Chicago-based AI engineering
Principal AI engineering
for Chicago businesses.
Production LLM integrations, retrieval architectures, and AI strategy, delivered by a principal engineer who has built software through every technology era since 1998. Remote-first and Illinois-based, serving Chicago, Chicagoland, the North Shore, and Lake County.
Why Chicago and Chicagoland teams hire Champlin Enterprises
Most AI engineering in Chicago routes you to a junior developer with a fresh certification and a playbook from a workshop. We are the opposite, a principal-led team with 28 years of production experience behind it. For Fortune 500 businesses in the Loop and well-capitalized mid-market teams across Chicagoland, the North Shore, and Lake County, that means direct access to the people making the architectural calls, no telephone game, and no assembly line.
What we actually build
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems grounded in your real data. LLM-powered internal tools that compress decision loops from days to minutes. Intelligent workflows that automate the knowledge work your team is burning hours on. Production evaluation harnesses so you can measure whether the AI is actually working. Always in production — never prototypes that die on staging.
The AI engineering stack we use
Claude (Anthropic), GPT (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), and open-weight models (Llama, Qwen, DeepSeek) in active production. Vector stores on Pinecone, Weaviate, or Postgres with pgvector. Orchestration in TypeScript, Python, or Laravel depending on your existing stack. Provider choice is part of the engagement — we are not locked into a single vendor.
What you get
What this looks like in practice
Production RAG systems
Your data, your answers — grounded in your documents, CRM, and internal knowledge bases. Zero hallucinations on source-bound queries.
LLM-powered operations
Contract review, customer ticket triage, underwriting, sales research — wherever principal-level judgment currently bottlenecks a process.
Evaluation harnesses
Before going live, you know whether the AI is right or wrong on the 500 cases that matter most. Continuous eval in CI.
AI strategy and roadmapping
Where to invest, where to wait, and which vendors are actually ready for production use. Written analysis, not slides.
Proof of work
Products we’ve built
Every product below was built by our principal-led team, designed, architected, and launched without a PM layer or an agency markup.
Trusted by
FAQ
Common questions
What does AI engineering in Chicago look like with Champlin Enterprises?
A principal engineer works with your executive and product teams to identify the highest-value AI opportunities, architect the integration, and build the production system. No slide decks, no generic strategy frameworks, we build the thing.
Do you work on-site with Chicago and Chicagoland clients?
Yes. Champlin Enterprises is remote-first and Illinois-based. On-site sessions across the Loop, the North Shore, Lake County, and the broader Chicagoland metro are available — workshops, architecture reviews, and executive briefings.
What industries do you serve in Chicago?
Healthcare, finance, legal, logistics, insurance, and B2B SaaS are the most common. The common thread is regulated or data-heavy domains where principal-level engineering judgment matters.
Can you audit an existing AI implementation?
Yes. Technical due diligence and code audits of existing AI systems are a common one-to-three week engagement, often triggered by acquisition diligence, board-level risk review, or before a major platform rebuild.
What is the engagement model?
The productized Sprint is a flat $25,000, and custom engagements start at $10,000. Build and Fractional engagements scale with the problem. Products and managed hosting carry their own public pricing.
Do you work with LLM providers beyond OpenAI?
Yes. Claude (Anthropic), GPT (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), and open-weight models (Llama, Qwen, DeepSeek) are all in active production use. Provider selection is part of the engineering engagement.
Nearby & related
Chicago + Chicagoland
Principal engineering,
on Chicago time.
Who you work with
Kevin Champlin
Founder & Principal Engineer
28 years in production software, from enterprise systems to the SaaS products above. Kevin leads every engagement with our AI engineering team, and the people who scope your project are the ones who build it and pick up the phone after launch. No offshore handoffs. No bait-and-switch.
A softer step
Not sure if you even need this kind of work?
Most businesses don't need a custom build. They need a clear look at where AI would actually pay off first. That's what the Free AI Opportunity Audit is: tell us about your operation and an AI agent we engineered reads your website and emails you, in about two minutes, three concrete places AI quietly pays for itself, a 90-day plan for the first one, and a website health grade. No call needed and no follow-up sales sequence. The audit is yours whether or not we ever work together.
Three Chicago-based engagements every quarter.
A real AI problem. A real budget. On-site or remote, Chicago metro or nationwide. The application takes ten minutes.
Free AI audit, emailed in about two minutes. No pitch deck.
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