Fergus James — independent consultant helping businesses on the coast and beyond make sense of technology. Modern systems, data & AI that earn their keep, and advice in plain English.
Five engagements, told the way I'd tell a mate — what the situation was, what we did, and what came of it. Keep scrolling.
The situation →240 stores being stocked on gut feel and one heroic, terrifying spreadsheet.
What we did →Built an ML forecasting pipeline end to end — data audit to production — then taught the team to run it without me.
The situation →A ten-year-old monolith slowing everything to a crawl, and a roadmap that couldn't afford to pause.
What we did →Carved it into services release by release — no code freeze, no big bang, no missed windows.
The situation →A logistics startup with funding, ambition, and not a single engineer.
What we did →Stepped in as fractional CTO — hired the founding team, set the architecture, shipped to paying customers ahead of plan.
The situation →An AWS bill growing faster than revenue, and nobody quite sure why.
What we did →Re-architected the hungriest workloads, right-sized the rest, and left behind a FinOps habit the team still runs.
The situation →120 capable engineers organised in a way that guaranteed bottlenecks.
What we did →Reshaped squads around value streams, stood up platform teams, and coached the leads through the change.
Engagements typically run 6 weeks to 6 months. I work hands-on — in the codebase, around the kitchen table, wherever the problem lives.
Honest assessment of where technology can actually create value for your business — and a roadmap your engineers won't laugh at.
→Legacy systems untangled, migrated, and modernised incrementally — keeping the business running while the foundations change underneath it.
→Senior technical leadership without the full-time price tag. Architecture decisions, hiring, vendor negotiation, and board-level reporting.
→For projects that are late, over budget, or quietly off the rails. Rapid diagnosis, hard conversations, and a credible path back to shipping.
→Org structures, ways of working, and engineering culture that make good delivery the default rather than a heroic exception.
→All four of Australia's Big Four banks, plus global names across tech, energy and finance — delivered over twelve years of in-house and consultancy roles.
…and plenty more besides. Big-firm experience — none of the big-firm invoice.
I spent twelve years building and fixing technology in the big smoke — as an engineer, an architect, and a leader. Now I'm based on the NSW south coast, bringing that experience to businesses that need someone who can see the whole board.
Most consultants hand you a deck and leave. I stay until the thing actually works — pairing with your team, challenging your roadmap, and leaving you stronger than I found you.
One to two weeks embedded with your team. I read the code, sit in the meetings, and find out what's really going on — not what the slide deck says.
A short, sharp set of recommendations with trade-offs made explicit. You'll know exactly what I'd do, what it costs, and what happens if you don't.
I stay to execute — hands-on, alongside your team, with success measured in shipped outcomes rather than billable hours.
I price by engagement, not by the hour — you'll know the number before we start, and there are no surprise invoices. Short diagnostics sit at the affordable end; bigger transformations get scoped together, openly. The budget options on the contact form will give you a feel for the ranges.
I'm based on the coast and love working locally — but a good half of my work is remote for Sydney, interstate and overseas clients. Twelve years of big-city delivery habits travel just fine over a video call.
Usually with a short, paid diagnostic: one or two weeks embedded with your team, reading the code and sitting in the meetings. You get honest findings and a plan you can run with or without me. No lock-in, no land-and-expand games.
Hands-on. I write code, build the dashboards, sit in the standups, and negotiate with the vendors. The deck-and-disappear model is exactly what I left the big firms to avoid.
Not at all — I'm usually the bridge, not the replacement. I help you ask your existing providers better questions, hold their work to a standard, and make them more useful. Good vendors tend to like having me around; the other kind tell on themselves.
Everything from owner-operators to enterprises with 120-strong engineering teams. The sweet spot: businesses big enough to feel real technology pain, small enough to actually move once we've found it.
Usually replies within one business day.