Ciarán O'Hara
AI Product & Design Builder — Local AI, Systems Thinking & Digital Products
San Francisco Bay Area, CA · ciaran.ohara@gmail.com · linkedin.com/in/ciaranohara
Infrastructure program leader and independent AI/product builder developing a portfolio of private AI systems, interactive products, and visual research tools. Combines 20+ years of complex technology program delivery with hands-on experimentation in local inference, RAG, AI infrastructure, UI design, product discovery, and rapid prototyping. Focused on turning complex systems into clear user experiences and practical products.
AI Product Strategy
Product Discovery & Prototyping
UI / UX Design
Local & Private AI
RAG & Knowledge Systems
AI Infrastructure
Vector Databases
Systems Thinking
Visual Information Design
AI Governance
Rapid Web Prototyping
GitHub
Ollama
LM Studio
OpenWebUI
Hugging Face
LangChain
LlamaIndex
FAISS
Qdrant
Solas Sovereign Systems
Founder / Product & Systems Design
- Developing a private AI infrastructure concept for organizations that need secure, locally controlled AI over sensitive enterprise data.
- Designed the product around local inference, document ingestion, vector search, RAG, and an on-premises / air-gapped deployment model.
- Developing the product and positioning around AI sovereignty, privacy, infrastructure control, and practical enterprise adoption.
- Exploring secure demonstration appliances and local AI environments using Mac Studio-class hardware and open-source AI tooling.
Global Local AI Foundation / GLAM
Founder / Product & Design
- Developed a public-interest initiative focused on local AI, privacy, and environmental sustainability, with Power, Privacy, and Policy as core themes.
- Designed and delivered an Earth Day demonstration showing local AI operating independently of the cloud, incorporating live environmental data and a visible energy / carbon narrative.
- Developed the organization, product concepts, messaging, and web presence around responsible local AI adoption.
White Mirror
AI Product Concept / UX
- Developed a privacy-first AI concept centered on an elegant, frictionless, and emotionally human user experience.
- Explored the product as a local-first AI environment where sensitive personal interaction can remain under user control.
- Defined UX and product principles emphasizing simplicity, trust, privacy, and human-centered interaction rather than model-centric features.
AI Observatory
Interactive Product / Information Design
- Designed an interactive exploration of the AI ecosystem intended to make models, companies, technologies, and relationships understandable through visual information design.
- Explored ways to turn a rapidly changing technical landscape into an intuitive product experience rather than a conventional directory or database.
- Developed the concept as a polished web experience and research / discovery tool.
Celtic Explorer
Digital Humanities Product / UX
- Designed a digital museum and research experience for Irish mythology combining an interactive encyclopedia, narrated stories, character portraits, and source material.
- Integrated mythology, Old Irish pronunciation, etymology, citations, manuscript sources, relationships, search, and filtering into a single exploratory interface.
- Designed the experience around discovery, navigation, and storytelling, including narrated playback and relationship-based exploration.
LegalVault
Private AI / Product Concept
- Developed a concept for a local encrypted AI appliance for small law firms, focused on private document search, eDiscovery, and retrieval-augmented analysis.
- Explored local vector indexing using FAISS / Qdrant and the use of on-premises AI to avoid sending sensitive legal data to cloud services.
- Developed the concept around a practical deployment model for organizations that need AI capability without surrendering control of their data.
ClarityNow
Product Concept / Browser UX
- Developed a browser-extension concept for simplifying and improving the user experience of enterprise ServiceNow workflows.
- Explored the use of an interface layer over existing enterprise software to reduce complexity without requiring changes to the underlying platform.
- Applied product and UI thinking to a familiar enterprise problem: making complex operational systems easier for people to use.
- Built and tested local AI workflows using Ollama, LM Studio, OpenWebUI, and Hugging Face model ecosystems.
- Explored RAG architectures, embeddings, vector databases, document ingestion, and retrieval using LangChain, LlamaIndex, FAISS, and Qdrant.
- Experimented with local speech and language tooling including Whisper and Piper TTS, and with Apple local AI capabilities.
- Indexed and worked with large document collections, including a corpus of approximately 50,000 court records for vector search experimentation.
- Explored model sizes, inference constraints, local hardware, and the practical trade-offs between cloud and edge AI.
- Developed an AI reading / research workflow using large source collections and structured prompting to investigate emerging AI technologies.
- Developing the Five P Method: People, Picture, Plan, Perform, Pivot — a practical model for connecting systems thinking, visual understanding, and project execution.
- Uses system maps, whiteboarding, Common Operating Pictures, and dependency visualization to turn complex technical environments into shared mental models.
- Applies the same systems-thinking approach to infrastructure transformation, AI products, and emerging technology environments.
- Designs interfaces as working products rather than static mockups, using rapid web prototyping to test ideas in the browser.
- Uses visual information architecture, system diagrams, and interactive prototypes to make complex concepts understandable.
- Combines product discovery, systems thinking, UI design, and technical experimentation to move from idea to demonstrable prototype quickly.
Local AI: Ollama, LM Studio, OpenWebUI, Hugging Face
RAG: LangChain, LlamaIndex
Vector Search: FAISS, Qdrant
Speech: Whisper, Piper TTS
Product / Design: UI prototyping, information architecture, visual systems, browser-based applications
Development: GitHub, web technologies, rapid prototyping
Solas Sovereign Systems
Global Local AI Foundation / GLAM
White Mirror
AI Observatory
Celtic Explorer
LegalVault
ClarityNow
EarthGPT / Gaia AI
20+ years leading infrastructure and technology programs across Apple, Marvell, Meta, Pearson, San Francisco International Airport, Infoblox, Nimble Storage, Symantec, and Yahoo!. Experience spans data-center transformation, cloud migration, enterprise infrastructure, security, governance, and complex cross-functional delivery. Full infrastructure record: Infrastructure Program Manager résumé →
PMP
Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)
Program & Project Management Certificate, UCSC Silicon Valley Extension
B.A. Business (IT), LYIT, Ireland
CCNA