AI, software, and compliance, from one operator who can actually build it.
Pyro Consulting helps you adopt AI the right way, ship real software, and pass the audits that come with both. I'm Erik Jacobson, a retired USAF Ammo troop. I dig until I find the real root of the pain, then I roll up my sleeves and build the fix. Full transparency the whole way, and the shipped work to prove it.
I do what others said couldn't be done.
Every job on this page started the same way. Someone said it wasn't possible. Not on that timeline, not on that budget, not the way they'd always done it. It got done anyway. That's the kind of problem I want.
I find the real problem, then fix it with you.
No black box and no hand-waving. Here's how a project actually goes.
Listen first
I dig until I find the root of the pain, not the symptom you walked in with. The goal is a fix you actually want, not the one that's easy to sell.
Plan it in the open
You get it in writing. Roadmaps, PRDs, the real artifacts. We both know the plan before anyone builds a thing.
Roll up my sleeves
Then I get my hands dirty and build the fix. I'm in the work, not pointing at it from a slide deck.
Full transparency
You see the work as it happens. Where it stands, what's hard, what changed. No surprises waiting at the end.
Alignment every step
We check in and stay aligned the whole way, so what ships is what you needed, not what I guessed.
Most consultants are one of three things. This is all three.
A strategist talks but doesn't build. A builder builds but doesn't see the business. A compliance person checks boxes but doesn't ship. The hard problems live in the overlap, and that's the whole job here.
Sees the business
I've scaled a 3-person shop into a 20-person operation more than once. I've run $5M+ programs at 100% on-time and on-budget, plus a 200,000-user accredited platform.
Ships the software
Multi-tenant SaaS, mobile apps, and AI pipelines, built to a real production standard. Not slideware. Real systems you can open up and inspect.
Passes the audit
ISO 27001 and IL4 ATO sustained for years, and a CMMC L1/L2 program driven to readiness. All of it backed by a USAF Quality Assurance Inspector background.
Most consultants hand you a deck.
I hand you a running system with the logs to back it up.
What I help you do
Four ways in. Each one starts with the expensive problem you're feeling today, and ends with something that actually runs.
AI Adoption & Governance
The pain: Leadership said "use AI," but the team is pasting confidential data into chatbots, nobody owns the policy, there's no audit trail, and legal is nervous.
The fix: I stand up the whole program. An AI use policy people will actually follow, the right tool choices, and governance mapped to NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, the EU AI Act, and GDPR. I help your team actually adopt it, with hands-on rollout and training, plus grounded, auditable pipelines that do real work. Then I put metrics and tracking in place so you can see the ROI in real numbers, not vibes. You get a running program with logs, not a strategy deck. And if you're in the DoD or defense space, I build it to survive federal scrutiny, not just an internal review.
Build the Thing
The pain: You've got a product idea or an internal tool you need, but hiring a team is slow and expensive. And most "advisors" can't actually build. So the MVP keeps slipping.
The fix: I build and ship production software, hands on. Full-stack SaaS, mobile, AI pipelines. My AI-assisted method moves a multi-person scope at real speed without cutting corners. Multi-tenant security, offline sync, audit logs. Built properly, not as a prototype.
CMMC & Federal Compliance
The pain: A Department of Defense (DoD) or Defense Industrial Base (DIB) contract now requires CMMC L1/L2 or NIST 800-171, and your binder of policies doesn't match reality. The clock is running, and a failed assessment means lost revenue.
The fix: I run the readiness program the way I ran my own. Scope it honestly, write the policies from scratch, build the evidence, prep the self-attestation, and tell you the truth about the timeline. Need to move fast? I can deliver a two-week CMMC Level 2 snapshot assessment. You get the boundary, a gap analysis against NIST 800-171, and a prioritized plan to fix what's missing. All of it backed by a Quality Assurance Inspector background and AI-augmented GRC tooling.
Training & Immersive Learning
The pain: You're paying thousands a seat for Articulate or Captivate, you can't use AI safely on sensitive material, and your most dangerous hands-on topics never really land as slides.
The fix: Two ends of the training spectrum, one shop. ISD WorkBench is a local-first, AI-grounded authoring studio with multi-format export for everyday e-learning. For the high-stakes, hands-on stuff, I build immersive game-based training in VR and AR. Graphics, game design, and instructional design, all under one roof. I sustained a 200K-user accredited platform, and I can build it, advise on it, or lead your team.
Three real products. One you can read the source of.
These aren't side projects. They're the evidence. Real software solving real problems, built end to end.
ISD WorkBench
A local-first, version-controlled studio for building e-learning and exporting it to any LMS: SCORM 2004, SCORM 1.2, xAPI, cmi5, or standalone. Templates and theming let a team build the same look and structure over and over without starting from scratch. A grounded AI assistant drafts whole courses from your own documents and stamps every block with provenance you can audit, and it won't make things up. It also keeps an eye on your source material: drop in a new version of a document and it diffs what changed, finds the courses that depend on it, flags the ones that need a refresh, and updates them where it can. All of it runs on one machine, even the air-gapped one.
- Version-controlled courses with reusable templates and theming
- Source-document change detection that flags and updates affected courses
- Five export formats from one source
- Grounded, auditable AI that refuses without sources
- Deterministic QA report, 508 and WCAG aware
SiteBoss
A live, multi-tenant construction project-management platform. Built for small builders. Projects, tasks, documents, photos, daily logs, and crews all in one place, whether you're at the office on a desktop or out on the jobsite on your phone. Every company's data is isolated at the database level, and every action lands in an audit log nobody can edit. Real Stripe billing, a real security audit, designed and built by me end to end.
- One place for files, photos, tasks & crews
- Row-level security on every table
- Role tiers keep subs to their own projects
- Live at sitebossmanager.com
Tachyon Transcripts
Real-time meeting transcription, 100% local. It captures your mic and system audio together, transcribes live with GPU-accelerated Whisper, and shows captions in a clean overlay. Nothing ever leaves your machine. It started as a hearing-accessibility tool, then grew into a private pipeline that feeds clean Markdown straight into a local LLM.
View the source on GitHub →- Zero telemetry, zero cloud, private by design
- Live, batch, and speaker-labeled transcripts
- Whisper large-v3 via faster-whisper and CUDA
- ~13,000 lines of Python, MIT-licensed, built end to end
I keep walking into a three-person mess and turning it into a twenty-person operation.
That's the pattern, across construction, defense modernization, crisis relief, and AI. Here's what that actually looks like.
I tell you the truth, then fix it
I inherited a cyber-compliance binder that described a cloud environment somebody had already shut down. The easy move was to paper over it. I scrapped it, rebuilt from scratch, and reset the timeline to an honest 6 to 10 weeks. Then I drove the CMMC L1/L2 program to every readiness milestone we targeted.
I build the whole operation from zero
Three people and a mandate, no infrastructure. I bought $500K+ of hardware and stood up an air-gapped 10Gb network, right down to the custom cabling and the HVAC to handle the heat. It scaled 7x to 20-plus people and still runs today. That work earned a DAF Digital Agent of Change recognition.
I run production at real scale, zero loss
As Senior Operations Controller for a 500-person organization, I ran the control center over a $1.3 billion stockpile with zero-error tolerance. 100% accountability, zero loss, and $66M in annual inventory at zero discrepancies.
I deliver AI outcomes, not slideware
As a company's AI lead, I cut training-content creation time by 83% with a custom RAG and agent pipeline built on government documents. I clawed back about 5 hours a week with automation I built myself, and I managed and closed $6M in contracts. All of it with audit logs and human review built in.
I turn a compliance scope into a decision in two weeks
Recently I took a software company's environment and turned it into a CMMC Level 2 snapshot assessment in a two-week sprint. They got a clear boundary, the gaps against NIST 800-171, and a prioritized plan the team could start on that next Monday.
I build immersive training, not just slides
In a defense training-modernization push, I built and led a small team on VR and tablet trainers. A C-5 hydraulic-override VR simulator, a fear-of-heights exposure trainer, an AMMO VR trainer, and tablet-based courseware. Real game design and 3D graphics paired with instructional design that actually holds up.
Questions I get a lot
Short, straight answers. If yours isn't here, just ask.
Can you help a DoD or defense contractor adopt AI safely?
Yes. I set up AI governance that holds up to federal scrutiny, map it to NIST AI RMF and the frameworks your contract cares about, and build pipelines that keep sensitive data where it belongs. I come out of the defense world, so I build for that bar, not just an internal review.
What's a CMMC Level 2 snapshot assessment?
It's a two-week sprint where I scope your boundary, run a gap analysis against NIST 800-171, and hand you a prioritized plan to close what's missing. You walk away knowing exactly where you stand and what to fix first.
Do you actually build software, or just advise?
Both. I build and ship production software hands on: full-stack SaaS, mobile, and AI pipelines. If you'd rather I guide your team, I can advise or lead instead. Your call.
Are you remote, or will you come on-site?
Both. I'm based in Caledonia, Michigan and I work remote-first with clients anywhere in the US. I'm also happy to travel for the right engagement, because some things are just better worked out in person.
How do you prove AI is actually paying off?
I put metrics and tracking in place from day one. Baseline before, measured after: time saved, cost cut, throughput, quality, whatever matters to you. You get the ROI in real numbers, with the audit trail to back them up.
Who runs Pyro Consulting?
Erik Jacobson. I'm a retired USAF Ammo troop who builds production software, runs compliance programs, and makes AI auditable. One person, accountable for the whole thing.
Got a hard problem? Let's talk.
Tell me what you're trying to do with AI, software, or compliance, and what's in the way. I'll tell you straight whether I can help and how I'd go about it.