A working AI department, inside your company.
A forward-deployed engineer, embedded in your team, shipping production systems tied to a number you already track. Strategy, training, and engineering, without the quarter-million-dollar hire.
Systems we install and run
The problem
Your team is too busy to get less busy.
Pilots stall out
Someone tried ChatGPT, a demo happened, nothing ever made it into production.
The hire is scary
A full-time AI engineer runs $250k loaded, and you would not know how to interview one anyway.
The work keeps piling
Questionnaires, follow-ups, reports, CRM updates. All manual, all repeated every week.
Everyone knows AI should be doing more here. Nobody owns making it real. That is the job we take.
How it works
The three pillars of an AI department.
Roadmap
We map your operations, find where AI moves a number you already track, and rank every build by ROI. Strategy an executive can defend.
Engineering
We build production systems and wire them into the tools you already run, in accounts you own. The first one ships in your first month.
Training
Hands-on sessions raise your team on the tools and the systems we install, so the capability stays with your company for good.
Recent work
Real systems, already running.
A sample of recent builds. Named case studies and client results are on the way.
Marketing agency
From dead leads to booked meetings
An AI sales system texts a company’s dormant leads, re-engages the ones worth pursuing, and books qualified meetings onto the sales calendar. Live SMS thread to calendar event.
A dead list turned back into booked calls.
Founder-led product company
Customer support agent
Drafts fast, on-brand replies to inbound emails. Questions get answered in minutes, and no lead slips through while the founder is heads-down.
Replies in minutes instead of days.
B2B SaaS, ~50 people
AI Operations Audit
Twelve interviews, a prioritized roadmap with ROI estimates, an AI use policy, and a live executive readout.
The blueprint for where AI pays off first.
Demos
Watch them work.
Screen recordings of real systems, walked through by the founder. Unscripted, no slides.
Live build · AI sales system
A dead lead list turned into booked calls
Watch the reactivation teammate text dormant leads, handle the replies, and book a qualified meeting onto a real sales calendar.
Live build · Email teammate
Inbound email answered in minutes
An email teammate reads a real inbound question, drafts an on-brand reply for approval, and keeps the pipeline moving while the owner is heads-down.
The process · AI Operations Audit
What you get from an audit
A walkthrough of a finished roadmap: the interviews, the prioritized builds with ROI math, and the AI use policy your team actually follows.
Hayden Enloe · FounderWho is behind it
You get the founder in the room.
Groundwork AI is led by Hayden Enloe, an AI engineer with a master’s in Information Systems who ships production systems for mid-sized companies: agents with real guardrails, retrieval that gets measured, and test suites that prove a system works before it touches your customers. Work with Groundwork and the person who scoped the work is the person who builds it.
The approach is simple. An honest diagnosis instead of a sales pitch, the path that is actually right for you, and systems you own. The goal is to give your team back the hours it loses to work that software should be doing.
Ways to work together
Find what’s worth building. Then build it.
Straight prices, one rule: the build has to be worth more than it costs, and cost less than the hire it replaces. If it will not, we will tell you on the call. The audit is guaranteed (worth three times the fee, or refunded), and your first build carries a written delivery guarantee.
Roadmap
AI Operations Audit
$6,500 · two weeks
Not sure where AI fits? Two weeks of interviews across your team, then an ROI-ranked roadmap an executive can defend.
Engineering
Build Sprint
From $10,000 · 4-8 weeks
One high-value production system: built, tested against your own data, wired into your tools, and shipped.
Partner
Embedded AI Partner
From $3,500/mo
Your AI department, one to three days a week: a forward-deployed engineer delivering continuous builds, team training, and strategy.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
How fast will I see something working?+
The audit takes two weeks. Retainers start with a two-week embedded diagnostic, and the first working system ships inside your first month.
How does pricing work?+
The audit is $6,500. Build sprints run $10,000 to $30,000 depending on scope, billed by milestone. Embedded partner retainers run $3,500 to $12,000 a month depending on how many days a week you need, with a 90-day initial term. We anchor every number against the alternative: a full-time AI engineer costs $15,000 to $25,000 a month fully loaded. If the math does not clearly favor you, we will say so on the call.
What if it does not work?+
The audit is guaranteed: if the roadmap does not surface at least one opportunity worth three times the fee, we refund it. Your first build carries a written delivery guarantee. And every system runs in accounts you own, so you are never locked in.
Do we need to be technical?+
No. That is the point of working with us. We handle the engineering, and we train your team on the parts they touch.
Is our data safe?+
Yes. Systems run in your accounts under your permissions, client data never goes into AI tools without approval, and every build ships with a written security boundary. The audit includes an AI use policy your team will actually follow.
What does the retainer actually include?+
Depends on the tier. Every tier includes maintenance of everything we build, a weekly ship note, and a monthly review of the number we agreed to move. Partner and Department tiers add a continuous build lane, hands-on team training, and quarterly executive roadmaps.
Let’s find the hours you’re losing.
Book a free teardown call. Walk us through one process, and we will tell you what we would build, the number it would move, and what it would save you. No pitch, just a diagnosis.
Not ready to talk? Take the 5-minute AI Readiness Assessment