From Expertise to Impact
A mid-career pivot with Pontem
I have had a good career. One built on expertise and solving hard problems. But at some point I realized that building a career around expertise is not the same thing as building one around impact, and neither is the same as fully owning it.
I did not build my career around some perfectly defined master plan. I built it by solving the problems in front of me. I said yes to difficult work. I adapted to what the business needed. I became useful. Over time, usefulness became a reputation, and that reputation became a career.
A good career, and one I am deeply grateful for.
But there is a difference between building a successful career and fully owning it.
Fresh out of Georgia Tech, I started at MSi, putting in the reps and building a strong technical foundation in flow assurance modeling. More importantly, I was exposed early to great people, tough problems, and the kind of thinking that would shape the rest of my career.
Over time, I became the flow assurance SME who could step into complex situations and quickly help make sense of them. I am proud of that identity. It taught me how to think in systems, not just in tasks, and how to stay calm when the answer is not obvious.
It also taught me something else: expertise can become a box.
Corporations value specialists. They depend on them. But they do not always know how to see them beyond the role they have already proven they can perform. The deeper your expertise becomes, the easier it is for others to mistake that expertise for the full extent of your potential. You become highly trusted, highly regarded, and sometimes highly confined.
That tension has shaped much of my career.
Even while flow assurance kept pulling me back, I had the chance to see and learn a lot. I saw two large deepwater fields move from concept through startup. I built procedures and relationships during operational readiness phases with operators who would go on to become Production Supervisors and OIMs across the Gulf. I managed subsea ROV vessel scopes to execute integrity inspections and reliability work on mature assets. I also saw firsthand how seemingly simple early project decisions could come back later as operational challenges (mostly in the form of hydrates and asphaltenes - ouch).
That variety mattered: it was my first taste of Independent Spirit, doing what was needed to help the Corporation make money. It broadened my view and deepened my instincts. But the times in between those roles often came with inconsistent responsibility and authority.
Eventually, I moved into a more strategic technology role, and it confirmed something I had suspected for a long time: I was capable of contributing well beyond the narrow boundaries of the label I had carried. That role pulled me closer to the intersection I had been circling for years — operations, data, problem solving, and innovation. I had the opportunity to directly influence which technologies we tested, deployed, and scaled across offshore facilities.
And then, as often happens in corporate life, circumstance intervened.
A merger was announced, but there was some uncertainty with timeline and outcome.
During two years of uncertainty, my team continued to push forward with innovating. In fact, some of our most meaningful progress happened in that stretch. We rolled out digital operator rounds, capturing 100,000+ operator entries in the first year alone. We installed vibration and electrical condition monitoring to detect anomalies on critical machines, deployed automated integrity sensors, and developed a subsea condition monitoring program. We tested computer vision to predict corrosion on fabric and structures, deployed a physics-informed neural network model that boosted GoA daily production and created an Asset Management Center on our production floor at Hess Tower.
A merger changes things. Business lines shift. Priorities get reshuffled. Advocates move on. Roles that look like the future one day can disappear the next. And…flow assurance came calling again. It was a reminder that much of what happens in a career is shaped not just by merit, but also by timing, structure, and forces outside your control.
That realization did not make me cynical. It made me clearer.
At some point, you have to decide whether your career is something that happens to you, or something you are willing to actively claim for yourself.
For me, this is that moment.
I have spent enough years proving that I can operate inside the box. What I want now is the opportunity to build on the full range of how I think and what I care about.
From the customer perspective, I see major gaps across industrial operations in basic problem solving, root cause analysis, and the beneficial use of lessons learned. Digital companies are trying to build the next great tool without enough domain knowledge. Engineering companies are trying to modernize operations without wanting to take on full-stack software solutions. And somewhere in the middle, the customer is still asking the most important question: how do create ROI from technology in my business?
That question matters to me.
I have a deep personal passion for production surveillance automation, and I believe the future will be built through end-user-informed analytics and high-quality visualizations grounded in the principles of reliable operations.
Identify anomalies. Diagnose the problem. Provide a prognosis. Plan and execute the corrective work.
At its core, the workflow is not complicated. But much of the surveillance work done today is still repetitive, manual, and difficult to scale. Valuable knowledge gets trapped in spreadsheets, habits, and people’s heads. Too much of it disappears when someone changes roles.
That is not sustainable. And it is not necessary.
Pontem gives me what I have realized I need most at this stage of my career: trust, flexibility, autonomy, and an open canvas to turn expertise into broader customer impact. It is a place where I can bring together operational realism and a strong belief that our industry still has plenty of room to get smarter.
Pontem, Latin for bridge, sits at an important intersection. It represents a bridge between data and discipline, between engineering depth and modern digital capability, and between identifying a problem and actually solving it.
Working with Pontem does not feels like a cold start. There is a legacy here from MSi and Assured Flow Solutions. When I left MSi in 2012, we have stayed connected through work, friendship, and the occasional chance to simply spend time together. Over the years, those ties never really went away. That shared history makes this move feel both familiar and full of possibility.
Tommy even brought me into AFS in 2015 to make a nationally-televised client testimonial video with the promise of meeting Terry Bradshaw. (That kinda happened - haha, see below).
I have long believed that flow assurance engineers are more naturally wired for digital leadership than many people realize. Long before digital transformation became the phrase of the day, many of us were already living in that world. We were building models from scratch, automating repetitive analyses, structuring data, interpreting patterns, and trying to understand what was happening between two sensors when the full picture was not directly visible. We were taking physics, data, and operations and turning them into better decisions.
That mindset matters now more than ever.
Pontem has the ingredients: deep technical roots, practical problem-solving capability, and strong digital instincts. In today’s environment, that combination matters.
That is the kind of work I want to be part of.
In the months ahead, I will be spending time reconnecting with friends old and new across the industry, learning from the global Pontem team, and helping shape how we support customers through Intelligent Operations.
This moment feels fitting.
For years, I built inside systems that benefited from my expertise, but did not always create room for my broader impact.
Now I have the chance to own that next chapter more directly.
That is why this feels like the right intersection.
A chance to turn expertise into impact.
Let’s reconnect.
Jason.Harry@pontemanalytics.com