AI product engineer, founder, & consultant

Turn complex AI ideas into working products.

I work from customer problem to production system: defining the product, making the architecture decisions, writing the software and staying accountable through launch, operations and growth. I also help teams assess AI opportunities and make practical decisions about implementation and governance.

Talk to me about your project See selected work

Queenstown-based. Working across New Zealand, Australia and worldwide.

01Product. Engineering. Delivery.

$20M+

raised across three rounds

40+

people in a global team

200K+

developer community built

0 → revenue

with a production AI startup

First class

BEng Software Engineering

The difference

There is a wide gap between a good plan and a finished product.

Complex projects fail in the execution gap between a credible plan and a working system. I bridge it by combining product judgement, software engineering, delivery and commercial reality in one engagement. That hands-on experience also informs the advice I give before a team commits to a build.

Product judgement

Clear priorities and practical roadmaps grounded in customer, technical and commercial understanding.

Hands-on engineering

Production AI and software systems across React, TypeScript, Node.js, .NET, Python and cloud infrastructure.

End-to-end ownership

From customer discovery and architecture to code, deployment, operations and continuous improvement.

Commercial experience

Fundraising, pricing, enterprise sales, partnerships and go-to-market from early stage through scale.

Governance & assurance

Traceability, human review and practical AI risk controls for regulated and high-trust environments.

Who I work with

Senior capacity for the work that matters most.

Founders & early-stage teams

You need senior technical and product leadership to turn a real opportunity into a credible, production-ready product.

Product & technology leaders

You have an important initiative or delivery problem that needs experienced execution, not another layer of management.

Agencies, consultancies & delivery partners

You need a senior specialist who can join a client engagement, provide clear technical advice and take ownership of hands-on delivery.

Government & regulated organisations

You need to identify where AI creates value and move from policy into safe, practical implementation.

Services

How I can help.

Bring me in for a defined AI product, focussed AI advisory, embedded engineering capacity, or hands-on technical leadership.

AI product engineering

Take an AI-enabled product from a real customer problem to a deployed, useful system.

Discovery, architecture and technical validation
Agentic workflows, RAG, MCP servers, and structured outputs
Production delivery, evaluation and human review

Product & engineering leadership

Hands-on product and technical leadership without the delay or cost of a permanent executive hire.

Roadmaps and practical prioritisation
Architecture and build-versus-buy decisions
Team design, hiring and delivery governance

Senior software engineering

Hands-on capacity for teams that need critical software designed, built and shipped properly.

React, TypeScript, .NET and Node.js
APIs, integrations and event-driven systems
Performance, reliability, testing and technical debt

AI transformation, governance & assurance

Identify useful AI opportunities and connect them to practical workflows, proportionate controls and an implementation plan.

AI opportunity and maturity assessment
Governance, human oversight and procurement
Operating models and implementation options

Discuss a project Explore AI advisory

Selected work

Built in the real world.

Production work across AI products, developer infrastructure, compliance, regulated delivery and global startups, alongside practical AI advisory methods.

AI compliance platform

Porticus

Founder & lead product engineer

Personally building an AI-native platform that turns operational documents and obligations into structured, source-traceable compliance programmes. Built the document-processing pipeline, structured extraction and requirement matching, with source links, confidence thresholds and human-review gates.

LLM pipelinesEvent-driven AzureKnowledge graphs

Blockchain infrastructure

SubQuery & OnFinality

Chief Product Officer

Led product and engineering through seed stage, product-market fit, token generation and public listing, while building a 40+ person global team.

$20M+ raised200K+ communityDeveloper platforms

AI customer service

8ai

Co-founder & CTO

Built a production AI support product from zero to revenue, combining multi-agent workflows with knowledge-grounded conversations.

RAGMulti-agentCashflow positive

Government & high-trust environments

AI transformation & governance

Consulting approach & method development

Developed an AI transformation approach for New Zealand government and regulated organisations. Designed the SPEAR opportunity-assessment rubric and a six-pillar governance model, connecting use-case selection to accountability, human oversight, procurement and implementation planning. The method considers process redesign and conventional automation alongside AI.

Opportunity assessmentGovernanceImplementation planning

Insurance technology

Sentro

Technical product leadership & engineering

Led delivery of a group-insurance platform, then returned to deliver production features across .NET, Angular and React.

Regulated delivery.NETAzure

Additional experience

AI investment intelligence

Built investment-memo workflows for a confidential client using Node.js, React and Azure, combining document ingestion, organisation-specific retrieval and multi-agent analysis with source-backed citations for review.

Backstory

Product strategy for sustainability-certification software.

Bitquery

AI-enabled lead intelligence and churn analysis for blockchain data.

Workplace SaaS

Production features, test automation and architecture improvements.

Task / Plexure

Product work for global marketing automation at scale.

AI advisory & consulting

Practical advice, grounded in building.

Not every engagement needs to start with code. I can help assess an AI opportunity, work through technical and governance questions, and define a useful next step. This can be a focused piece of work or lead into hands-on delivery.

Opportunity assessment: A prioritised view of where AI is useful, with process changes and conventional automation considered too.
Technical direction: Architecture, data readiness and build-versus-buy options grounded in delivery experience.
Workflows & governance: Practical responsibilities, human-review points, information controls and procurement considerations.
Implementation roadmap: Sequenced next steps, dependencies and measures to test quality and value.

For consultancies and delivery partners, I can own a defined AI or technical workstream within your wider engagement, working alongside strategy, data and change specialists.

Discuss a focused engagement

Capability

Enough range to see the whole problem.

Hands-on depth where it counts, with enough range to connect technical decisions to customer, operational and commercial outcomes.

AI & data

RAG, multi-agent workflows, structured outputs, document extraction, traceability, OpenAI, Azure AI, Python and data pipelines.

Product engineering

React, TypeScript, Node.js, .NET Core, C#, Angular, REST APIs, SQL, PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server.

Cloud & operations

Azure, AWS, GCP, serverless and event-driven systems, CI/CD, monitoring, secure infrastructure and cost optimisation.

Product & commercial

Discovery, architecture, roadmaps, UX, delivery governance, team design, pricing, partnerships, enterprise sales and fundraising.

AI advisory & governance

Opportunity assessment, operating models, human oversight, procurement controls and practical implementation roadmaps.

Software engineer
Product leader
Founder & operator

About James

Software engineer.
Product leader.
Founder.

I started as a software engineer and moved into technical product leadership because the hardest product problems span both disciplines.

I have built AI products from zero to revenue, designed and shipped production software, led distributed teams, raised capital and worked directly with enterprise customers.

I now bring that combination to organisations that need a senior engineer who can make strong product decisions and remain accountable for the working result. I also provide focused AI advice for teams deciding how to leverage this new capability in their organisations.

Work with me

Start a conversation

Bring me the
messy version.

If you have a difficult product, delivery problem or AI opportunity, you do not need to turn it into a polished brief before getting in touch.

Tell me what you are trying to achieve, where it is stuck and what constraints you are working with. I will tell you directly whether I can help.

james@bayly.xyz

LinkedIn GitHub