AI Platform Engineering, MLOps & Cloud Consulting
Senior-led, fixed-scope consulting for regulated European fintechs, banks, insurers and wealth managers. Move AI from blocked pilot to audit-ready production with governance, platform and FinOps your CTO, CISO and audit team can trust.
Book a ConsultationWhy hire Open Empower instead?
Every regulated enterprise we talk to has already looked at one of these four options. Here's the honest trade-off for each, and where we fit.
Big-4 / large advisory firm
What you get: Brand recognition, global bench strength, broad jurisdictional coverage.
The gap: The partner who scoped the work is rarely the one delivering it. Junior-heavy teams, time-and-materials billing, and slide decks that describe a platform instead of shipping one.
Boutique compliance consultancy
What you get: Deep EU AI Act / DORA / GDPR paperwork and control frameworks.
The gap: Governance on paper, not in the platform. Someone still has to turn the control framework into Kubernetes policies, CI/CD gates and monitoring — most compliance shops don't build that.
Generic cloud / dev-shop consultancy
What you get: Solid engineering delivery, Kubernetes and IaC experience.
The gap: No first-hand experience of what a bank audit actually asks for. Compliance gets bolted on at the end, which is exactly when it's most expensive to fix.
Hire an in-house platform lead
What you get: Full-time attention, institutional context, no consultancy overhead.
The gap: A 3–6 month hiring cycle before anyone starts, and a single point of failure if that hire doesn't work out or leaves mid-build.
Open Empower is the senior engineer who's actually built inside a bank — fixed fee, vendor-neutral, and the governance shipped as working platform controls instead of a document.
How an engagement runs
Four phases, each independently useful. You can stop after any of them, or hand the rest to your own team — nothing here locks you in.
Assessment
Infrastructure, data and compliance audit. You get a prioritised gap list before you commit to anything larger.
Blueprint
A vendor-neutral platform and governance architecture your team can actually build against — not a 60-page report nobody opens again.
Implementation
Kubernetes, MLOps, IaC and CI/CD shipped into your environment, with your team pairing on it, not watching from the sidelines.
Advisory
Ongoing resilience, compliance evidence and cost review, so the platform stays audit-ready after we've handed it over.
Core Services
Outcome-focused consulting for leadership teams who need platform clarity and delivery velocity.
Platform Engineering
Audit-ready platforms, golden paths, and reliability guardrails.
- Internal developer platform on Kubernetes/OpenShift
- Policy-as-code and reliability guardrails
- Golden paths your teams actually adopt
AI Strategy Consulting
Prioritised use cases, a funded roadmap, and EU AI Act/DORA guardrails for regulated AI production.
- Use-case scoring and business case
- Phased roadmap your CFO can sign off
- Governance guardrails built in from day one
AI Governance Consulting
EU AI Act, DORA and ISO 42001 controls built into your platforms and evidenced for audit.
- AI inventory and risk classification
- Model lifecycle gates in CI/CD
- One control set mapped to four frameworks
AI Operating Model
Target operating model, RACI, platform, FinOps and skills for enterprise AI at scale.
- Federated, centralised or hub-and-spoke design
- Roles, RACI and governance gates
- FinOps: showback, chargeback, GPU cost control
Cloud Migration
Secure landing zones, modernization planning, and migration governance for regulated financial infrastructure.
- Landing-zone architecture and network design
- Workload-by-workload migration plan
- Compliance evidence carried through the move
Delivery Packages
Fixed-scope packages for teams that need tangible deliverables and fast time-to-value.
AI Readiness Assessment
Blocked pilot diagnosis, compliance gap analysis, and audit-ready roadmap.
- Infrastructure, data and governance audit
- Prioritised gap list with quick wins
- Fixed fee from €12k, 2–6 weeks
Platform Design & Blueprint
Architecture, governance framework, and delivery plan for regulated AI production.
- Vendor-neutral reference architecture
- Governance and guardrails your team can build against
- Phased 4-week engagement
Implementation & Delivery Kit
Deployable platform modules, CI/CD pipelines, and compliance evidence workflows.
- Terraform / IaC modules shipped into your cloud
- CI/CD and GitOps pipelines
- Team enablement, not a handover document
Continuous Advisory
Ongoing operational resilience, compliance support, and risk review for financial AI.
- Monthly resilience and compliance review
- Direct access to a principal engineer
- No SDRs, no account managers