Agentic AI System Design & Deployment
End-to-end architecture for autonomous and semi-autonomous agents. From single-agent reasoning loops to multi-agent orchestration patterns, with the operational discipline that production demands.
Raleigh, NC · Agentic AI Solutions Architect
Agentic AI systems, built to ship in production.
Agentic AI Solutions Architect designing and deploying intelligent agents at enterprise scale. Context engineering, agent orchestration, and production reliability — backed by a decade of enterprise security architecture at Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, and Cisco.
Agentic AI architecture
Context engineering
AI pre-sales advisory
Conference speaking
Now
Designing intelligent systems for production.
Ferdinand Soto
Agentic AI Solutions Architect
I am an Agentic AI Solutions Architect focused on building and deploying intelligent, production-ready AI agents.
I combine deep expertise in context engineering, agent orchestration, and large language model systems with a strong foundation in enterprise security. This unique combination allows me to design agentic systems that are not only powerful, but also reliable and production-ready.
Currently, I work at the intersection of AI engineering and enterprise deployments — helping organizations move from experimental AI to production agentic systems that actually work at scale.
If you are building or scaling agentic AI capabilities and need someone who understands both the technical depth of AI systems and how to make them production-ready, I would value the conversation.
Capabilities
From experimental AI to production agents.
Context Engineering for Production Agents
System prompts, retrieval, tool definitions, conversation state, and structured memory — the discipline that turns an LLM that demos into an agent that ships. Designed for reliability, not novelty.
Intelligent Agent Orchestration & Workflows
Multi-step, multi-tool, multi-agent workflows that hold together under real load. Tool selection, planning loops, evaluation gates, MCP integrations, and the boring instrumentation that keeps it observable.
Building Reliable & Secure Agentic Systems
Where a decade of enterprise security pays off: trust boundaries, prompt-injection resistance, supply-chain integrity, and the failure-mode discipline that separates a demo from a system you can put in front of a customer.
AI Pre-Sales & Technical Advisory
Translating agentic AI capability into customer outcomes. Architecture reviews, evaluation methodology, executive briefings, and the translation work between research-grade capability and field-grade deployment.
Enterprise AI Transformation
Helping large organizations move from pilot to portfolio. Reference architectures, governance models, evaluation harnesses, and the change-management work that makes agentic AI a capability the business can compound on, not a one-off demo.
Career
A decade of enterprise systems work, in reverse order.
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2024 — present
Cortex Specialist Systems Engineer
Palo Alto Networks Current
Pre-sales technical lead for Cortex (XDR, XSIAM, XSOAR), with growing focus on the AI-native side of security operations: agent-augmented SOC, automated detection authoring, and the operational shape of LLM-driven response. The same posture I bring to agentic AI architecture more broadly.
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2022 — 2024
Senior Security Technical Specialist
Microsoft
Pre-sales for Microsoft Security across enterprise accounts. Architecture, customer enablement, and contributing field perspective into product strategy. Worked across the Defender and Sentinel surface area.
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2021 — 2022
Technical Solutions Specialist, Duo Security
Cisco
Technical advocate for Cisco Duo as the identity layer of the Zero Trust portfolio. Customer-facing demos, deal support, and product feedback into the Duo team.
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2020 — 2021
Pre-Sales Security Systems Engineer
Cisco
SLED West security pre-sales. Cloud security, network segmentation, and consistent over-quota delivery across two fiscal years.
FAQ
The questions people actually ask.
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Who is Ferdinand Soto and what does he do?
An Agentic AI Solutions Architect focused on building and deploying intelligent, production-ready AI agents. He combines deep expertise in context engineering, agent orchestration, and large language model systems with a strong foundation in enterprise security, helping organizations move from experimental AI to production agentic systems that work at scale. -
What is an Agentic AI Solutions Architect?
An Agentic AI Solutions Architect designs, deploys, and scales production AI systems built around autonomous and semi-autonomous agents. The role combines context engineering, agent orchestration, tool-use design, and system reliability — turning experimental LLM capabilities into agentic workflows that deliver measurable business impact in enterprise environments. -
What is context engineering?
Context engineering is the practice of designing what an AI agent sees and remembers as it operates: the system prompt, retrieved knowledge, tool definitions, conversation state, and structured memory. Done well, it is the difference between an agent that demos and an agent that ships. It is the discipline that makes large language models behave reliably in production. -
Is Ferdinand available for agentic AI advisory or consulting?
Yes — for agentic AI architecture reviews, context-engineering work, production-agent reliability, AI pre-sales advisory, and conference speaking. Email hello@ferdinandsoto.com with a paragraph on what you are building. -
How does Ferdinand's cybersecurity background help with AI?
Production agentic systems live or die on reliability and safety. A decade of enterprise security work — threat modeling, supply-chain integrity, adversarial review — transfers directly to designing agents that handle real-world inputs, untrusted data, and failure modes without breaking. Security is the supporting strength behind agents that are not only powerful, but production-ready. -
Where is Ferdinand based?
Raleigh, North Carolina. Available remotely across the United States and for travel to AI engineering, agentic AI, and AI safety events. -
How can I contact Ferdinand?
Email hello@ferdinandsoto.com directly, use the contact form on this page, or send a LinkedIn introduction at linkedin.com/in/ferdinandsoto. He reads every introduction and replies to most.
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