Brian
Powell
Twenty years of finding the manual process and building the system that runs it.
Brian Powell is an AI systems and automation engineer in Phoenix, Arizona. He designs the AI and automation systems that run business operations: reporting agents, sales paperwork pipelines, verified data migrations, search-visibility platforms, and the internal tools behind them, built on twenty years in healthcare marketing, from web-to-print developer to VP of Online Marketing.
Open to conversations about AI and automation engineering, marketing engineering, and technical leadership roles. Remote or Phoenix.
Departments founded, orbiting the AI layer that now runs them. Systems as moons. Hover or tap a body to read it.
- 0years, four titles, three departments
- 0AI and automation systems shipped in 2026
- 0records migrated by pipeline, zero lost
- 0departments founded and handed to teams
I build the system, then the team that runs it.
I design AI systems that do real knowledge work, with the guardrails that make them safe to trust: validated outputs, bounded actions, evidence trails, and a human gate before anything reaches a client. A day of analyst work runs in ninety minutes. Proposals cannot contain a hand-typed number. Fifteen years of records moved without losing one.
The habit is twenty years old. Every title in my career came from the same move: notice the work being done by hand, build the tool that does it, then hire and train the people who run it. A web-to-print portal became a website department. The website department became search and paid media. Today I direct AI and automation for the agency and still own the systems underneath every department I founded.
How I work: spec first, tests before code, adversarial review, live verification, then it ships. I would rather prove it than describe it, so every system on this page has a write-up with the numbers.
Six systems. One habit.
Six AI and automation systems that replaced hand work inside a healthcare marketing agency, all in production. One metric each on the card; the full story, the decisions, and how each was verified, one click in.
- live SaaS · AI fixes · solo build
Obelisk
Multi-tenant SEO and answer-engine platform for WordPress. AI-drafted fixes written back to the live site after human approval, then re-verified.
livein productionRead the case study - agent system
AI Report Automation
The agency's three core deliverables, generated with a claim-verification framework so nothing unverified reaches a client.
1 day → 90 minrunnable by anyone on the teamRead the case study - internal platform
Quote-to-Signature Pipeline
One pricing engine loaded by the browser and required by the server, so quote, proposal, and contract figures are provably identical.
~2 mindeal to signature-ready packetRead the case study - data migration
Quickbase Liberation
Fifteen years of agency history exported through resumable, verification-gated phases into a searchable archive and a Notion workspace.
537,060records verified · zero silent lossRead the case study - internal platform · solo build
Agency SEO and Ads Platform
Empty repository to production in 16 days. Eight data integrations, per-client dashboards, and a closed-loop ads engine that proved live write-back on a real account.
16 days51k lines TypeScript · 1,257 testsRead the case study - security
WordPress Incident Response
Seven client sites assessed, a coordinated campaign traced to its shared entry point, and the method packaged as a reusable toolkit.
0 lostlegitimate files across 7 sites · 4 compromises cleanedRead the case study
Every role was the same story with better tools.
Read it like a flight log. Every entry is the same idea applied to a bigger piece of the business: the departments grew, the systems grew, and the role grew with them. The current entry is still open.
- v2006
Web-to-Print Developer
What got automated: Print ordering. A self-service portal sent customer jobs straight to the press.
- v2008
Web Developer
What got automated: Site production. Hand-built 300-plus client sites and learned exactly which parts should never be done by hand again.
- v2012
Director of Web Development
What got automated: Delivery. Standards and scoping that let a team ship 300-plus more, then handed design to the designers.
- v2016
VP of Online Marketing
What got automated: The departments. Founded SEO and paid ads, ran IT, built the CMS and project system the whole agency works in.
- v2025·current · center
Director of AI and Automation, acting SEO Director
What got automated: The knowledge work. Reports, proposals, migrations, and audits now run as systems with human gates.
- SystemsDirects AI and automation: the agents, pipelines, and platforms the agency runs on, plus the SOPs they enforce.
- TeamDirects search and paid media, five specialists, 100-plus active accounts.
- HiringOwns it end to end: job descriptions, structured skills assessments, interviews, signing authority.
- PackagingOwns service packaging and pricing, with AI-search deliverables as standard line items since 2026.
Automate. Build. Lead. Search.
AutomateAI and platforms
- Claude API
- Claude Code
- Agent skills
- LLM guardrails
- ChatGPT
- Gemini
- Perplexity
- Make
- n8n
- Zapier
- GoHighLevel
- DocuSign
- Documenso
- Notion API
- Quickbase API
- Gamma API
- Browser automation
Buildengineering
- TypeScript
- Next.js
- React
- Astro
- Node
- Python
- PHP
- PostgreSQL
- MySQL
- Docker
- Traefik
- Cloudflare
- WordPress
- Beaver Builder
- Elementor
- Divi
- TDD
Leadoperations
- Department building
- Hiring
- Pricing and packaging
- SOPs
- Presales
- Incident response
Searchvisibility
- Technical SEO
- Local SEO
- Google Business Profile
- Google Ads
- Meta Ads
- AEO
- GEO
- Schema
- GA4
- Search Console
- Conversion tracking
- Yoast · Rank Math · SEOPress
The short answers.
Brian Powell is an AI systems and automation engineer in Phoenix, Arizona. He designs the AI and automation systems that run business operations, on top of twenty years in healthcare marketing that took him from web-to-print developer to VP of Online Marketing.
He builds systems that automate business operations and put AI to work inside them, with human gates: reporting agents, sales paperwork pipelines, verified data migrations, search-visibility platforms, and the internal tools teams run on. That sits on top of two decades of web development and marketing leadership.
Phoenix, Arizona. He prefers remote work and is available for in-office work in the Phoenix metro. Relocation is a conversation for the right role.
Obelisk, a live multi-tenant SEO and answer-engine SaaS; an agency SEO and Ads platform shipped solo in 16 days with 1,257 automated tests; an AI report automation system that turned a day of analyst work into 90 minutes; a quote-to-signature pipeline with one shared pricing engine; a 537,060-record Quickbase migration with zero silent data loss; and a WordPress incident-response toolkit. Each has a full write-up at brianpowell.dev/work/.
Yes. He has freelanced since 2015 alongside the agency role: small business marketing, AI and automation systems, web design, SEO, and ads. Email him to talk about a project.
Email brian@brianpowell.dev, or connect on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/gobrianpowell. His resume is available as a PDF at brianpowell.dev/resume/.
Let’s build the thing that runs itself.
One email is enough. Tell me what keeps getting done by hand, and I will tell you how I would make it stop. I read every message myself.