JON CARLISLE · MSPA · EVANSTON, IL

The Data
Juggernaut.

Everything we do is only as good as our data.
Even AI.

Currently shipping AI at DLA Piper 20+ years · 5 orgs · 3 countries Building tech for missions that matter
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SNOWFLAKE + AZURE LANGGRAPH AGENTS 3M+ LOCATIONS ANALYZED AWS MICROSERVICES MULTIMODAL DOCUMENT INTELLIGENCE $250K+ ANNUAL SAVINGS RESPONSIBLE AI DISTRIBUTED TEAMS @ SCALE SNOWFLAKE + AZURE LANGGRAPH AGENTS 3M+ LOCATIONS ANALYZED AWS MICROSERVICES MULTIMODAL DOCUMENT INTELLIGENCE $250K+ ANNUAL SAVINGS RESPONSIBLE AI DISTRIBUTED TEAMS @ SCALE

Receipts. Not buzzwords.

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Years building data & engineering organizations
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Engineers scaled across three countries at Omnitracs
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Annual savings delivered via the Magnolia data platform
0M+
Locations analyzed by the Location Intelligence platform we built at Omnitracs
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Faster AI workflow prioritization at DLA Piper · 80% less data servicing time at a Fortune-500 pharma

A data executive who actually likes the data.

I'm Jon. I lead engineering and AI teams that ship — across enterprise SaaS, regulated environments, and the messy middle where strategy meets production.

I started as a data architect, did a master's in predictive analytics at Northwestern, ran distributed teams across the US, India, and LATAM, and now lead AI delivery at DLA Piper. My film-school undergrad still shows up in how I tell the story of a roadmap.

The throughline of my career has been a quiet conviction: the smartest model in the world will fall over if the data underneath it is bad. I build accordingly.

Outside the day job, I run an AI consulting practice for nonprofits, founded a hydroponics nonprofit fighting food insecurity in Evanston, and am shipping a location-based iOS scavenger hunt app for the fun of it.

// Vital stats

  • roleAI Director, DLA Piper
  • basedEvanston, IL
  • educationMSPA, Northwestern
  • alsoBA Film, U of Iowa
  • superpowerProduction-ready AI
  • kryptoniteBad data hygiene
  • currently_readingarxiv, slowly

What I've shipped, what I'm shipping.

AI · CONSULTING · LIVE

AI Force Consulting

An AI consulting practice built only for nonprofits and mission-aligned orgs. Custom LLM solutions, impact measurement, fundraising optimization, and operations automation — engineered with the same rigor I bring to enterprise.

LangChainAzure OpenAIImpact MLNonprofit ops
aiforceconsulting.com →
NONPROFIT

Feed Our Communities

Hydroponic education in Evanston schools and churches, fighting food insecurity one community garden at a time.

feedourcommunities.org →
iOS APP · SOON

Scavenger Go

Every storefront is a clue. Live scavenger hunts powered by local Instagram pages, leaderboards, and real prizes.

scavenger-go.com →
DLA PIPER · 2024–PRESENT

Multimodal Document Intelligence

Azure OpenAI applications for document drafting, regulatory analysis, and structured intelligence at one of the world's largest law firms — built on LangChain, LangGraph, Azure AI Search, and LangFuse.

LangGraphAzure OpenAIVisual OCRKnowledge graphs
MAGNOLIA CAPITAL

Snowflake + Azure Data Platform

A greenfield modern data platform powering AI-driven analytics for a private equity firm. $250K+ saved annually.

OMNITRACS / SOLERA

Location Intelligence Platform

AWS microservices analyzing 3M+ locations and dwell patterns for enterprise logistics customers.

COMING SOON

Dream Job Finder — in the lab

An AI-powered job finder that auto-generates a recruiter-ready portfolio site for every candidate — using this very page as the design template. Built to put more humans in better roles, faster.

Agentic AIResume parsingAuto-portfolioCandidate-first

A career arc, not a list of jobs.

2024 — Present · Chicago, IL

AI Director / AI Engineering Lead

DLA Piper LLP
  • Lead AI innovation delivery across product-like and internal platform initiatives, shaping architecture and execution for rapid POCs and production applications.
  • Designed and deployed Azure OpenAI applications for document drafting, regulatory analysis, and structured document intelligence using LangChain, LangGraph, Azure AI Search, and LangFuse.
  • Recently expanded into R&D leadership shaping multimodal document intelligence, visual OCR research, and knowledge-graph exploration.
  • Champion responsible AI frameworks, explainability, and security-aware implementation in a regulated professional-services environment.
2022 — 2024 · Chicago, IL

Vice President, Product & Engineering

Magnolia Capital
  • Built and led the engineering organization delivering greenfield data and AI products for a private equity firm.
  • Delivered a modern Snowflake + Azure + Power BI data platform — $250K+ saved annually.
  • Established delivery practices that moved work from pilot to production with reproducibility and accountability.
2019 — 2022 · Chicago, IL

Senior Director of Engineering

Omnitracs (acquired by Solera)
  • Scaled distributed engineering team from 10 to 30+ engineers across three countries.
  • Oversaw an AWS microservices Location Intelligence system analyzing 3M+ locations and dwell patterns for enterprise customers.
  • Established agile, DevOps, data pipeline, and observability practices across a remote-first culture.
2017 — 2019 · Chicago, IL

Manager, Strategic Analytics

Trianz (CBIG Consulting)
  • Led AI, data, and predictive analytics engagements for Fortune 500 clients — translating exec goals into production cloud platforms.
  • Cloud migration + Snowflake adoption for pharma client: 80% reduction in data servicing time.
  • Defined ML best practices and built internal training on deep learning, cloud analytics, and production data engineering.
Earlier career

Senior Project Manager & Earlier Consulting

Rotary International · IHSA · Sylectus · others
  • Worked directly with engineering in Pune, India on cross-regional delivery — early experience leading across time zones.
  • Built a healthcare data warehouse for IHSA and delivered enterprise BI/analytics solutions across consulting roles.
  • Contributed to Sylectus revenue growth supporting a highly configurable transportation management platform.

Tools sharp, thinking sharper.

01 Engineering Leadership

Global distributed teams Managers of managers Hiring management Performance management Career development Executive communication

02 AI & ML

LangGraph LangChain Azure OpenAI LangFuse Agentic workflows Responsible AI Multimodal docs OCR / KG MLflow Azure ML

03 Data Platforms

Snowflake Databricks PySpark SQL Power BI Pipeline architecture Observability

04 Cloud & Architecture

AWS Azure Microservices Cloud-native systems APIs CI/CD Production reliability

05 Languages

Python SQL TypeScript R Scala (functional)

06 Education & Certifications

MSPA, Northwestern BA Film, U of Iowa Snowflake Certified Red Teaming LLMs CrewAI R Programming Functional Scala (EPFL)

Let's build something good.

Hiring, partnering, sponsoring, or just curious how data should actually work? My inbox is open.

SYSTEM // OPERATIONAL