I take on a small number of AI engagements a year, mostly by referral. This page exists so you can decide — before we ever talk — whether I'm the right person for what you're building. I'd rather lose your email than your month.
> status: open to select work · AU + US · by referral · a handful of engagements a year
What I help with
- Product direction for AI, pre-PMF. What to build, who it's for, what it costs, what breaks, what needs a human, and the metric that proves it's working — decided before you burn runway building the wrong thing well.
- Voice & conversational AI. Real-time voice agents that hold up on live calls: telephony, ASR and TTS, barge-in, latency budgets, and the escalation paths for the moments a model shouldn't be deciding alone.
- The backend AI actually runs on. The unglamorous layer that keeps agents alive in production — Go and TypeScript services, Postgres, queues, event-driven pipelines, observability, and the integrations a demo never needs.
- Production hardening. Taking something that works in a demo to something that survives real users, real volume, and real regulation. Human-in-the-loop designed as escalation, not theatre.
Who it's for — and who it isn't
+ a fit if A fit if…
- You have an AI prototype that demos well but isn't a product yet.
- You're pre-PMF, and every wrong call costs runway you don't have.
- You're in a regulated or high-stakes domain — insurance, finance, health — where "mostly works" is a liability.
- You want someone who's shipped voice and agents to real users, not just built a notebook.
- You'd rather have one senior person who's done it than a team learning on your time.
− probably not if Probably not if…
- You want a long-term staff seat or a big team — I take a few contracts a year, hands-on.
- You want someone to ratify a decision you've already made — I'll push back; that's most of the value.
- You're optimising for the cheapest pair of hands. I'm not that, and that's fine.
- You need a foundation model trained from scratch — I build systems around models, not the models themselves.
- You need it shipped tomorrow with no scope — I scope before I build, which is why the builds last.
How I work
- By referral, a small number of engagements a year.
- Australia and the US — Melbourne-based; I've shipped for a venture-funded LA company across the time gap.
- Anywhere from advisory to hands-on build, usually starting with advice and earning the build.
- We start with a conversation about scope, not a contract.