A Class Act: AI Builders & Founders

Michael Young - CEO MBN Solutions
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What does it really take to build and lead a world-class AI or data team?I'm Michael Young, founder and CEO of MBN Solutions in Scotland. After two decades placing top talent across data, AI, and tech, I've seen what actually separates high-performing teams from the rest, and it's rarely what the headlines tell you.A Class Act is where I bring you those stories.  Honest, experience-led conversations with the data and AI leaders making the hard calls right now: who they hire, how they build data science capability, and what real leadership looks like when the technology never stops moving.No hype. No jargon. Just practical insight from people who've actually done it.Whether you're a data leader, a people manager, or hiring in tech, you'll walk away from every episode with something you can use.New episodes twice a month. Follow A Class Act so you never miss one.

  1. Episode 1

    S3E1: What Does A Forward Deployed Engineer Actually Do? With Tom McLaughlin, Forward Deployed Engineer at The OpenAI Deployment Company

    Every AI company seems to want a forward deployed engineer. Yet very few can explain what they’re actually hiring for. Tom McLaughlin was doing the job before it became one of the hottest titles in AI. He went from software engineering at JP Morgan to Tomoro, the applied AI firm OpenAI acquired in May 2026, and he’s now a forward deployed engineer at The OpenAI Deployment Company, working inside enterprise clients across the UK, Europe and the US. In this conversation, he chats to host Michael about where the FDE role came from, what a customer is really paying for when they hire one, and why so much of the value has moved from writing code to judgment, context and ownership.  If you’re building an AI team, hiring into one, or still working out whether you need forward deployed engineers at all, start here. What you’ll hear: The restaurant story Palantir used to explain the whole idea and the one line the entire model rests onWhy Tom thinks most companies hiring internal FDEs are answering a different question from the one they think they’re askingWhat the customer is actually paying for and whether one person should be carrying all threeWhen forward deployed engineer and forward deployed strategist should be two separate jobsCan one exceptional FDE with a swarm of agents replace a team of five?Why making code cheap doesn’t remove the bottleneckThe line between FDE and plain consultancyWhat is left for the human once agents do the implementationTom’s picture of 2030What to look for when hiring an FDEThe one hiring mistake to avoidGuest InformationTom McLaughlin is a founding forward deployed engineer at The OpenAI Deployment Company, based in Scotland and working with enterprise clients across the UK, Europe and the US. He started out as a software engineer at JP Morgan before joining Tomoro, the applied AI consulting and engineering firm OpenAI acquired in May 2026 as the founding piece of its Deployment Company. Connect with Tom McLaughlin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aibuilder/ Please note: The views expressed by the guest in this episode are their own and do not reflect those of their current or former employers. About Your HostMichael Young is the Founder & CEO of MBN Solutions and host of A Class Act. With nearly two decades of experience helping organisations build high-performing data, analytics and AI teams, he brings frontline insight into what makes exceptional talent and leadership. Connect with MBN SolutionsIf you’re hiring forward deployed engineers, building an AI delivery team, or rethinking what your technical hiring process is actually screening for, MBN partners with organisations to build data and AI teams that deliver. MBN Solutions on LinkedIn — industry updates, projects, and the latest in data, AI and analytics talent. Visit the company page here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mbn-recruitment-solutions For questions, guest recommendations, or to connect: Email: michael@mbnsolutions.com Visit MBN Solutions at www.mbnsolutions.com

    S3E1: What Does A Forward Deployed Engineer Actually Do? With Tom McLaughlin, Forward Deployed Engineer at The OpenAI Deployment Company

  2. Episode 2

    S3E2: AI in Customer Service: Sabio's Chief AI Officer Stuart Dorman on What Changed and What Hasn't

    Stuart is Chief AI Officer at Sabio Group, a CX consulting and technology firm that has spent two decades helping large organisations run their contact centres. He was working on speech recognition and natural language when it was still called speech technology, long before ChatGPT made any of it mainstream, so he has watched several waves of this arrive and seen which ones actually changed anything. In the second episode of season 3, Michael Young asks him what genuinely changed after ChatGPT, why the predicted wave of job losses has not materialised, and what separates the organisations getting real value from AI from the ones putting staff through a morning of Copilot training and calling it transformation. If you run a contact centre, own CX, or are trying to work out what AI is genuinely worth in a service organisation, this one is for you. What you’ll discover: What Sabio was doing with speech recognition and natural language back in 2004, and whether today feels revolutionary or like the technology finally caught upThe moment AI stopped being something Sabio sold to clients and started changing Sabio itselfWhy the Silicon Valley prediction that customer service would be first for job disruption has not played out the way it was soldWhy he sees AI as an expansive rather than a reductive technologyThe argument that the organisations who win are not the ones handling the most interactions, but the ones serving far more customersWhat he would do differently if he were building Sabio from scratch today as an AI-native companyWhy the barrier is no longer access to the technology but whether your organisation is culturally set up to use itWhy testing, tuning and optimising an AI deployment is now often a bigger job than building itWhere agentic AI is genuinely useful today in customer service, and where explainability and regulation start to biteGuest InformationStuart Dorman is Chief AI Officer at Sabio Group, where he leads the company’s AI strategy and its advanced technology portfolio across contact centre, AI, data and data analytics. He has spent close to three decades working where technology meets customer experience, starting with speech applications and natural language long before generative AI made the field mainstream. Sabio is a CX consulting and technology firm specialising in AI-powered customer experience, working with technology partners including Amazon Connect, Salesforce, Genesys and Google Cloud, and with clients including British Airways, Vodafone, Marks & Spencer and DHL Express. Stuart is responsible for developing those strategic partner relationships, and is a regular speaker across the global CX circuit. He is a strong advocate for treating AI as an expansive technology rather than a cost-reduction exercise, for experimentation over long roadmaps, and for the view that the constraint on most organisations is cultural rather than technical. Connect with Stuart Dorman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartdorman/ Please note: The views expressed by the guest in this episode are their own and do not reflect those of their current or former employers. About Your HostMichael Young is the Founder & CEO of MBN Solutions and host of A Class Act. With nearly two decades of experience helping organisations build high-performing data, analytics and AI teams, he brings frontline insight into what makes exceptional talent and leadership. Connect with MBN SolutionsIf you are building the AI capability inside a service organisation, or working out what skills your teams actually need to make it pay, MBN partners with organisations to build data and AI teams that deliver. MBN Solutions on LinkedIn — industry updates, projects, and the latest in data, AI and analytics talent. Visit the company page here: linkedin.com/company/mbn-recruitment-solutions For questions, guest recommendations, or to connect: Email: michael@mbnsolutions.com Visit MBN Solutions at www.mbnsolutions.com Subscribe & FollowSeason 3 is under way. Follow A Class Act wherever you get your podcasts and leave a review to help more listeners find these conversations.

    S3E2: AI in Customer Service: Sabio's Chief AI Officer Stuart Dorman on What Changed and What Hasn't

  3. Episode 3

    S3E3: From Chemical Engineer to AI Engineer at Legora with Google DeepMind Scholar Emma Rattray

    Emma Rattray picked chemical engineering at seventeen because she liked maths and physics. She’s now an AI engineer in Stockholm, working on a product thousands of people use every day. How she got from one to the other is the interesting part. Michael Young asks her how each of those steps actually happened. What the master’s demanded that neither her degree nor her job had. And what she’s learned about getting AI into production now she does it full time. What you’ll hear: ✔️How a LinkedIn post about visiting Stockholm turned into a job she was not looking for ✔️The small project she is proudest of, and why it was one of the simplest things she built ✔️The question from her Lagora interview that has stayed with her, and why it had nothing to do with AI ✔️Why she says the fundamentals still decide everything, however new the technology is ✔️Why choosing chemical engineering at seventeen was not a mistake, and what it still gives her ✔️What went into winning a Google DeepMind scholarship ✔️What the master’s demanded that neither her degree nor her job had ✔️The three things she would ask anyone describing a project they have built ✔️What a day actually looks like as the only engineer on a product used every day ✔️What moving fast looks like at a startup compared with JP Morgan Guest Information Emma Rattray is a member of the technical staff at Lagora in Stockholm, where she builds and ships AI products into production. She studied chemical engineering at the University of Edinburgh, moved into software engineering at JP Morgan, and returned to Edinburgh for a master’s in AI as a Google DeepMind scholar. Connect with Emma Rattray on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-rattray-bb026b143/ Please note: The views expressed by the guest in this episode are their own and do not reflect those of their current or former employers. About Your Host Michael Young is the Founder & CEO of MBN Solutions and host of A Class Act. With nearly two decades of experience helping organisations build high-performing data, analytics and AI teams, he brings frontline insight into what makes exceptional talent and leadership. Connect with MBN Solutions If you are hiring AI engineers, building an early-career pipeline, or trying to work out what to actually look for in people coming into the field now, MBN partners with organisations to build data and AI teams that deliver. MBN Solutions on LinkedIn — industry updates, projects, and the latest in data, AI and analytics talent.  Visit the company page here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/520643 For questions, guest recommendations, or to connect: Email: michael@mbnsolutions.com Visit MBN Solutions at www.mbnsolutions.com how to get into AI, AI career, AI engineer, AI engineering career, career change into AI, machine learning career, AI jobs, getting into tech, Google DeepMind scholarship, masters in AI, University of Edinburgh, JP Morgan, software engineering, building in public, AI portfolio projects, early career AI, graduate AI jobs, AI startup, Stockholm tech, Lagora, Emma Rattray, Michael Young, MBN Solutions, A Class Act podcast, AI talent, hiring AI engineers

  4. Season 3 Trailer

    Season 3 Trailer | Meet the People Building the Future of AI

    Season 3 of A Class Act is here. Every breakthrough in AI begins as an idea almost nobody believes in yet. But brilliant technology doesn't change anything until it survives contact with the real world. So why do some AI products transform entire organisations while others never make it past the demo? And who are the people capable of closing that gap? This season, host Michael Young sits down with the category-defining founders, the scientists moving the field forward, and the forward deployed engineers turning breakthroughs into real-world outcomes. The decisions, the failures, the talent, and the human judgment shaping what comes next. Season 3 opens on Wednesday 16 September with Tom McLaughlin, a founding forward deployed engineer at The OpenAI Deployment Company, on the role every AI company is hiring for. Follow A Class Act wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an episode. A Class Act is hosted by Michael Young, Founder & CEO of MBN Solutions. Email: michael@mbnsolutions.com Website: www.mbnsolutions.com

See All Season 3 (4)

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About

What does it really take to build and lead a world-class AI or data team?I'm Michael Young, founder and CEO of MBN Solutions in Scotland. After two decades placing top talent across data, AI, and tech, I've seen what actually separates high-performing teams from the rest, and it's rarely what the headlines tell you.A Class Act is where I bring you those stories.  Honest, experience-led conversations with the data and AI leaders making the hard calls right now: who they hire, how they build data science capability, and what real leadership looks like when the technology never stops moving.No hype. No jargon. Just practical insight from people who've actually done it.Whether you're a data leader, a people manager, or hiring in tech, you'll walk away from every episode with something you can use.New episodes twice a month. Follow A Class Act so you never miss one.

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