Christopher C. Cook · AI & Engineering Leadership

From one engineer to adefense AI departmentwith DoD-approvedproduction AI.

Five years as Director of AI at ORBIS: a ten-engineer core team, project managers under my direction running programs of 30+ with the Navy, shipyards, and industry partners, a direct working line to the C-suite, and copyrighted IP that became the company's main research revenue engine. In 2026, as Senior Director of AI at Frontier Design, I built an agentic proposal engine and the evaluation layer behind it.

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Christopher Cook in a navy suit and checked shirt, seated at a desk in front of data-visualization screens
Charleston, SC32.78° N · 79.93° W

Executive Leadership, Engineering Leadership, AI Strategy, Building AI Organizations, AI Governance, Production Machine Learning, LLM Evaluation, Secure, Locally Deployed AI, Agentic Systems, DoD Program Delivery, Business Development & Capture

Scope and outcomes

  • 1 → 10core

    leading programs of 30+

    AI engineers in the department I founded as its only engineer. I directed the project managers running the programs and worked directly with the C-suite.

  • ~$7M

    In consecutive DoD contracts on one AI program I procured and led, alongside additional multimillion-dollar DoD programs

  • 5 / 5

    Performance rating, five consecutive years as Director of AI

// 01What I lead

Four areas I own as an AI leader

Each one links to the case studies that show it in practice.

  1. 01AI Strategy & TransformationDeciding where AI is worth its cost, then building the roadmap, the funding case, and the program capture that delivers it.Evidence
  2. 02Enterprise AI Platforms & EngineeringProduction computer vision, forecasting, and language-model systems, including training and deployment inside accredited boundaries.Evidence
  3. 03AI Governance & Responsible AdoptionModel-access controls, segregated environments, evaluation harnesses, and human oversight that let AI ship where errors carry consequences.Evidence
  4. 04Teams, Talent & Organizational ChangeBuilding AI organizations from zero, developing leaders inside them, and earning headcount through delivered value.Evidence

// 02Selected leadership impact

Organizational initiatives, with the outcome attached

All 5 case studies
DeliveredLeadership · Strategy

Founding and scaling an AI department

ORBIS, Inc. · defense engineering and R&D · Aug 2020 – Jan 2026

Built an AI function from a single engineer into a ten-engineer core leading defense programs of 30+ people, with the Navy, shipyards, a university, and industry partners around it.

core AI engineers, department founded as its only engineer
1 → 10
on programs across departments, contract experts, and government partners
30+
Challenge
A defense engineering and R&D firm wanted applied AI but had no team, standards, or delivery record in it.
What I led
Founded the department as its first engineer and owned AI/ML strategy from problem definition through production deployment.
Outcome
AI department scaled from 1 to 10 core engineers; programs of 30+ led across departments, contractors, and government partners.
ProductionPlatforms · Strategy · Governance

AI defect recognition approved for submarine-construction shipyards

ORBIS, Inc. · DoD program · 2020 – 2026

Took a radiographic defect-recognition system from a blank page to DoD approval for shipyard integration, anchoring roughly $7M in consecutive contracts.

three consecutive DoD contracts
~$7M
approval for shipyard integration
DoD
Challenge
Inspectors review radiographic imagery of welds and castings where a missed defect has physical consequences.
What I led
Procured and led three consecutive DoD contracts worth approximately $7M.
Outcome
Department of Defense approval for shipyard integration on submarine builds.
ProductionPlatforms · Governance

An agentic proposal engine with its own evaluation layer

Frontier Design LLC · Jan 2026 – Jun 2026

Built a multi-stage LLM system that drafts proposals from structured evidence and scores its own output, and validated the grader before trusting it.

rubric dimensions in the self-score
8
strictness control on the validated autograder
0–10
Challenge
Proposals, concept notes, and two-pagers drew on past projects that lived mostly in people's memory.
What I led
Architected and built the proposal and whitepaper engine on Claude.
Outcome
Engine used to produce federal and commercial proposals, concept notes, and two-pagers.

// 03How I lead

Servant leadership, held to a demanding standard

I own the environment around the work: priorities, resources, access to customers, and protection from organizational friction. Engineers own their areas and are expected to explain their assumptions, test their conclusions, and raise risk early.

At ORBIS I kept roughly a third of the team's capacity on research without an immediate customer, and documented how those experiments turned into funded programs so the allocation survived budget reviews. That research produced the copyrighted IP behind most of the company's R&D revenue.

How the ORBIS department was builtThe operating philosophy

// 04Career at a glance

Experience

Full experience
  1. 01Jun 2026 – Present

    AI Safety, Red-Teaming & Evaluation Consultant

    Self-employed

    Adversarial evaluation of frontier AI models for clients across high-consequence domains.

  2. 02Jan 2026 – Jun 2026

    Senior Director of Artificial Intelligence

    Frontier Design LLC

    AI products, data platform, and service structure for an AI consulting and proposal firm.

  3. 03Aug 2020 – Jan 2026

    Director of Artificial Intelligence

    ORBIS, Inc.

    Founded and led the AI function of a defense engineering and R&D firm, from strategy through production delivery.

  4. 04Nov 2019 – Aug 2020

    Programmer Analyst

    Lincoln Land Community College

    Database modernization and machine learning on institutional data.

  5. 05May 2018 – Nov 2019

    Data Analyst / Programmer

    State of Illinois

    Statewide school-accountability algorithm and data remediation.

  6. 062015 – 2018

    Teaching Assistant, Mathematics & Computer Science

    University of Illinois Springfield

    Taught machine learning, data analytics, advanced calculus, and theoretical statistics.

  7. 07Jul 2007 – Mar 2010

    Sonar Technician (Submarines), Third Class Petty Officer

    U.S. Navy · USS Rhode Island Military service

    Sonar and acoustic signal processing aboard a nuclear submarine.

// 05Technical depth

Available when you want it

Every case study ends with an expandable technical perspective. For engineering leaders who want more, these go deeper.

// 06Contact

A conversation about an AI or engineering leadership mandate.

If you are filling a senior AI or engineering role, or weighing an enterprise AI decision, I am glad to talk it through.

ccook21@outlook.com LinkedIn Resume (PDF)Executive Brief
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