical discovery, demos, proofs of value, sizing and technical decision criteria.
    • Translated architecture patterns and technical tradeoffs into business value for executives.

  4. SolarWinds

    Sales Engineer

    Apr 2019–Jun 2020

    Supported technical sales across a broad infrastructure software portfolio.

    • $5M+quarterly quota attainment supported
    • 12+products supported
    • Supported $5M+ in quarterly quota attainment across more than 12 products.
    • Created internal technical training to support the sales engineering team.
    Infrastructure software presales

    Demonstrated, deployed and troubleshot enterprise and commercial solutions spanning DevOps/APM monitoring, security and SIEM, compliance, access rights and patch management.

  5. Sigma Information Group

    IT Consultant

    Jul 2018–Apr 2019

    Enterprise IT consulting across systems, networking and business continuity.

    • Managed infrastructure, proactive monitoring, compliance audits, backup retention and business continuity.
    • Combined project delivery with business development, partner sales, technical presentations and customer success.

  6. Unetek

    IT Specialist II

    Oct 2015–Jul 2018

    Hands-on infrastructure consulting and technical support for small and midsize businesses.

    • Consulted on technical infrastructure, fulfilled RFI/RFP/RFQ requests and managed organizational supply chains.
    • Provided on-call break/fix technical support.

  7. Texas A&M University

    IT Support Engineer

    Mar 2015–Oct 2015

    Enterprise IT support across campus, research centers and 254 county offices.

    • Supported networked workstations and peripherals, user accounts, permissions and organizational compliance.
    • Proactively monitored systems and resolved time-sensitive support issues.

Skills & Practice

Product & leadership

Product strategy, roadmap ownership, organization design, team scaling, customer discovery, go-to-market planning and strategic partnerships.

AI & platforms

Enterprise AI, foundation models, agent systems, inference, retrieval-augmented generation, Kubernetes (RKE2 and k3s), Terraform, Docker, Python, AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.

Enterprise delivery

Architecture, technical discovery, proof-of-concept delivery, regulated and air-gapped environments, deployment practices, adoption and partner channels.

Education & Certifications

Master of Business Administration

Questrom School of Business, Boston University · 2020–2022.

Degree Credential

Degree credential

Issued January 2023 · CeDiD: 230A-0542-C8DD.

B.S. Information Technology Management

Western Governors University · 2014–2016.

Certifications & Continued Learning

Expiration dates are listed where provided.

  • Amazon Web Services SysOps Administrator – Associate

    Amazon Web Services

    Issued Nov 2023 · Expires Nov 2026

    Credential ID: NCT3QEEB52QE1QCB

  • Amazon Web Services Developer – Associate

    Amazon Web Services

    Issued Nov 2023 · Expires Nov 2026

    Credential ID: NKK89FY2XEFQQ1WJ

  • Essential Linear Algebra for Data Science

    Coursera Course Certificates

    Issued Sep 2023

    Credential ID: JQLWCTCBHJV6No expiry date supplied.

  • AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty

    Amazon Web Services

    Issued Jun 2023 · Expired Jun 2026

    Credential ID: NLVDVCT20JQ11P5G

  • Amazon Web Services Solutions Architect – Associate

    Amazon Web Services

    Issued Mar 2023 · Expired Mar 2026

    Credential ID: GHD39NYKZEE4143V

  • MongoDB Certified Developer, Associate (C100DEV)

    MongoDB

    Issued Apr 2022

    Credential ID: 286-998-837No expiry date supplied.

  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals

    Microsoft

    Issued Oct 2021

    Credential ID: I010-4104No expiry date supplied.

  • MongoDB Certified DBA Associate (C100DBA)

    MongoDB

    Issued Jan 2021

    Credential ID: 989-793-551No expiry date supplied.

  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

    Amazon Web Services

    Issued Oct 2020 · Expired Oct 2023

    Credential ID: EYBHE9DB12V118S1

  • SolarWinds Certified Professional – Architecture & Design

    SolarWinds

    Issued Mar 2020 · Expired Mar 2023

    Credential ID: 2100

  • Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud Engineer

    Google

    Issued Jan 2020 · Expired Jan 2022

    Credential ID: XnIhwu

  • Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python)

    Coursera Course Certificates

    Issued Jan 2020

    Credential ID: C2TL78JWRCRFNo expiry date supplied.

  • Computational Thinking for Problem Solving

    Coursera Course Certificates

    Issued Dec 2019

    Credential ID: NBYCAPZW2QBCNo expiry date supplied.

  • Google IT Support Professional

    Google

    Issued Jul 2019

    Credential ID: LGGHGBALWNCPNo expiry date supplied.

  • Machine Learning for Business Professionals

    Coursera Course Certificates

    Issued May 2019

    Credential ID: EMKEMFC7V2PJNo expiry date supplied.

  • Financial Markets – Honors

    Coursera Course Certificates

    Issued Apr 2019

    Credential ID: 8B25P6JP3ED9No expiry date supplied.

  • CompTIA Project+

    CompTIA

    Issued Jun 2016

    Credential ID: J1Q7METGP3Q1K994No expiry date supplied.

Talks & Writing

article · Poolside · May 2026

Poolside on Dell

An efficient path for frontier AI inside your boundary.

Read more

Publication · Poolside ·

Published May 28, 2026

Authored by Colin Baird for Poolside. An introduction to bringing frontier AI into customer-controlled environments with Dell.

Read on Poolside

talk · NVIDIA GTC DC 2025

NVIDIA GTC DC 2025

Accelerate Government Innovation With Secure, AI-Enabled Models for Software Development (Presented by Poolside)

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Talk · NVIDIA GTC DC 2025

Lightning talk

A GTC DC 2025 talk on secure AI-enabled software development for government. Session DC51216.

Watch on NVIDIA On-Demand

article · Substack · Dec 2025

The Six-Hour Mind: Why Intelligence Can’t Compound Without Memory

Explores why memory may become one of the most important infrastructure layers in AI, especially as models get more capable. I look at where current memory systems fall short and what persistent, domain-specific memory could unlock for software engineering and other long-running work.

Read more

Publication · Substack ·

Published December 7, 2025

An essay by Colin Baird on Substack.

Read on Substack

article · Substack · Jul 2026

AI Moats Through the Lens of Multiple Discovery

Examines why model intelligence alone may be a weak long-term moat as breakthroughs diffuse and reproduction gets cheaper. I argue that durable AI value is more likely to accrue to the systems around models, including context, governance, orchestration, evaluation, and distribution.

Read more

Publication · Substack ·

Published July 21, 2026

An essay by Colin Baird on Substack.

Read on Substack

Places I’ve Called Home

Present: The Triangle, NC

  1. South Korea
  2. Iowa
  3. Virginia
  4. Portugal
  5. Turkey
  6. Egypt
  7. Jordan
  8. England
  9. Arizona
  10. Texas
  11. North Carolina