Rick Hightower

Rick Hightower helps companies become AI-first through practical mentoring, executive and team training, and custom AI solution development. He is a former Senior Distinguished Engineer, with background at Capital One and Apple. His work has focused on bringing ML and AI insights into real front-line business applications. Based in Austin, he works remotely.

Rick is a Claude Certified Architect (CCA-F), AI systems practitioner, and builder of production multi-agent systems. He is currently authoring a book on Harness Engineering with Manning Publishing. He created Skilz, a universal agent skill installer supporting 30+ coding agents including Claude Code, Gemini, Copilot, and Cursor, and co-founded one of the largest agentic skill marketplaces.

Today, Rick and the Spillwave team work with leaders and teams who want to move beyond AI experiments and build real AI capability inside their companies. He helps organizations adopt AI safely, train their people, redesign workflows, and build practical AI systems that create measurable business value.

Ready to make your company AI-first? Connect with Rick on LinkedIn, Substack, or Medium, book him to speak or train your team via SpeakerHub, visit Harness Engineering for the commercial offer, or book a discovery.