// SORE THUMB
The best ideas always stand out.
SORE THUMB is a solutions-architecture and technology practice built for the moments when "nobody's quite sure how this works" needs to become "here's exactly what to build." We turn ambiguity into architecture — for engineering teams and the executives who have to sign off on it.
Enterprise architecture. Agentic AI. Cloud, IoT & product engineering — based in Idaho, working with teams everywhere.
// About
Comfortable in the ambiguity.
SORE THUMB exists for the projects that don't come with a manual. We're brought in when a system has grown faster than its documentation, when a promising idea needs a real architecture underneath it, or when a technical decision needs to be explained clearly to people who don't live in the technical weeds every day.
Our approach borrows discipline from enterprise architecture — capability modeling, target-state design, governance that doesn't get in the way — and applies it at a pace that actually fits a fast-moving team. We're equally comfortable in a whiteboard session with engineers and a slide deck in front of a leadership team, because a good architecture has to survive both conversations.
We also bring something a lot of architecture practices don't: a background in physical design and visual storytelling. That shows up in how we document and communicate — clear diagrams instead of documents nobody reads — and in a genuine comfort working across software, hardware, and the people in between.
// Capabilities
What we bring to a project:
Enterprise & Solution Architecture
Target-state (“North Star”) architecture, business capability modeling, and governance frameworks designed to hold up under real deadlines, not sit on a shelf.
Agentic AI & Intelligent Automation
Practical, production-minded use of agentic AI and modern AI tooling to speed up delivery and augment — not replace — sound architecture and engineering judgment.
Cloud & Platform Engineering
Cloud-native architecture on AWS, containerized services, and event-driven APIs, built to modernize integration rather than add another layer of complexity.
Product, IoT & Embedded Systems
Full-stack and embedded engineering for connected physical products — firmware, edge computing, and the cloud services behind them.
Architecture Communication & Visualization
Diagrams and documentation people actually use: sequence diagrams, system views, and executive-ready visuals that turn technical decisions into decisions leadership can act on.
// How We Work
A few of the shapes an engagement can take:
Architecture from zero
Stepping into an environment with little or no existing documentation and building the target-state architecture, governance, and roadmap a growing organization needs to scale with confidence.
AI-augmented delivery
Designing agentic AI and automation into the architecture and engineering workflow itself, so teams move from concept to decision faster without cutting corners on rigor.
Bridging hardware and software
Architecting connected products end to end — firmware, edge computing, and the cloud services behind them — in close partnership with industrial designers and engineers.
Executive translation
Turning a technical architecture into a story a non-technical leadership team can understand, fund, and get behind, without losing what makes it technically sound.
// Contact