About

I help teams use AI well.

Former Marine Corps officer. Naval Academy graduate. I've been obsessed with automating work since 2012, and I've built automation into every job I've ever had. Now I do it for small businesses - practically, safely, no jargon.

Stephen Thorn, AI consultant in Raleigh-Durham NC - leading AI workshops and training
Stephen Thorn, AI consultant in Raleigh-Durham NC - AI trainer and consultant
Background

How I got here

I'm Stephen Thorn, an AI consultant and trainer in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. I help small businesses - usually 2 to 50 people - choose AI tools, set up workflows that save time, and train their teams to use them well. Not an enterprise firm, not an agency. One person with a long technical background who makes AI useful for businesses that didn't think it was for them.

The through-line is automation. I've built it into every job I've had since 2012 - running robotic warehouse operations, leading Marines, and now building production AI systems for small businesses. When I automate a workflow for you, it isn't a trick I picked up when AI got popular. It's what I've done my whole career.

Experience

Career

$60M in inventory moved by an autonomous warehouse I ran. $0 to $1M in revenue growth I drove. 98% of engineering setup time cut by tooling I built.

Head of Solution Engineering, North America

TiDB

2024 - Present
  • Built a production RAG-based AI system for internal knowledge retrieval and customer-facing use cases
  • Founded and leading TiDB's AI Center of Excellence, driving AI adoption across engineering and GTM

Advisor

Coroot · Part-time

2024 - 2026
  • Technical and go-to-market advisor to an open-source observability startup

Principal Solutions Engineer, Federal

Babel Street (formerly Vertical Knowledge)

2023 - 2024
  • Generated $20M in new pipeline leading technical GTM for DoD and intelligence-community customers
  • Built an online data marketplace for government intelligence customers, and a custom search tool that cut analyst data-search time by 98%
  • Company's technical solutioning expert for federal RFPs across the IC and DoD

Founding US & GTM Leader; Senior Director, Solutions Architecture AI/ML

Sosivio · also served as Advisor

2021 - 2023
  • Founding commercial operator - built the entire GTM motion from $0 to $1M ARR
  • Led a product overhaul and website redesign that drove a 200% increase in downloads; contributed code to the Sosivio Kubernetes Operator
  • Advised the CEO on fundraising, exit strategy, and board-level decisions

Senior Solutions Engineer

Percona

2019 - 2021
  • Designed a workshop platform that cut engineering setup, configuration, and testing time by 98% - adopted across the SE organization
  • Exceeded quota by 100%+ for two consecutive years; published 23 workshops, webinars, and technical blog posts

AI Robotics Operations Manager

Symbotic

2017 - 2019
  • Ran operations for a fully autonomous AI-driven robotic warehouse processing $60M in inventory for Walmart
  • Drove a 30% increase in AI system throughput through process optimization

Infantry Officer, Chief of Staff & Operations Director

United States Marine Corps

2012 - 2017
  • Led teams of up to 200 personnel across complex, high-stakes operational environments
  • Built a Twitter sentiment analysis engine in 2012 to gauge the national mood from public social data
Skills

What I bring

AI Agents & LLM Tooling

Building production AI agent systems professionally. I know what works, where the sharp edges are, and how to get real output from these tools.

Technical Communication

Career built on making complex systems understandable for decision-makers and practitioners.

Go-to-Market & Revenue

Led $9.3M renewals and built $20M pipelines. I understand the commercial side of technical work.

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWS, GCP, Kubernetes (CKA + CKS certified), Linux, distributed databases, Terraform. Hands-on, not just advisory.

Training & Coaching

Custom 1:1 and group training for teams building AI into their workflows. Certified by Anthropic, Google, IBM, and Wharton.

Leadership & Operations

Marine Corps officer and startup founding hire. Cross-functional executive leadership in high-stakes environments.

Certifications & Education

United States Naval Academy B.S. Information Technology, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD

  • AI for Business Specialization Wharton School (UPenn)
  • Google AI Professional Google
  • Anthropic AI Fluency · MCP · Agent Skills Anthropic
  • AWS Solutions Architect Amazon Web Services
  • GCP Cloud Engineer Google Cloud
  • RAG and Agentic AI Professional IBM
Honest About Scope

What I'm not

I'm not an ML researcher, not building neural networks from scratch, not an enterprise infrastructure consultant, and not a healthcare compliance or legal advisor.

I use AI at a professional level every day and help real teams get practical value from it. If your needs go beyond that, I'll tell you directly and point you somewhere better. That honesty is part of the deal.

Want to work together?

Whether you need AI training, consulting, or want to talk about a project. I'd be happy to hear from you.

Get in Touch

No pressure, no upsells. Just a straightforward conversation about what would help.