Open to opportunities

Sterling Blood

@sterlingblood

Message

AI-native data executive building scalable data platforms and high-leverage teams.

United States

Message

What I'm looking for

I seek leadership roles building AI-native data platforms and MLOps teams where I can drive product impact, cost-efficient infrastructure, and scalable, AI-augmented engineering productivity.

I am an AI-native data executive with a decade of experience designing and delivering scalable data platforms, ML systems, and high-leverage teams from 0→1 to enterprise scale. I combine strategic leadership with hands-on technical execution to create measurable business impact and operational efficiency.

At Jasper AI I was the first data hire, architecting a 0→1 data platform that supported 1.5M users and 715M+ content generations, reduced cloud spend by $500K+ annually, and delivered real-time pipelines and automated revenue recognition for board-level reporting.

I have led data and ML organizations through hypergrowth, productionized ML workflows and event-driven underwriting services, and founded a consultancy delivering AI-driven platforms and rapid production launches. I prioritize pragmatic MLOps, cost-efficient architecture, and AI-augmented engineering productivity.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Cofounder & Chief Consultant

Current

Crimson Edge

Jan 2025 - Present (1 year 1 month)

Founded consultancy delivering AI-driven data platforms and ML solutions for startups, delivering rapid data platform builds and Terraform-based infrastructure and CI/CD for initial production launches.

Consulting Data Platform Terraform CI CD MLOps Rapid Prototyping Infrastructure Automation

Current

Director of Data Engineering

Current

Jasper AI

Jun 2022 - Present (3 years 8 months)

First data hire who built Jasper's 0→1 data platform powering analytics, AI, and GTM across 1.5M users and 715M+ content generations; reduced cloud spend by $500K+ annually and delivered real-time personalization pipelines.

Data Platform BigQuery GCP DBT Airflow Pub Sub Cost Optimization Python

Senior Manager, Data & ML Engineering

Divvy

Sep 2019 - Jun 2022 (2 years 9 months)

Built and scaled Divvy's data and ML engineering org through hypergrowth, productionized ML workflows with SageMaker and MLflow, and delivered real-time underwriting services for credit decisioning.

MLOps Sagemaker MLFlow AWS Real Time Systems Team Leadership

Machine Learning Engineering Manager

Progressive Leasing

Jul 2016 - Sep 2019 (3 years 2 months)

Led ML engineering efforts to productionize models that generated $20M+ annual lift via credit limit optimization and integrated scikit-learn models into production underwriting systems.

Machine Learning A B Testing Python scikit learn Optimization

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

University of Utah

Master of Science, Statistics

Grade: Magna Cum Laude

Completed a Master of Science in Statistics with a mathematical emphasis; thesis focused on imbalanced classification problems and graduated Magna Cum Laude.