Patrick Ortell
VP Engineering | CTO | Technical AI Product Manager | AI/ML Leader
Fort Collins, CO (Remote-First)
Summary
Engineering leader and AI/ML practitioner with 14+ years shipping production systems — not demos, not decks, not prototypes. 3 exits. Teams scaled from 2 to 80+. Products from $0 to $50M ARR. I’ve been CTO, VP Engineering, Technical Product Owner, ML Engineer, and Fractional CTO across startups, enterprise AI platforms, and decentralized protocol teams. Off the clock, I do pro bono AI/ML work for nonprofits, mentor at Techstars (#GiveFirst, All Star Mentor 3 consecutive years), and ship open-source projects that are equal parts unhinged and useful.
Key Achievements
AI/ML & Product
- First AI chatbot in AgTech — A full year ahead of any competitor; designed prompts, reduced hallucinations, iterated on adoption data
- Custom PyTorch + OpenCV pipeline — Spectral imaging cameras analyzing plant health (mold, disease, transpiration rates)
- RAG system — Ingesting 2,000+ academic studies, deployed as a daily copilot for greenhouse growers via Azure GPT
- Langchain agents — OSS + closed LLMs + NLTK converting natural language into cross-domain database queries
- Predictive models + digital twins — Integrated with PRIVA environmental controls and CFD models for real-time greenhouse optimization
- On-chain LLM context portability — Vendor-agnostic AI conversations stored cryptographically on the Frequency blockchain
- Rust-based PII security nodes — Daemon processes giving users real-time control over unauthorized data transmission to brokers
Outcomes & Delivery
- 70% support cost reduction — Via LLM-powered automation (GPT-4, Langchain)
- 85% fewer production incidents — Through MLOps discipline (MLflow, CI/CD, observability)
- 30% ML model performance improvement — Via pipeline optimization and training iteration
- 100% on-time delivery — 8 consecutive quarters directing an 11-person distributed team
- 60% MTTR reduction — Via Grafana/Prometheus observability framework
- 25% operational efficiency improvement — Through technology introduction
- 20% cloud cost reduction — Via infrastructure migration
Leadership & Scale
- $0 to $50M ARR — Grew engineering org from senior IC to VP level
- 3 successful exits — SpexAI, biemedia, Pegcog/Techstars
- Teams scaled from 2 to 80+ — Across CTO, VP Engineering, and Technical Product Owner roles
- IC → Director → VP → CTO — Progressive leadership across multiple companies
- 95% team satisfaction — In weekly 1:1s; built high-trust remote-first engineering cultures
- Automated technical + product due diligence pipelines — For Techstars applicant evaluation
Open Source & Community
- 4 OSS projects — Synthetic user research (Bureau of Synthetic Affairs), expert duplication via LoRA (Xerox Project), multi-agent PRD validation (PRD Executioner), ML-powered social network (Narwal)
- 11 nonprofit AI/ML infrastructure projects — Via arus impact — OSINT for Bellingcat, press freedom intelligence for RSF, humanitarian early warning systems
- Techstars All Star Mentor — 3 consecutive years
- Code for America — FOCO chapter, 9+ years
- Youth hackathon mentor — Poudre School District, 9+ years
Experience
Mentor
Techstars | Jun 2023 – Present | Boulder, CO (Part-Time, Hybrid) | #GiveFirst
Pro bono lead mentor for early-stage companies in the Techstars program — providing the full spectrum of fractional CTO/CPO advisory as a give-back to the founder community.
- AI/ML model evaluation, framework selection, vector database architecture, and vendor assessment for early-stage companies building AI-powered products
- Hands-on guidance on LLM integration, prompt engineering, RAG architectures, and ML infrastructure design
- Product-market fit validation, product discovery, and roadmap prioritization
- Compliance guidance including SOC2, DevOps best practices, and technical due diligence prep
- Technical hiring support — sourcing, assessment, and onboarding for engineering and ML roles
- Built automated technical and product due diligence pipelines for Techstars — grading program applicants across a structured evaluation matrix
Founder & Technical Advisor
arus.io | Feb 2010 – Present | Colorado (Remote)
Fractional CTO/CPO and technical advisor for early-stage startups. 16 years of engineering, product, and leadership experience distilled into high-impact advisory — a few hours a month, async-first, no chaos.
- LLM strategy and implementation (RAG, agents, prompt engineering, model selection)
- ML pipeline architecture, MLOps, and model deployment guidance
- AI product discovery — helping founders identify where AI creates real value vs. hype
- Architecture reviews, code reviews, technology selection, and cloud infrastructure design
- Product-market fit validation, roadmap development, and fundraising support
- Technical hiring — sourcing, assessment, and onboarding for engineering and ML roles
- Founder sanity checks — the honest, low-ego perspective on what to build, what to skip, and what to fix
Technical Product Manager
Project Liberty — Frequency Protocol | Nov 2022 – Nov 2025 | Remote
Technical Product Owner for Frequency, a decentralized social protocol. Led both core protocol delivery and AI/ML initiatives focused on data sovereignty, LLM context portability, and privacy-preserving infrastructure.
- Led development of an open-source system for storing LLM conversation contexts on the Frequency blockchain — enabling portable, vendor-agnostic AI interactions without vendor lock-in
- Designed B2B user-approved LLM context sharing framework — a consent-based data marketplace on decentralized infrastructure
- Directed development of Rust-based PII security nodes — daemon processes giving users real-time control over leaked data being passed to data brokers
- Directed 11-person distributed team across 4 time zones building a Rust-based decentralized social protocol
- Achieved 100% on-time delivery across 8 consecutive quarters, shipping 4 major protocol releases
- Reduced mean time to recovery (MTTR) by 60% through Grafana/Prometheus observability framework
Rust, TypeScript, Svelte, AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, GraphQL, LLMs (GPT, Claude, Phi), cryptographic protocols, on-chain storage
Machine Learning Engineer & Product Owner
SpexAI GmbH | Sep 2022 – Mar 2025 | Remote (Acquired)
Technical Product Owner & MLOps Lead for enterprise AI platform serving agricultural customers. Led the full AI/ML product portfolio — from computer vision pipelines to LLM-powered copilots — across the entire greenhouse operations stack.
- Built custom OpenCV + PyTorch object detection pipeline for spectral imaging cameras analyzing plant health in real time — detecting mold, disease, and measuring transpiration rates
- Shipped the first AI chatbot/assistant in AgTech — a full year ahead of any competitor — designed prompts, optimized for accuracy, reduced hallucinations
- Reduced support costs 70% by building LLM-powered automation (GPT-4, Langchain) — end-to-end from prompt engineering through deployment and monitoring
- Architected a RAG system ingesting 2,000+ academic studies on plant health and botany — deployed as a daily copilot for greenhouse growers via Azure GPT
- Designed Langchain agents (OSS + closed LLMs + NLTK) converting natural language into cross-domain database queries for greenhouse operations
- Built predictive models + digital twins integrated with PRIVA environmental controls and CFD models for real-time greenhouse optimization
- Improved ML model performance by 30% through pipeline optimization, training iteration, and model tuning
- Cut production incidents 85% through MLOps discipline (MLflow, monitoring, CI/CD)
Python, PyTorch, OpenCV, GPT-4, Azure OpenAI, Langchain, NLTK, AWS SageMaker, Kubernetes, Terraform, MLflow, PRIVA, Vector DBs
Vice President of Engineering
Choi Holdings | Sep 2021 – Jun 2022 | Remote
Led engineering for an NFT marketplace platform built on the Flow blockchain — from smart contracts to consumer-facing product.
- Managed distributed team of 18 engineers across 4 time zones
- Architected and shipped NFT minting, marketplace, and wallet integration on the Flow blockchain using the Flow SDK
- Achieved 95% satisfaction rating in weekly 1:1s; built high-trust engineering culture
- Partnered with business teams to align engineering priorities with product and business outcomes
Nest.js, TypeScript, React, Flow SDK, Vue.js, Swift, Kotlin, Terraform, AWS, Kubernetes
Chief Technology Officer
TiLT | Jun 2020 – Mar 2021
CTO for an FMLA leave management platform navigating one of the most complex compliance landscapes in HR tech — HIPAA, insurance provider integrations, payroll systems, internal HR workflows, and federal government reporting.
- Led team of 7 engineers; owned technical roadmap and architecture decisions
- Architected integrations across HIPAA-compliant data pipelines connecting insurance companies, payroll providers, HR systems, and federal reporting requirements
- Reduced cloud costs 20% by migrating from Heroku to AWS while maintaining HIPAA compliance
Node.js, TypeScript, GraphQL, React, AWS
VP of Engineering
Radar Relay | Apr 2018 – Jun 2020 | Promoted from Senior Engineer → Director → VP
One of the earliest decentralized exchanges (DEX) on Ethereum — an open order book relayer built on the 0x protocol. Wallet-to-wallet, non-custodial trading with no accounts, no deposits, no trading limits.
- Grew from IC to VP, managing 15 direct reports building decentralized trading infrastructure
- Shipped 4 technical strategies aligned with SEC compliance requirements — navigating novel regulatory territory for tokenized asset trading
- Built the engineering architecture for 0x protocol integration, smart DEX routing, multi-liquidity source aggregation (Uniswap, Kyber, Curve), and margin trading via dYdX
- Collaborated with SEC on compliance frameworks for decentralized asset trading — one of the first teams to operate a DEX within a regulatory compliance model
Node.js, TypeScript, GraphQL, Vue.js, React, Python, Golang, Ethereum, 0x Protocol, Hyperledger, AWS, GCP
Chief Technology Officer
TurboTenant | Oct 2016 – Apr 2018 | Fort Collins, CO
CTO for a property management SaaS platform for independent landlords — now serving 900K+ landlords nationwide. Full rental lifecycle: listing syndication (28+ sites), tenant screening (TransUnion), online applications, lease generation, rent collection, and maintenance management.
- Managed 9 direct reports; owned technical roadmap, architecture, and hiring
- Introduced 3 new technologies driving 25% operational efficiency improvement
- Built the core platform infrastructure that still powers the product today
Node.js, React, Ruby, PostgreSQL, AWS
Senior Software Engineer → Director of R&D
CommercialTribe | Apr 2015 – Dec 2016 | Denver Metropolitan Area
Director of R&D for a sales enablement and LMS SaaS platform — helping enterprise sales teams shorten ramp times and boost quota attainment through video-based practice, coaching, and certification workflows.
- Managed 12 engineers across 3 time zones; achieved 90% sprint completion rate
- Built WebRTC-based real-time video platform powering the core product
- Shipped React Native mobile application extending the platform to mobile-first sales workflows
- Led R&D on video analysis and coaching feedback features
WebRTC, React Native, React, Node.js, AWS
Earlier: Software Engineer at Cadence & Cause · Software Developer / Product Owner at Levels Beyond (Reach Engine) · Developer at biemedia (acquired) · Engineer at Techstars/Pegcog (acquired) · Intern at Mozilla
Technical Skills
- AI/ML & Prompt Engineering — LLMs, PyTorch, TensorFlow, OpenCV, Langchain/LangGraph, A2A, NLTK, prompt optimization, hallucination reduction, AI assistant/agent design, RAG architectures, NL2SQL, computer vision, object detection, digital twins, CFD modeling, predictive modeling, MLflow, SageMaker/Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Vertex, MLOps, model deployment, AI context portability, data sovereignty
- Product Management — Product discovery, requirements definition, success metrics, stakeholder management, workflow design, adoption tracking, PMF validation, technical due diligence, Agile/Scrum, sprint planning, roadmap development
- Languages — Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Rust, Golang, Ruby, Scala, Swift, Kotlin
- Frontend — React, Next.js, Svelte, React Native/Expo, Vue.js, AngularJS, D3.js
- Backend — Node.js, Nest.js, GraphQL, REST APIs, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Redis, Vector DBs, data pipelines, WebRTC, real-time streaming
- Infrastructure & DevOps — AWS (SageMaker, Bedrock, Lambda, ECS/EKS, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, CloudFront, Route53, IAM, CloudWatch), GCP (Vertex AI, BigQuery, Cloud Run, GKE), Microsoft Azure, Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, Docker, CI/CD, SOC2 compliance, Grafana, Prometheus
- Blockchain — Ethereum, Hyperledger, Substrate/Rust protocols, SEC-compliant trading systems, cryptographic protocols, on-chain data storage, decentralized identity
- Leadership — IC → Director → VP → CTO progression; teams scaled from 2 to 80+; up to 18 direct reports; 95% team satisfaction; high-trust remote-first and async engineering cultures; full-cycle technical recruiting; 3 successful exits; $0 to $50M ARR
Open Source & Nonprofit Impact
arus impact — AI/ML infrastructure for nonprofits doing real impact work. Data pipelines, ML tools, and integration middleware — scoped for mission, not margin. 501(c)(3) focused, pro bono.
Featured Projects
- Bellingcat — OSINT Investigation Infrastructure — Entity resolution, computer vision geolocation, and multilingual monitoring pipelines for open-source investigations supporting human rights accountability
- Reporters Without Borders — Press Freedom Intelligence — Automated violation monitoring, Press Freedom Index pipeline acceleration, and Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) certification tooling
- CyberPeace Institute — Cybersecurity Intelligence — Scaling threat intelligence, volunteer matching, and cyber-resilience tooling from 240 NGOs to 10,000
- Data-Pop Alliance — Humanitarian Early Warning — Flood prediction pipelines, geospatial analytics, and humanitarian data infrastructure for climate-vulnerable communities
- Fairplay — Children’s Tech Accountability — Automated dark pattern detection, platform policy monitoring, and COPPA compliance scanning for children’s digital rights advocacy
Open Source Projects
- Bureau of Synthetic Affairs — AI-powered synthetic user research system that intercepts anonymous Reddit confessions, cross-references them with federal government data, and manufactures 19-dimension synthetic personas to validate product ideas
- The Xerox Project — Expert duplication via LoRA fine-tuning — ingests academic papers, clinical research, and domain expertise, then synthesizes LoRA-weighted personas that learned the field. 94.7% voice match on first subject
- PRD Executioner — Multi-agent system that generates 50–300 synthetic user personas, has them brutally review your PRD, and surfaces hidden conflicts through multi-agent debates — all in under 5 minutes
- Narwal — Fully open-source social network built on user sovereignty and transparency, with ML-powered video content labeling and serverless content moderation
Education
Metropolitan State University of Denver — Dual BSA, Technical Communications & Computer Science (2009–2013)
Grant writing for non-profits, Digital design. Activities: Mhdivine Club, Collegiate Entrepreneurship Organization.
- Tutor GED and College prep to inner city and at-risk youth for Mhdivine club
- Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010
- Volunteer work for Soxplace with homeless teens (2009)
Certifications & Licenses
Honors & Awards
- Techstars All Star Mentor — 3 consecutive years (2023, 2024, 2025)
- Entrepreneur of the Year Award — Metropolitan State College of Denver (2010)
Volunteering & Community
- Code for America — FOCO Chapter (Jun 2016 – Present, 9+ years) — Using technology to solve everyday challenges for nonprofits, schools, government, and grassroots organizations in Fort Collins
- Youth Hackathon Mentor — Poudre School District (Sep 2016 – Present, 9+ years) — Mentoring students building apps for mental health, nutrition, and physical activity
- Mentor — Sox Place (Jan 2008 – Sep 2009) — Drop-in center for homeless youth in Denver; meal prep, GED teaching, one-on-one counseling
What people say
“He will not say what you want to hear, but need to hear. Forging a solution that is fit for the task with as little ego as possible. His first product to market was the first ChatBot in an AgTech application, at least a year ahead of everyone else. Because he can cut through the noise.”
“Patrick brought a rare combination of deep technical expertise — especially in AI — and a broad command of web3, crypto, wallets, and blockchain systems. His ability to translate complex systems into clear product direction was invaluable.”
“Patrick was one of our mentors at Techstars and easily the most impactful. He has this rare ability to immediately understand a problem and zero in on smart, scrappy ways to solve it. He even jumped in to support our first AI/ML hire, from assessment to onboarding.”
“Patrick didn’t just recite technical facts. He translated ML intricacies into choices that fit our product and resource constraints. If you need someone who can make real impact in ambiguous, high-stakes environments, Patrick is the person you want in your corner.”
“He can be anything you need him to be. Architect, developer, product shepherd, teacher, organizer, leader. A bottomless well of skills. I believe he’s the best CTO in Colorado and the first stop for me on any technology endeavor.”
“Patrick has a unique character mix between setting and maintaining high standards and an overall roll-with-it attitude that positively imprints on a team. Integrity, attention to detail, commitment to deadlines, quality are a handful of traits that represent Patrick.”
“Patrick is a total pro. There is no project too big or too small for this guy. He always goes above and beyond and delivers on time — usually more than what I’ve asked for. I would jump at the opportunity to hire Patrick again in a heartbeat.”
“Patrick is an incredibly talented professional, who not only delivers industry expertise to projects, but also contributes to an inclusive work culture. With a creative mindset and an ability to think outside the box, working with Patrick is a true privilege.”
“Patrick is a visionary when it comes to solving difficult tech-related problems. He understands the needs of the users and the limitations/opportunities surrounding how to build an effective solution. It’s not often you find a DEV that puts this much thought into the how and why a product is needed.”
“Patrick is a true champion of ideas and creative innovation. He uses multiple technologies to create new and innovative applications and designs. With a high level of knowledge and understanding of web based technologies, and a side of creative genius, he makes an excellent addition to any organization.”
Let's talk
Book a 30-minute intro call. No pitch, no pressure — just a conversation to see if I can help.
Book a call