Seattle · Enterprise AI

AI that earns its keep in Puget Sound's plants, hospitals and insurers

Seattle is home to some of the biggest AI platforms on earth. The aerospace plants, health systems, insurers and retailers around them still need AI that runs on their data and moves a number. That's where I work.

Talk about your Seattle team Industries I work with

23.3%Growth in real GDP of the Seattle metro, 2018 to 2023 (computed from the BEA chart data below) Source

+7.7%Change in annual average nonfarm jobs, 2020 to 2025 (computed from the BLS chart data below) Source

4,161,883Residents of the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro, 2025 Source

Seattle companies don't need convincing that AI is real. The region's cloud and research ecosystem made sure of that. What I hear from operating companies here is different: we have access to every model and platform, we've run pilots, and we still can't point to a line on the P&L that moved. That gap between capability and result is the job.

I'm an independent enterprise AI consultant based in Minnesota, with 20 years across sales, paid acquisition, marketing technology, CRO and analytics, and more than $50M in managed ad spend behind a habit of measuring everything. I design, build and optimize agentic AI workflows, RAG and knowledge systems, and private AI infrastructure for regulated and industrial businesses. Every engagement is tied to one KPI from day one, runs at a fixed scope and fixed price, and shows you working software every week.

The metro has grown fast. Real GDP in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue rose 23.3% from 2018 to 2023, and annual average nonfarm employment in 2025 was 7.7% above 2020. But job growth nearly stalled after 2023, adding under 10,000 jobs in two years. When headcount flattens and demand doesn't, the companies that win are the ones that get more throughput from the teams they have.

Seattle's industries, and where AI moves the number.

The sectors that anchor the Seattle economy, and the specific work I do for each.

01 / Industry

Aerospace and heavy manufacturing

Boeing builds the 737 MAX in Renton and wide-body aircraft at its Everett factory, and PACCAR, maker of commercial trucks, is headquartered in Bellevue. Behind them sits a long supplier chain of machine shops, composites and precision parts makers across King, Snohomish and Pierce counties, all working under strict quality and traceability requirements.

How I help

Manufacturing here runs on documentation: work instructions, nonconformance reports, engineering changes and supplier certifications. I build knowledge systems that let engineers and technicians query that record in plain language with citations, and agents that draft nonconformance and corrective-action paperwork from structured inputs for a human to approve. Where export controls or IP rule out public APIs, it runs on private infrastructure. Targets include quality engineering hours per report, time to disposition, and first-time fix rate.

AI for Manufacturing & Supply Chains

02 / Industry

Healthcare and research medicine

Providence, a not-for-profit Catholic health system, is headquartered in Renton. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, founded in Seattle in 1975, also serves as the cancer program for UW Medicine. Clinical care, research and administration here produce a steady flood of documents that clinicians and staff still process manually.

How I help

I build retrieval systems over clinical policies, protocols and payer rules so staff get cited answers in seconds, and document pipelines that pull structured data out of referrals, authorizations and research forms. PHI stays inside controlled infrastructure with access logging. The KPI is set at kickoff, typically prior-authorization turnaround, abstraction hours per week, or time to answer a policy question.

HIPAA-Compliant Enterprise AI for Healthcare

03 / Industry

Health insurance

Premera Blue Cross is headquartered in Mountlake Terrace, just north of Seattle, and the region carries a large base of health plans, benefits administrators and brokers serving employers across the Northwest.

How I help

Insurance work is document- and rule-heavy, which is where AI pays off fastest when it's built carefully. I build claims and appeals triage agents, member and provider service assistants grounded in plan documents, and review workflows that flag missing information before a human touches the file. Everything is logged and explainable for regulators. The number we move is usually cycle time, touches per claim, or first-contact resolution.

Enterprise AI for Insurance & Underwriting

04 / Industry

Retail and consumer operations

Costco's corporate office is in Issaquah and Starbucks is headquartered in Seattle's SoDo neighborhood. Around them is a large base of retail, distribution and consumer brands running high-volume supplier, store and customer operations.

How I help

The opportunity is in the operational back office: supplier onboarding and compliance document review, store and field operations knowledge assistants, and customer service workflows that resolve routine cases end to end with a human on exceptions. With my background in paid acquisition and CRO, I also tie AI work to revenue metrics, not just cost. KPIs include cases resolved without escalation, onboarding cycle time and cost per contact.

Enterprise Workflow Automation

Seattle by the numbers.

Public data on the size and direction of the Seattle economy.

Seattle metro real GDPReal GDP, Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue MSA, billions of chained 2017 dollars, 2018 to 2023

Show the numbers

Year	$B
2018	395.7
2019	417.4
2020	418.4
2021	449.5
2022	459.5
2023	487.8

Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis via FRED. Series RGMP42660, millions of chained 2017 dollars, divided by 1,000 and rounded to one decimal. FRED marks this series as discontinued; 2023 is the latest value published under it.

Seattle metro nonfarm jobsTotal nonfarm employment, annual average, thousands of jobs, 2020 to 2025

Show the numbers

Year	K jobs
2020	1,973.4
2021	2,009.9
2022	2,098.5
2023	2,115.7
2024	2,124.6
2025	2,125

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED. Series SMU53426600000000001A, BLS Current Employment Statistics, annual frequency (annual average), not seasonally adjusted, thousands of persons.

Seattle's AI bench is deep and unusually research-driven. The University of Washington's Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering sits next to major R&D operations from Microsoft Research, Amazon and Google, and the Allen Institute for AI, a nonprofit founded by Paul Allen in 2014, is known for releasing fully open models along with their training data, code and evaluation suites. Fred Hutch and the Allen School also run joint programs at the intersection of biology and computer science.

For a non-tech enterprise, that proximity is useful but not sufficient. The platforms are world class; turning them into a claims workflow, a quality system or a clinical knowledge base that people actually use is a different job. I work on the buyer's side, choose tools on fit and total cost, and hold the build to an operating metric.

I run Seattle engagements remote-first from Minnesota, two hours ahead of you, and fly out when the room matters: kickoff to agree the KPI and map the workflow, a working session with the engineers, nurses, adjusters or store leads who do the job today, and launch. In between you get a weekly demo and a scorecard against the baseline. Scope and price are fixed up front, and security review, data handling and model governance are designed in from the first week so the system clears your internal gates instead of stalling at them.

Questions from Seattle teams.

We already run on a major cloud AI platform. What would you add?

The platform gives you models and services. I turn them into a specific workflow with a measured outcome: the retrieval design, the agent logic, evaluation tests tied to the business result, cost per task, and integration with the systems your people already use.

Can you work with export-controlled or proprietary engineering data?

Yes, with the right architecture. For sensitive manufacturing and aerospace data I design private or on-prem deployments where data and inference stay inside your controlled environment, with access control and audit logging your security team can verify.

How long before we see results?

You see working software in the first weekly demos. The engagement is scoped around one KPI with a baseline measured at the start, so you know by the end of the fixed scope whether the number moved and by how much.

Do you come on-site in Seattle?

When it helps. Typical on-site moments are the kickoff, a hands-on workshop with frontline teams, and go-live week. The rest runs remotely, which keeps the price fixed and the pace steady.

Put AI to work in Seattle, tied to a number.

Tell me the process or the problem. You'll get a straight answer on what it's worth and what it would take.

Let's talk

AI that earns its keep in Puget Sound's plants, hospitals and insurers

Seattle's industries, and where AI moves the number.

Aerospace and heavy manufacturing

Healthcare and research medicine

Health insurance

Retail and consumer operations

Seattle by the numbers.

Questions from Seattle teams.

Put AI to work in Seattle, tied to a number.

Other markets I work in.

Sources