/ James Baxter — Software Architect & Principal Engineer — Brisbane, Australia
I design the specifications, context architecture and delivery guardrails that turn AI-assisted coding from an experiment into a repeatable engineering capability. Behind that sits 20+ years of platform architecture, backend engineering and production diagnostics.
/ Services
/ 01
I design the specification, documentation and context architecture that allows coding agents to work reliably across real repositories — repository instructions, scoped context loading, documentation gates, acceptance criteria, and workflows that prevent generated knowledge from accumulating unchecked. In one bounded greenfield platform build, I measured roughly 12x my usual solo delivery rate using a specification-driven AI workflow; architecture, review and acceptance criteria remained explicit throughout.
» In public: VendKit — a Go tool that distributes agent instructions and other curated files across repositories, held to upstream by a checksum manifest and upgraded through review-gated pull requests.
/ 02
Distributed JVM systems (Java/Scala) and multi-tenant SaaS platforms on Azure and Kubernetes — declarative provisioning, GitOps reconciliation and per-tenant isolation, designed as platforms rather than one-off systems. I reshape systems at their architectural limits so they can grow again without a rewrite-the-world bet, and I treat developer experience as an architectural concern: one-command local stacks, ephemeral per-PR environments, deterministic builds.
» Designed a control plane where one operator action provisions a complete customer environment — Kubernetes cluster, managed databases, networking, identity and observability — reconciled continuously from Git.
/ 03
Failures that resist conventional debugging, traced to the JVM, the dependency graph or the packet.
» Resolved intermittent gateway 504s with no corresponding application traces by isolating corruption in a TCP timestamp option on the network path.
» Diagnosed a recurring production outage at a major bank by tracing connection-pool collapse to UDP lookups silently dropped by a firewall.
/ Ways to engage
01
A focused one- to two-week investigation producing findings, priorities and a practical implementation plan.
02
Fixed-scope design and validation for an AI delivery system, platform initiative or modernisation programme.
03
Ongoing principal-level architecture and hands-on engineering for teams that need senior capability without a permanent hire.
04
Intensive investigation of complex or business-critical failures, subject to availability.
» Most engagements begin with a paid discovery or diagnostic phase.
/ Track record
of enterprise product engineering.
architected a multi-tenant SaaS platform where a single operator action provisions a complete customer environment across two-dozen-plus cloud resource types.
doubled the throughput of an enterprise product.
grew an engineering function from one developer to a ten-person cross-functional team.
/ Contact