Services

Three offerings, all rooted in AI-fluent technical leadership: senior fractional CTO engagements, hands-on AI product development, and training and speaking on LLMs and AI coding agents.

Jump to: Fractional CTO · AI product development · Training and speaking · How I work

Fractional¹ CTO

As your fractional CTO, I provide senior technology leadership on a flexible basis, giving you executive-level expertise without the overhead of a full-time hire.

I work as the technology lead on your team: setting and evolving your technology strategy, evaluating tools and architectural choices with an emphasis on business impact rather than technical novelty, and addressing technical debt, security, and scaling before they become problems. Where AI is part of the picture (and it usually is now), I help you get from "we should do something with AI" to a clear, defensible plan, and then to working software.

What makes the relationship work is the combination of strategy and hands-on building. I can chart the course, and I can write the code that proves the course is right. So when you need to make a critical technology decision, you get both the strategic perspective and practical validation, not just one followed by the other.

My current fractional CTO engagement is at Squadify, where I bring senior technology direction to the leadership team and lead the AI work hands-on. Behind that, 30 years tackling thorny technology problems and making them work in the wild — 23 of them at IBM.

AI product development

For organisations exploring or scaling AI, I build alongside you, from prototype through MVP to live product. LLMs, agentic systems, and the engineering practice that turns them into things real users can rely on.

Design Thinking shapes the work end-to-end: observation, reflection, making, repeat. Product ideas get framed with human-centred research; AI capabilities get prototyped to test what's actually feasible; working software gets integrated into real platforms with architecture that evolves as the technology shifts. Short feedback loops, decisions made on evidence.

Recent AI work includes Squadify's AI Insights engine and SquadBot (both live in production), with the re-platform of Squadify's core currently in design. Plus custom AI tools for clients that have evolved into revenue-generating products, and LLMs integrated into existing platforms in ways that hold up under real use.

Training and speaking

For teams adopting LLMs and AI coding agents, I run workshops and training tailored to where you are now: practical use, patterns that work, common pitfalls, and how to think about responsible adoption. The aim is teams that can confidently use these tools without either over-trusting them or dismissing them.

I also teach Design Thinking — the same Enterprise Design Thinking practice I learnt at IBM and now bring to product and AI work — for teams that want grounding in human-centred design alongside the technology.

I also speak regularly at conferences, internal summits, and meetups on AI, design, and the future of technology. My talk Building with LLMs, given at the Mindstone AI meetup in London, is a representative example.

I support the Innovation Thinking & Practice module at Leeds University Business School, because the next generation of business leaders needs grounding in technology and innovation, and because teaching keeps me close to emerging thinking.

How I work

A few things to know about working with craftscale:

• Engagements are flexible. Most fractional CTO arrangements are one to three days a week, ongoing, with reasonable notice on either side. Project-shaped work (discovery, prototype, MVP) is scoped on a project basis.
• I work alongside your team, not above it. I can bring in collaborators from my professional network for specialist work where it accelerates a project, but the goal is always to leave your team stronger than I found it.
• Decisions are grounded in business impact. I'm wary of technology choices justified by novelty or trend. The test is: does this make the business demonstrably better at serving its customers?
• Communication is in plain language. I translate between technical possibility and business reality. That's a big part of what I bring.

Drop me a line.

If any of these shapes match what you need, get in touch and we'll figure out the rest in conversation.