Hello, I am

Colin McNamara

Building AI systems for nuclear safety and food security — where failure isn't an option

📝 Sharing my notes on AI, infrastructure, and building resilient systems

I build AI systems for industries where failure isn't an option.

After 25 years architecting, automating, and operating hyperscale infrastructure for Silicon Valley giants, I saw how AI could transform critical industries — if we could make it trustworthy. Today, I'm proving it's possible.

Two Missions, One Standard: Zero Tolerance for Error

At Always Cool AI, we tackle humanity's most critical challenges:

Nuclear Energy: Developing AI solutions for the nuclear industry where every decision must be auditable, traceable, and correct. When you're working with nuclear power, "probably right" isn't good enough.

Food Supply Chain: Automating ingredient safety analysis and FDA compliance validation. Our AI turns months of manual review into automated workflows, helping brands launch safer products in 12 weeks instead of 12 months.

Production-Grade AI That Regulators Trust

We don't build demos. We build systems that pass audits. Using LangGraph for orchestration, OpenTelemetry for complete observability, and implementing both MCP and A2A Protocol for secure agent communication, our AI systems provide:

100% decision traceability — every AI action logged and auditable

Real-time compliance monitoring — for FDA, NRC, FedRAMP, and SOC-2 requirements

Zero-trust agent architecture — because critical infrastructure demands it

Real Results in Production

My experience with enterprise compliance taught me that manual processes don't scale — and with AI, they're impossible. So we built AI systems that generate their own audit trails, validate their own decisions, and prove their own compliance. Energy companies now scale safely. Food manufacturers launch products with confidence. Government contractors achieve FedRAMP compliance faster. That's what happens when you combine deep technical expertise with practical AI implementation.

Building the Future With 1,300+ Practitioners

I founded Austin LangChain AIMUG because the hardest problems require collective intelligence. Our community doesn't just theorize — we share production patterns, debug real implementations, and push the boundaries of what's possible with practical AI.

The future belongs to AI that works when everything is on the line.

25 Years of Delivering Results

Before founding Always Cool AI, I solved hyperscale challenges at the world's most demanding companies:

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Senior Network Development Manager (2018-2022)

58%

Outage Reduction

Led 12 engineers managing 116,000 devices across 64 datacenters. Reduced network outages for White House, US Marine Corps, and major banks.

Oracle Optical Networking

Service Owner & Automation Lead (2021-2022)

$27M

Revenue Accelerated

Managed $70M budget. Built automation saving 844 engineering hours/year. Accelerated datacenter deployments by 10 weeks.

Apple's Largest CDN Build

Network Architect @ ePlus (2007-2011)

$113M

6-Month Deploy

Built Earth's largest content delivery network for Apple iTunes/iCloud in 6 months. First production MLAG architecture at scale. Led software teams and deployed $113M of gear.

Built $180M Business Line

Director @ Nexus IS/Dimension Data (2011-2016)

$180M

Annual Revenue

Built SDN practice from scratch to $180M/year. Developed network software for Cisco. Created IP and customer base that enabled NTT/Dimension Data acquisition.

Now applying these lessons to AI: building observable, compliant systems where failure isn't an option.

Website built with

Performing reactivity and statefulness, special guest SolidJS

Let's Connect

Reach out to me via email or on social media.