Product judgement
Clear priorities, practical roadmaps and decisions grounded in customer, technical and commercial understanding.
AI product & technology consultant
Turn complex ideas into working products.
I help founders, product leaders, agencies and regulated organisations solve difficult product and delivery problems, from strategy and architecture through to engineering, launch and growth.
Queenstown-based. Working across New Zealand, Australia and worldwide.
01Product. Technology. 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 rarely fail because nobody can write a strategy deck. They fail in the execution gap. I bridge it by working across product judgement, engineering, delivery and commercial reality.
Hands-on engineering
Scalable production software across AI, React, TypeScript, Node.js, .NET, Python and cloud infrastructure.
Delivery leadership
A senior operator who can align stakeholders, unblock teams and stay accountable through implementation.
Commercial experience
Fundraising, pricing, enterprise sales, partnerships and go-to-market from early stage through scale.
Governance & assurance
Practical AI risk controls for regulated and high-trust environments, designed to enable real progress.
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 & delivery partners
You need a senior contractor who can enter a client engagement, handle ambiguity and deliver without constant supervision.
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 problem, embedded delivery capacity, or senior leadership across an initiative.
01
AI product strategy & development
Take an AI-enabled product from an early idea to a deployed, useful system.
- Discovery, validation and product definition
- Agentic workflows, RAG and structured outputs
- Prototype-to-production delivery
02
Fractional product & technology leadership
Senior 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 and delivery governance
03
Senior engineering & delivery
Experienced hands-on capacity for teams that need critical work completed properly.
- React, TypeScript, .NET and Node.js
- APIs, integrations and cloud systems
- Performance, reliability and technical debt
04
AI transformation, governance & assurance
Move from generic AI pilots to proportionate controls and a practical operating model.
- AI opportunity and maturity assessment
- Governance, procurement and assurance
- Safe implementation in high-trust environments
Selected work
Built in the real world.
Work across AI products, infrastructure, compliance, regulated delivery and global startups.
AI compliance platform
Porticus
Founder
Building an AI-native platform that helps organisations manage overlapping compliance frameworks without duplicating controls, documents and evidence.
Knowledge graphsLLM pipelinesAzure
Blockchain infrastructure
SubQuery & OnFinality
Chief Product Officer
Led product, capital raising and a 40+ person distributed team through seed stage, product-market fit, token generation and public listing.
$20M+ raised200K+ communityGlobal team
AI customer service
8ai
Co-founder & CTO
Built a production AI support product from zero to revenue, using multi-agent workflows and knowledge-grounded customer conversations.
RAGMulti-agentCashflow positive
Government & high-trust environments
AI transformation & governance
Confidential NZ organisations
Designed practical AI transformation, governance and assurance approaches for organisations balancing opportunity, safety and public trust.
ISO 42001NIST AI RMFAssurance
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
Citation-backed investment memos from unstructured startup material.
Backstory
Product strategy for sustainability-certification software.
Bitquery
AI-enabled RevOps systems and lead intelligence for blockchain data.
Workplace SaaS
Production features, test automation and architecture improvements.
Task / Plexure
Product work for global marketing automation at scale.
How I work
Useful output,
not more ceremony.
- 01
Define the outcome
Clarify the business objective, users, constraints, risks and what success should look like.
- 02
Reduce the uncertainty
Validate the product direction, technical approach and delivery plan before committing unnecessary time or capital.
- 03
Build in working increments
Deliver usable software and decisions early. Test with real users, then adjust based on evidence.
- 04
Leave the team stronger
Document important decisions, transfer context and build systems the internal team can continue operating.
Capability
Enough range to see the whole problem.
Depth where it counts. A practical way to connect technical decisions with customer, operational and commercial outcomes.
AI & data
Agentic systems, multi-agent workflows, RAG, structured outputs, 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, roadmaps, UX, delivery governance, team design, pricing, partnerships, enterprise sales and fundraising.
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 problems span these disciplines.
Since then, I have built products, led distributed teams, raised capital, worked with enterprise customers, represented companies publicly and stayed hands-on with delivery.
I bring that experience to organisations that need senior judgement and practical execution in the same engagement.
Work with meStart 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