I'm a software engineer with more than 20 years of experience building scalable systems and leading technical teams. I'm currently Chief Architect (Backend) at Boldin, where I also led development of the AI harness behind Boldin AI.

My focus is systems architecture, scaling large Rails applications, DevOps, and helping small remote teams ship well.

Experience

Chief Architect (Backend) · Boldin

2021 – Present

I lead the design and evolution of the backend systems powering Boldin's financial-planning platform, working across Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL and AWS with a focus on secure multi-tenant architecture, scalability, reliability and pragmatic engineering.

I also led development of the AI harness behind Boldin AI: agents and tool calling, retrieval, evals, guardrails and an MCP server.

VP Engineering · Intellum

2017 – 2021

Led the engineering organisation behind a customer education platform used by tens of millions of people. I built and scaled the engineering team, architected and scaled the application on Ruby, PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch, AWS and Google Cloud, and supported enterprise clients including Google, Facebook and Amazon. I also set code guidelines, development processes and engineering standards, and mentored engineers.

Principal Software Engineer · Intellum

2011 – 2017

Worked on Exceed, Intellum's flagship learning platform, helping make it one of the best learning experiences available.

Team Lead · NetEngine

2011

Introduced continuous integration and test-driven development across key projects, managed client expectations, and delivered weekly releases while balancing four projects with limited resources.

Software Engineer · Unboxed Consulting

2006 – 2011

Contract Rails engineer working with many startups to improve agile processes and build quality products. Also involved in financial administration, client relations, recruitment and marketing.

Skills

Backend
Ruby (since 2006), Rails, systems architecture, application scaling
AI
Agent harnesses, tool calling, multi-agent routing, RAG and embeddings, evals, guardrails and grounding, MCP
Databases
PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, ElasticSearch, BigQuery, Redshift, DynamoDB, MongoDB
Infrastructure
AWS, Google Cloud, Kamal, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes
Frontend
JavaScript, Hotwire / Stimulus, React, HTML and CSS
Practices
Git, test-driven development, continuous integration, Agile, Scrum and Kanban
Leadership
Building and managing teams of 2–20, engineering strategy, recruitment, contract negotiation

Education

Bachelor of Business Science, Information Systems · University of Cape Town

2002 – 2005

Information systems, business strategy, project management, economics, financial mathematics, statistics, accounting and finance.

Interests

Finance, lean teams, sustainability, machine learning, economics and renewable energy.

Elsewhere