AI Infrastructure that runs in production — and passes your audit
We get your Kubernetes and production AI shipping — vendor-neutral, compliance-ready, in weeks, not quarters. Built for mid-market teams (500–5,000 people) shipping under SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA, or FedRAMP.
Starts with a 60-minute discovery call → fixed-scope assessment: architecture, security, cost & compliance gaps.
Founder-led · ex-Mirantis · 12+ yrs in production · 100% US-based
CNCF Silver Member · Founder-led — ex-Mirantis & Bethesda/Xbox platform engineering behind 49M+-user products. That's the bar we build to.
Latest: 349 NIST 800-53 controls enforced in-pipeline · evidence auto-pushed to eMASS · ATO-ready in <3 months →The gap we close
Most platforms stall between pilot and production
The hard part isn't standing up a cluster — it's shipping on it daily, proving it to your auditors, and owning it without a vendor. The industry data says most teams are stuck.
Source · CNCF 2025 Survey
What we do
Our Core Services
Kubernetes Platform
Ship features, not firefights.
Your team shouldn't be debugging CNI plugins at 2am. We design, deploy, and operate production Kubernetes — RKE2, EKS, bare metal — so your engineers ship features instead of fighting infrastructure.
AI/ML Infrastructure
Every GPU dollar working.
GPUs are expensive. Idle GPUs are unforgivable. We build inference and training infrastructure with intelligent scheduling, spot orchestration, and autoscaling — so every dollar of compute actually works.
Security & Governance
Audits stop blocking releases.
Compliance isn't a checkbox — it's a deployment gate. We embed policy-as-code, image signing, and audit trails directly into your CI/CD pipeline. SOC 2, PCI DSS, and HIPAA controls enforced at the pipeline level — every deploy, not once a quarter.
How we operate
Metal to model — the whole stack, vendor-neutral
We operate the full open-source lifecycle — bare metal and any cloud, through Kubernetes and GitOps, to production AI behind a sovereign data boundary. No proprietary platform, no lock-in.
THNKBIG builds and operates the full lifecycle from bare metal to production AI on open source, with no proprietary lock-in. On-prem virtualization, edge, public clouds, existing clusters, and bare metal all connect through GitOps and infrastructure-as-code into the THNKBIG platform core — a Kubernetes-native management platform with Argo CD, Flux, Prometheus, Grafana, policy-as-code, and a signed supply chain. The platform serves AI services for GPU scheduling, model serving, and retrieval. Between those services and the models sits the THNKBIG AI Ontology, a sovereign data boundary: models see typed schemas, never raw data; every call is audited and redacted; computation stays inside your perimeter. Open-weight models like Qwen, Kimi, MiniMax, and Gemma run self-hosted, and your own applications sit on top — the whole stack handed over to your team.
The THNKBIG platform
Meet the platform we build — and you own
Not a product with a license — an open-source platform assembled, hardened, and operated for you, then handed over. Three faces of the same stack.
A production platform your team can actually run
Built on Kubernetes (RKE2 · EKS) with Argo CD-driven GitOps, Prometheus and Grafana observability, Harbor registry, and a cosign-signed supply chain. Everything is declarative and documented — the platform is reproducible from its Git repo, not from tribal knowledge.
100% open source — no license, no lock-in. We build it, harden it, and hand you the keys.
Explore Kubernetes Platform →- GitOps-driven operations: Every change is a pull request; drift is reconciled automatically. Your audit trail is your Git history.
- Observability from day one: SLO-based dashboards and alerting wired in as the platform is built — not bolted on after the first incident.
- Supply-chain security built in: Signed images, SBOMs on every build, and policy gates in CI — the pipeline is the control.
Proof
Outcomes, not adjectives
Real results from live engagements.
Who it's for
Built for regulated & high-stakes industries
Financial Services
SOC 2 · PCI DSS enforced at the pipeline — audits stop blocking releases.
Explore →Defense & Government
RMF/ATO and classified delivery — audit evidence generated on every build.
Explore →Technology & AI
GPU infrastructure that ships models daily — and survives the diligence review.
Explore →Healthcare
HIPAA technical safeguards as policy-as-code — platforms your auditors can verify.
Explore →How an engagement runs
From first call to your team owning it
Discovery call
A 60-minute discovery call with THNKBIG — we understand your situation and show you where we can add value. No sales pitch.
Readiness assessment
Technical findings across architecture, security, cost, and compliance — a prioritized roadmap with clear ROI, in week one.
Build & harden
Senior engineers in your environment, pairing with your team from day one. Compliance enforced in-pipeline as we build — not bolted on before the audit.
Your team owns it
Runbooks, architecture decision records, training, and on-call shadowing before we leave. Vendor-neutral and open-source — no lock-in, by design.
Built by Engineers,
for Engineers.
No slideware. No "digital transformation" buzzwords. Just battle-tested infrastructure expertise.
Engineering First
We aren't project managers. We are senior infrastructure engineers who write code, build pipelines, and debug kernels.
Vendor Neutral
AWS, GCP, Azure, or Bare Metal. We architect the best solution for your specific workload, not our partnerships.
Production Focused
We don't build POCs that sit on a shelf. We build resilient systems designed to handle millions of requests.
Vendor-risk ready
How we work in your environment
Built for regulated environments and your vendor-risk review.
US-based · US-persons
Data-residency and US-persons requirements met — no offshore, no subcontractors.
Least-privilege access
Scoped, just-in-time access to your clusters — we don't hold standing keys.
Insured
COI & MSA on file. We sign your paperwork before we touch production.
No lock-in
Vendor-neutral, open-source, full knowledge transfer — your team owns it at handoff.
2-minute self-assessment
Where's your platform on the maturity curve?
Two minutes, five questions. Get your stage — Explorer to Innovator — and the specific next step to close the gap.
Where does your platform actually stand?
5 quick questions on deploy frequency, GitOps, observability, security, and AI-workload readiness. Get your maturity stage — Explorer, Adopter, Practitioner, or Innovator — and a concrete next step.
Before you book — the questions procurement asks
Do you work inside our environment and tooling?
Yes. We work in your cloud accounts, your clusters, and your CI/CD with scoped, just-in-time access — we don't hold standing keys, and we don't require you to adopt our stack. Everything we build is open-source and vendor-neutral.
Are your engineers US-based?
100%. Every engineer is a US person working from the US — no offshore delivery, no subcontractors. That covers data-residency, ITAR, and US-persons requirements common in regulated and government work.
Are you insured? Will you sign our MSA?
Yes. We carry professional liability and cyber coverage, and we provide a COI and sign your MSA and security paperwork before we touch production.
What does the readiness assessment cover?
Architecture, security posture, cloud cost, and compliance gaps — delivered as a prioritized roadmap with clear ROI projections in the first week. It starts with a 60-minute discovery call to see whether we can help at all.
Will we be locked in when the engagement ends?
No — the opposite is the point. We build on open-source, document everything, and train your team to own the platform. Handover with full knowledge transfer is step four of every engagement.
US-Based Kubernetes Consulting Experts
THNKBIG is a cloud native consulting firm headquartered in Austin, Texas, with senior engineers across the United States delivering on-site and remote. Our senior Kubernetes and DevOps engineers specialize in production-grade AI infrastructure, MLOps pipelines, and platform engineering that scales. Our senior team has deployed and operated 200+ production Kubernetes clusters across energy, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, and government — including classified workloads running under full Authority to Operate. As a CNCF Silver Member, we're active contributors to the cloud native ecosystem.
What differentiates THNKBIG from other Kubernetes consulting services is our focus on measurable outcomes and our commitment to US-based senior talent — every engagement is led by engineers with 10+ years in production infrastructure, and within the first week we deliver actionable recommendations with clear ROI. Whether you need Kubernetes consulting services, DevOps consulting, or cloud native architecture support anywhere in the US, we specialize in GPU orchestration for AI/ML workloads, GitOps with ArgoCD and Flux, multi-cluster management with Rancher, and zero-trust architectures that meet SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and FedRAMP requirements.
Ready to ship — and pass
your next audit?
A 60-minute discovery call with THNKBIG, then a fixed-scope assessment — architecture, security, cost & compliance gaps.