Steven Tomlinson

Continuing Education

Continuing Education

Ongoing education is a professional obligation, not a career reset.

My continuing education focuses on emerging system forces — artificial intelligence, decentralized finance, and protocol-driven infrastructure — and how they intersect with enterprise architecture, governance, and long-lived systems.

Rather than chasing tools, I prioritize foundational understanding, organizational impact, and architectural risk awareness.

Focus Areas

Artificial Intelligence & Agent Systems

Understanding how generative and agent-based AI alters system design, operational boundaries, and governance.

Decentralized Finance & Protocol Infrastructure

Developing architectural fluency in decentralized systems, trust models, and financial primitives — with attention to where these systems integrate cleanly with enterprise environments, and where they do not.

Cloud & Platform Evolution

Tracking how cloud-native platforms evolve to support intelligent agents, data-intensive workflows, and policy-driven systems.

Certifications & Specializations

Generative AI Leader

Provider: Google Cloud Year: 2025 Credential: https://www.coursera.org/account/accomplishments/specialization/696U81I91094

A specialization focused on organizational adoption of generative AI, agent-based systems, and enterprise integration patterns — emphasizing governance, risk, and value creation rather than model internals.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi): The Future of Finance

Provider: Duke University Year: 2022 Credential: https://www.coursera.org/account/accomplishments/specialization/UQ5PSDYGZG73

A multi-course specialization covering DeFi primitives, infrastructure, systemic risk, and architectural constraints, grounded in real-world financial and regulatory considerations.

Selected Coursework

Artificial Intelligence & Intelligent Agents

These courses focus on agent orchestration, decision boundaries, enterprise integration, and organizational readiness, not consumer-facing AI tooling.

Decentralized Finance & Infrastructure

This coursework emphasizes protocol behavior, systemic risk, and architectural trade-offs, rather than speculative applications.

How This Education Is Applied

Continuing education directly informs my work in:

  • AI-enabled system architecture
  • Identity and trust modeling
  • Risk-aware integration of decentralized components
  • Governance of intelligent and autonomous systems
  • Long-term architectural sustainability

Active Project Applications

AI Portfolio Repository — steven-tomlinson/ai-portfolio

  • Certification lab projects and courseware from Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure
  • Personal experiments testing AI concepts and integration patterns
  • Hands-on implementations of agent-based systems and orchestration
  • Learning notes documenting architectural implications

Lockb0x Codex Forge — steven-tomlinson/lockbox-codex-forge

  • Protocol-driven Chrome extension demonstrating trust boundaries and verifiable provenance
  • Applies cryptographic primitives and secure system design principles
  • Production-ready implementation awaiting Chrome Marketplace publication

Liquidity Dashboard — steven-tomlinson/liquidity-dashboard-

  • Python/Streamlit application for DeFi analytics
  • Applies learnings from Duke University DeFi specialization to practical financial data analysis

For detailed project information, see my AI Projects & Research page.

Learning is evaluated by architectural impact, not credential volume.

Perspective

Senior architects are not paid to know everything. They are paid to recognize what matters, what is premature, and what carries long-term risk.

My continuing education exists to sharpen that judgment.