Chris Ballard
AI and Machine Learning Consultant
AI Consultant with 15 years of Machine Learning expertise who delivers transformational business results using applied AI/ML. Combines strategic thinking, exceptional communication skills, and deep technical engineering expertise - a rare combination that enables translation of complex AI capabilities into clear business value.
About Me
Hi, I’m Chris, AI and Machine Learning Consultant specialising in practical, business-focused AI solutions.
After years as a Head of Machine Learning at enterprise companies, I noticed a pattern: brilliant AI solutions that never quite fitted business reality. Too many projects failed not because the technology was wrong, but because the approach was.
I founded Justified AI to bridge that gap - bringing enterprise-level AI expertise to ambitious tech startups and SMEs and ensuring that every AI initiative is justified by real business needs and delivers real returns.
I’ve spent the last 15 years building and deploying machine learning systems that actually work in production - from processing 50,000 emails per minute at scale to developing cutting-edge LLM applications with RAG pipelines and multi-agent architectures. What sets me apart isn’t just the technical depth - it’s that I can speak both boardroom and code fluently.
I genuinely love the challenge of translating complex AI concepts into clear business value. Whether I’m presenting strategy to a board, debugging a thorny technical problem with developers, or architecting an end-to-end AI system, I’m driven by making AI work for real businesses with real constraints.
I’m always happy to discuss how AI might (or might not) help your business. No sales pitch, just an honest conversation about possibilities.
What I Bring
Technical Depth
- Former Head of Machine Learning with deep expertise in ML and NLP
- Years of hands-on experience building and deploying production AI systems
Business Acumen
- Product management experience with proven track record of ROI-positive AI solutions
- Ability to translate between technical and business teams
Industry Experience
- Education, Retail, Cybersecurity, Market research
- Solutions spanning AI agents and chatbots to document analysis and optimisation.
Why Justified Matters
Real Experience, Real Results
I’m genuinely grateful when clients take the time to share their feedback - hearing how we’ve made a difference together is what makes this work so rewarding.
Skills & Expertise
A comprehensive toolkit built through years of hands-on experience and continuous learning
Large Language Models (LLMs)
Production LLM applications and advanced techniques
- Fine-tuning models (SetFit, full fine-tuning)
- RAG pipelines with vector databases (MongoDB, Elasticsearch, FAISS)
- LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex
- Prompt engineering and optimization
- Multi-agent architectures
Natural Language Processing (15 years)
Traditional NLP and modern transformer approaches
- Transformer models and fine-tuning
- Sentence Transformers and embeddings
- Text classification and semantic search
- Named entity recognition
- Text generation systems
Machine Learning (15 years)
Comprehensive ML experience across paradigms
- Supervised/unsupervised learning
- Neural networks (RNN, LSTM, GRU, CNN, Transformers)
- Tree algorithms (Random Forest, XGBoost, CatBoost)
- Zero/few-shot learning
- Custom PyTorch models
Python Engineering (15 years)
Advanced Python development and best practices
- NumPy, Pandas, SciPy, PyTorch, Scikit-Learn
- FastAPI, Pydantic, SQLAlchemy
- Poetry, testing, git
- Production-ready, maintainable code
- Modern Python best practices
AI/ML Deployment at Scale
Building and deploying ML systems processing millions of requests
- AWS (SageMaker, Bedrock, Lambda, ECS)
- GCP (VertexAI, BigQuery)
- Docker, Kubernetes
- Airflow, Kubeflow, Dagster
- MLOps and monitoring
Databases & Data Engineering (25 years)
Working with data at scale
- SQL databases (PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL)
- Vector databases for semantic search
- Distributed computing (Spark)
- Data pipeline design
- Data warehouse architecture
Technical Strategy & Architecture
Aligning technical solutions with business goals
- Technical strategy development
- Board-level presentations
- Business requirements to AI products
- CTO and technical leadership
- ROI and business case development
Team Leadership & Mentoring
Building and developing high-performing teams
- Managing teams of up to 15 data scientists
- Strategic roadmap development
- Agile planning and delivery
- Mentoring and knowledge transfer
- Stakeholder communication
Professional Experience
A journey of continuous growth and impact
Cookpad Inc
Lead AI Engineer
Leading recipe platform serving millions of users worldwide
Key Achievements
- Redesigned AI chatbot backend with MCP integration and event-driven architecture
- Deployed scalable solution to AWS Lambda with SNS/SQS messaging
- Improved system reliability and performance
StoreSpace Insights
AI Consultant
AI-powered retail analytics and optimization
Key Achievements
- Designed AI system to automate retail store planning
- Developed optimization algorithm for store profitability
- Created comprehensive business case with cost-benefit analysis
StudyHall
Lead AI Engineer
AI-powered education platform serving UK schools
Key Achievements
- Built multi-agent AI system using LangGraph
- Implemented RAG pipeline with MongoDB and LlamaIndex
- Developed comprehensive guardrails for educational content
Tessian
Lead Machine Learning Engineer
AI-powered email security protecting organizations from human-layer security risks
Key Achievements
- Managed ML team of 8 data scientists and engineers
- Fine-tuned Transformer models achieving 90% detection accuracy
- Deployed cost-efficient AWS SageMaker endpoints handling 50k requests/minute
- Implemented MLOps practices for rapid model deployment
Dotti
AI Consultant
AI-powered perimenopause health assistant
Key Achievements
- Developed detailed AI and Technical Strategy
- Advised on health data collection approaches
- Designed machine learning approach for personalized recommendations
Climate Policy Radar
Chief Technology Officer, Founding AI Engineer
AI-powered climate policy search and analysis platform
Key Achievements
- Founding CTO responsible for technical strategy and implementation
- Architected and delivered climate policy semantic search MVP in 8 weeks for COP 26
- Combined PDF extraction with Sentence Transformers for semantic search
- Built scalable data pipeline for climate policy documents
Nielsen IQ
Lead Applied Data Scientist
Global leader in consumer intelligence and analytics
Key Achievements
- Managed team of 15 PhD-level Data Scientists
- Implemented extreme multi-label ML system achieving £2M annual operational cost savings
- Developed strategic roadmaps for AI/ML capabilities
- Led agile planning and delivery across multiple projects
Nielsen IQ Brandbank & Tribal Group
Earlier Career
Progressive roles across data science, engineering, and product management
Key Achievements
- Data Scientist, Innovation Consultant (Nielsen IQ Brandbank)
- Business Intelligence Consultant, Product Manager (Nielsen IQ Brandbank)
- Engineering Manager (Tribal Group)
- Built foundation in ML, data engineering, and technical leadership
Technology Stack
Tools and technologies I work with regularly
AI & Machine Learning
PyTorch
Scikit-Learn
Hugging Face
LangChain
LlamaIndex
LangGraph
Transformers
Programming & Development
Python
JavaScript
HTML
Docker
Git
Python
NumPy
FastAPI
Pydantic
SQLAlchemy
Jupyter
Pandas
Cloud & Infrastructure
AWS
SageMaker
Lambda
GCP
Azure
Kubernetes
Data & Databases
SQL
MongoDB
Elasticsearch
FAISS
Apache Spark
Airflow
Dagster
Kubeflow