Applied AI Consulting

About

I am a machine learning engineer with over 20 years of experience. I have worked with innovative companies such as Airbnb and GitHub, which included early LLM research used by OpenAI for code understanding. I have also led and contributed to numerous popular open-source machine-learning tools. I am currently an independent consultant helping companies operationalize Large Language Models (LLMs) to accelerate their AI product journey.

I have worked with leading companies on AI products such as Weights & Biases, Replicate, Modal, Honeycomb, Rechat, LangChain and Answer AI.

Problems I Solve

You should consider hiring me if …

  • You don’t know how to improve your LLM products systematically.
  • Your LLMs need to be cheaper or faster.
  • You are overwhelmed by tools & frameworks.
  • Feel lost on what to prioritize and what experiments you should run.
  • Need outside expertise to evaluate your needs and vet potential talent.

Services

I offer two tiers of services to support your goals.

Tier 1: Strategy

I will advise you on the following topics:

  • LLM performance issues: (cost, quality, speed)
  • Custom Evaluation Systems
  • RAG, Fine-Tuning, and Prompt Engineering
  • Strategy & Hiring: I will introduce you to talent, vendors, and partners in my network.

I’ll give you ongoing feedback and guidance via regular meetings with your team. This will help you avoid common pitfalls and select the right tools and techniques, saving you time and money.

Tier 2: Comprehensive

Everything in Tier 1, plus:

  • Implementation: I’ll write production-ready code and/or prototypes to accelerate your AI product development.
  • Domain-Specific Evaluation Systems: I’ll design and implement custom evaluation systems to measure the performance and reliability of your LLMs.
  • Hands-On Model Optimization: I’ll fine-tune, prompt engineer and debug models to improve performance and efficiency.
  • Development Tools and Infrastructure: Build custom tools and infrastructure to streamline your AI development process.
  • Content and Writing: Produce written documents and blogs to communicate best practices, methodologies, and practical case studies to your stakeholders
  • Team Growth & Hiring: Work with 2-4 people individually on your team to rapidly upskill them on AI. I will also help you source and evaluate key hires.

I only work with one Tier 2 client at a time.

Pricing

I work on a monthly retainer basis. The cost depends on the tier of service you choose:

  • Strategy: $14,575/month
  • Comprehensive: $58,300/month

Contact me at hamel@parlance-labs.com to discuss starting an engagement. You can also book a paid call if you need immediate short-form advice.

Current & Past Clients

  • Replicate: development of fine-tuning serverless infrastructure using axolotl and optimized LLM inference.
  • Weights & Biases: Provide product guidance for evaluation, annotation, and observability. I am currently assisting with their LLM initiatives.
  • Honeycomb: Currently improving the natural language query assistant through evaluation systems and fine-tuning.
  • LangChain/LangSmith: provided product guidance for enterprise LLM tools.
  • Modal: Serverless tools for fine-tuning.
  • Rechat: I am working on Lucy, a conversational AI for real estate agents. You can read about my recent work on Rechat here.
  • Answer.ai: Conduct research on new LLM applications and help with product strategy.
  • Axolotl: I am a core contributor to axolotl, a library for efficient fine-tuning of LLMs.
  • Posit: Helped Posit expand into the Python AI and ML ecosystem.
  • Catena: LLM infrastructure such as routing, evaluation, and orchestration.
  • Luminai: Improving the accuracy and efficacy of AI Agents that automate tasks in the browser.

Where You Can Find Me

I’m active on Twitter and GitHub. Also, I write about building AI products on my blog.