Why hire a founder-engineer instead of an agency placement
Most "AI engineer" hiring in the Triangle routes through staffing agencies that place a resume and step back. This is the opposite. You work directly with the person writing the code: scoping the problem, choosing the architecture, shipping it to production, and owning what happens when it runs. There is no bench, no account manager, and no hand-off to someone junior after the sales call.
That matters most for AI work, where the hard part is rarely the model call. It is the plumbing around it — routing, retrieval, evaluation, and knowing when the system is quietly wrong. Those decisions are easier to make well when the same person owns them from prototype to production.
AI systems built here
Model gateways for tool-using agents
A routing layer in front of models that dispatches tool-using agents, handles fallback, and keeps agent behavior observable in production rather than a black box.
RAG that stays honest
Retrieval-augmented generation wired to real source data, so answers are grounded in your documents instead of the model's guesswork.
Evaluation harnesses
Harnesses that backtest AI output against historical ground truth, so you can measure whether a change actually improved quality before it ships.
A live real-time voice agent
Not a slide — a real-time voice agent you can pick up the phone and talk to. Ask for a link and try it before you commit to anything.
The through-line across all of it: production AI whose every decision is signed, anchored, and independently auditable. If a system makes a call, you can prove what it saw and why it acted — which is what regulated and federally-adjacent buyers in the Triangle actually need.
Production track record
in payments moved as Director of Engineering at a neobank over ~3 years, at 100% uptime — leading 17 engineers across 5 products.
of React / TypeScript. Owned all commits on the Snap! Spend customer-facing React app and wrote core payments code across the platform.
At the neobank the payments stack was the real thing: Stripe Connect multi-tenant, Plaid ACH, Apple Pay and Google Pay, fraud rules, and KYC/KYB. Earlier work includes a WebRTC platform for the Emmys, built in React in 5 weeks, and a React dashboard on top of a Rails EHR (Medaxion) — real healthcare and real-time-media experience alongside fintech.
Beyond client work, the studio has shipped its own hard systems: Nectar, a programming language written in Rust that compiles to WebAssembly with a public compiler and 2,500+ tests; a multi-tenant payments and field-ops platform on Stripe, Temporal, and Postgres (Rust/Node on GCP); and a tamper-evident audit trail signed with post-quantum cryptography (ML-DSA, provisional patent filed).
A fit for regulated and federally-adjacent work in the Triangle
The Research Triangle is dense with life sciences, government-adjacent, and enterprise buyers who cannot use AI they can't audit. Hibiscus Consulting is an SBIR-eligible small business, which makes it a clean fit for federally-adjacent contracts, and the whole engineering posture — signed, anchored, independently auditable decisions — is built for exactly that kind of scrutiny.
Ways to engage
- Founding engineer — join early and build the first production AI systems with equity on the table.
- Senior / staff / director — a full-time hire who has led engineering teams and shipped payments at scale.
- Contract — scoped project work to design, build, and ship an AI system end to end.
All three are open, remote across the US or Triangle-local from Cary. The fastest way to start is a short email describing what you're trying to ship.
Related reading
Frequently asked questions
Who is available to hire as an AI engineer in Raleigh?
Blake Burnette, through his studio Hibiscus Consulting LLC, based in Cary in the Research Triangle. He is a founder-engineer who ships production AI end to end and previously spent ~3 years as Director of Engineering at a neobank. Reach him at blake@hibiscus.buzz.
Is this a staffing agency or an individual engineer?
Neither a staffing agency nor a placement. You work directly with the founder-engineer who scopes, architects, builds, and ships the work himself — no bench, no hand-off to a junior after the sales call.
What kinds of AI systems have actually been built?
Model gateways that route tool-using agents, RAG systems grounded in real source data, evaluation harnesses that backtest output against historical ground truth, and a live real-time voice agent you can call and talk to. The consistent goal is production AI whose every decision is signed, anchored, and independently auditable.
Does he work remotely, or only in the Triangle?
Both. Hibiscus is based in Cary and available Triangle-local for Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill teams, and works remotely with clients across the US.
Can this work fit federally-adjacent or regulated projects?
Yes. Hibiscus Consulting is an SBIR-eligible small business, and the engineering approach — auditable, cryptographically signed decisions (ML-DSA post-quantum, provisional patent filed) — is designed for regulated and government-adjacent environments common in the Research Triangle.
Ready to hire?
Send a short note about what you want to ship. You'll hear back from the person who will actually build it.
Email blake@hibiscus.buzz