Permanent Roles

I am good at solving hard problems, it doesn’t matter what they are. Some problems only look hard because they are complex, and those are not the same thing. What I do is break a complex problem into different levels of simplicity. The components are never equal, some are harder, some are not core, and some cannot start until another is finished, with ripple effects on the designs. Knowing that order, those relationships, and where the effort is worth the gain, takes a lot of experience. Sometimes I make it look so easy, and that makes you think you can go hire someone cheaper or with less experience, without realising it feels easy because I am that damn good at what I do. My value is making your life easier. That’s why you hired me: I remove friction, not add to it. This is why I am always the go-to person for many teams and individuals. “No Problems, Only Solutions.”

I am open to the right permanent role, on the right terms. I am picky about where I put my energy, and I would rather find the right team than the nearest job. I work best on full autonomy, handed a real problem and given room to run. I am at my worst where everything has to be defined before I can move.

There are two kinds of permanent role I am looking for:

  1. Building, as an AI Product Engineer
  2. AI enablement and training

Role interest 1: Building, as an AI Product Engineer

I am a founder at heart with an engineer’s mind, most drawn to very hands-on, founding-startup work: scoping the product, building it, and owning it end to end. With agentic coding I move fast, a prototype or MVP in days rather than weeks, then iterate from there. Shipping fast does not mean sloppy. A demo, prototype or MVP still has to work, and it has to be quality controlled. AI makes it easy to generate something that looks finished; what I care about is whether it holds up underneath: the logic, the workflow, the wiring, the design intent. That is what my own custom harness is for: a specialised framework I built and use for this.

As an entrepreneur, I know the importance of testing the water, which is what MVPs and working prototypes are for: getting something in front of real users and seeing how it goes. Either stop the ones there is no real want or market for, or refine and scale the ones users actually want. Perfection is not the goal.

A prototype is also a way to drive and guide a conversation. Sometimes I know going in that it is not the answer, but it is still a good starting point when a stakeholder or client is not sure what they want. Having something they can hold and play with makes a big difference: people can also learn what they want by learning what they don’t want. So the first thing I get clear on is the purpose, and the angle we are building for.

What I want is to actually architect and build, with the room to run at it. It does not have to be a team; I can be solo, working directly with the interested stakeholders. I have shipped several real production systems this way over the last year, and the CV below has the detail.

Role interest 2: AI enablement and training

The other role I want is helping people actually use AI. Most teams buy the tools and then copy and paste back and forth into a chat window, and stop there. I have spent a year working out what makes it stick: a real process around it, not a novelty. I built my own harness for it, and I run different workflows depending on what I am working on. Closing the gap between “we bought Claude” and “our people use it every day” is the work I have been doing, for myself and now for clients, and teaching people so they own it after I leave is the part I like most.

Training and guiding people is not new to me, and it did not start with AI. In my ICT and infrastructure architecture career, most of it at Canonical (Ubuntu Linux), I sat with every kind of stakeholder and engineer, from the CFO down, guiding and training them and translating the technical into something they could actually use. I did the same as Programme Director of the dance school and the largest Brazilian Zouk community online that I built, where I designed the programme around how people actually retain and improve, and trained and led the people in it. It comes down to the same combination every time: coaching, mentorship and technical training.

Additional information

One thing that is not on my CV. Last year I was diagnosed with ADHD, which finally explained why mainstream education never worked for me. It is also why I have spent two decades quietly obsessing over how people actually learn: memory retention, bite-size sessions, how psychology, memory, biomechanics and emotion all work together. When I train someone, that is what I am drawing on underneath. It is personal, and it is the thing I have spent my life getting good at.

My CV

Download my CV as a PDF for the full detail: what I have built and shipped, my experience, and my skills.