Vaughn Dickson
CTO for SaaS and platform companies. Twenty-six years building software, twenty as CTO.
I am a CTO and software engineer based in Cape Town. I have spent twenty-six years building software, twenty of them leading engineering as CTO, in startups and corporates, from a first commit to platforms customers rely on and the teams that run them.
Since late 2021 I have been CTO of Public Sector Network, a government-only professional network across Australia, New Zealand and North America. I built its platform from an empty repository in January 2022, led a small engineering team, designed the architecture and the AWS estate and moved it between regions, and since 2025 have run its engineering hands-on with AI tooling in the loop. The case study has the detail.
Before that I was CTO of Wizenoze, an ed-tech scale-up in Amsterdam, where I led product and engineering and we built a web-scale crawler and search platform that classified content by reading level with machine learning. Earlier I spent eight years as CTO of Stem Software in Cape Town, building the web-based ERP for retailers, supermarkets and restaurants that the company still sells and hiring and training the team that grew it, and I wrote code at Fundamo (a Visa company), Cognician, Pick n Pay and Obsidian Systems: distributed search, mobile-money transaction engines, data pipelines, and web applications at every size in between.
What I believe about the job: a CTO’s real team is the executive team, not the engineering team. The work is connecting the technology to the financials, the market and the customers, and translating in both directions. I have written about that. I still write code because it keeps my judgement honest; the side projects on this site are the evidence.
I work as a fractional and interim CTO for SaaS and platform companies, do technical due diligence for investors and boards, and help leadership teams decide where generative AI pays off. For the right company I would join full-time. Consulting explains how that works, and my CV has the roles.
Role by role
- 2021–present
Chief Technology Officer, Public Sector Network
Australia, remote from Cape Town
Built the community, events, learning and marketplace platform behind a government-only professional network from the first commit; led the engineering team, the architecture and the AWS estate through a region move; and since 2025 have run its engineering hands-on with AI tooling in the loop.
- 2014–present
Fractional CTO, Vaughn Dickson Consulting
Cape Town
Fractional and interim CTO work, technical due diligence and AI strategy for SaaS and platform companies, alongside the full-time roles below.
- 2014–2021
Chief Technology Officer, Wizenoze
Amsterdam and Cape Town
Recruited and led the development team and ran product development at an ed-tech scale-up: a web-scale crawler and search platform that classified content by reading level with machine learning, served through APIs, SDKs and classroom apps, on AWS with a full CI/CD pipeline.
- 2012–2014
Staff Engineer, Cognician
Cape Town
Took the Clojure and Datomic rewrite of a coaching platform to production within two months of joining, and automated the AWS estate.
- 2011–2012
Senior Developer, Fundamo, a Visa company
Cape Town
Integrated a mobile-money transaction engine with banking, SMS and USSD channels, built the load-testing tools that found its concurrency bugs, and trained Visa staff in Singapore to support it.
- 2003–2011
Chief Technology Officer, Stem Software
Cape Town
Built the web-based ERP for retailers, supermarkets and restaurants that the company is based on, as its only developer for the first four years and then with a development team I scaled out and trained; it is still selling.
- 2002–2003
Senior Developer, Pick n Pay
Cape Town
Stocktake software and data pipelines off legacy systems for one of South Africa’s largest retailers.
- 2001–2002
Programmer, Obsidian Systems
Cape Town
A real-time freight auction platform with a custom workflow engine, and an online flight-booking framework integrated with legacy systems.
Reading
The books that shaped how I design systems and run teams are on the recommended reading list.
Need a CTO in the room?
Tell me what is going on. The first conversation is free, and I will say honestly whether I can help. If I can’t, I’ll introduce you to someone who can.
Cape Town, working remotely. My mornings overlap with Australian afternoons, and my afternoons with the UK, Europe and the US east coast. Or message me on LinkedIn.