Fractional or interim CTO
Executive technical leadership one to three days a week, or full-time for a defined period: strategy, architecture, hiring, vendors, the board pack, and a steady hand for your engineering leads.
CTO-as-a-Service
A CTO when you need one. One who still ships.
Fractional, interim, or full-time for the right company: technical leadership for SaaS and platform companies. Teams, architecture, cloud, and generative AI that reaches production, from a CTO who runs a 100,000-member platform today with AI in the loop.
- 25 years building SaaS · 20 as CTO
- ISO 27001 readiness led, 2026
- Cape Town · UTC+2 · remote
- Open to conversations about the next engagement
Now
CTO, Public Sector Network 2021–present
A government-only professional network across Australia, New Zealand and North America, 100,000+ members.
- First commit in January 2022 to ISO 27001:2022 readiness
- Automated tests from 67 to about 5,250 in two years, CI on every push
- Run since 2025 as a team of one with AI tooling in the loop
What I do
How I work →Three ways to put a CTO in the room
AI strategy and delivery
Where generative AI pays off in your product and your engineering, where it does not yet, and a plan that ships. I run a production platform with AI in the loop every day, so the advice comes from practice, not slides.
Technical due diligence
A fixed-scope review of code, architecture, security, team and operations, with a plain-language report and a prioritised risk list for investors, acquirers and boards. Then help fixing what matters.
Proof
All projects →The platform I run today
2022–present · CTO
Public Sector Network platform
The community, events, learning and marketplace platform behind Public Sector Network, a free government-only network across Australia, New Zealand and North America. Built from the first commit in 2022 and run end to end as CTO.
- 100,000+ government professionals across Australia, New Zealand and North America
- First commit in January 2022 to ISO 27001:2022 readiness
- Automated tests from 67 to about 5,250 in two years, CI on every push
- Run since 2025 as a team of one with AI tooling in the loop
Side projects
Still shipping
2026 · Design, code and launch
Flappycar
A one-button browser game: a sports car on cold-gas thrusters, a daily course everyone shares, and ghost races sent to friends as a URL with no backend at all.
2026 · Design and code
mdread
A very fast, GPU-rendered Markdown reader for Linux and macOS, built in Rust for large high-DPI screens. Ten percent of the features, all of the speed.
- Public Sector Network
- Wizenoze
- Cognician
- Fundamo, a Visa company
- Stem Software
- Pick n Pay
Selected writing
All writing →Thinking in public
Your real team as CTO
One of the biggest mistakes new CTOs make is thinking their team is still the tech team. Your real team is the executive team, and that changes how you spend your week.
The Gotcha Game That Drives Great Engineers Away
Most tech interviews are a game of gotcha that makes the interviewer feel clever and loses solid builders. The best interviewers are great conversationalists who listen.
How will we train junior developers in a world of generative AI?
Generative AI is delegation, not just abstraction. How do juniors build the judgement to use it well, and what should teams and employers change?
The Illusion of Democratized AI — And Why It Should Worry You
Training frontier models is structurally out of reach for all but a few hyperscalers. Why that concentration of compute is a strategic risk for everyone building on top.
About
Twenty-five years building SaaS. Twenty as CTO.
CTO of Public Sector Network since 2021, where I built a 100,000-member platform from the first commit and run it today with AI in the loop. Before that, CTO at Wizenoze and Stem Software, and an engineer at Fundamo (Visa), Cognician and Pick n Pay. Open to fractional and interim work, and to full-time for the right company.
Work with me
Need a CTO in the room?
Tell me what is going on. The first conversation is free, I will say honestly whether I can help, and if I can’t I’ll introduce you to someone who can. Fractional, interim, or full-time for the right company.
Open to conversations about the next engagement. Cape Town · UTC+2 · remote