FinTech · 2023–
Beach Finance
CTO & CISO. Leading technology and security for a regulated financial platform: strategy, architecture, and the posture that keeps it trustworthy.
Fractional CTO & technical leadership
Senior technology leadership, embedded in your team.
A fractional CTO for founders and leadership teams who need senior technical judgement / without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire. Twenty years of shipping software where it actually had to work.
I learn your business first.
The right technology follows.
I'm James Blizzard. Twenty years building software, mostly in places where it had to actually work: the NHS, financial intelligence, government, energy. I give founders and leadership teams the technical judgement of a CTO, embedded a few days a month, without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire.
How I can help
Fractional CTO
Senior technical leadership embedded in your team a few days a month. I sit between the people running the business and the people writing the code, make the calls that need making, shape and hire the team, and own the technical posture / at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CTO.
- ↳ Technology strategy & roadmap
- ↳ Team building, hiring & mentoring
- ↳ Architecture & the decisions that matter
- ↳ Security, governance & compliance
- ↳ A steady hand in the board room
Build
Software development
The core of what I do. Most engagements are hands-on, designing and building the software itself: web apps, APIs, data pipelines and the integrations that tie a system together. Twenty years of writing code that has to hold up in production.
- ↳ Web apps & APIs
- ↳ Data & streaming pipelines
- ↳ System integrations
- ↳ Rescuing & finishing stalled builds
Run
Secure hosting & infrastructure
Where the software lives, and how it stays up. Secure, reproducible infrastructure with everything defined as code, deployed automatically, monitored properly, and built to pass an audit.
- ↳ Infrastructure as code
- ↳ CI/CD & automated deployment
- ↳ Secure cloud hosting & DevOps
- ↳ Monitoring, backups & compliance
Advise
Due diligence & advisory
A short, focused engagement. Whether you're investing, acquiring, or just want an honest second opinion on where your technology stands. You walk out with a clear picture and a plan you can act on, even if it's without me.
- ↳ Codebase & architecture review
- ↳ Investment / acquisition due diligence
- ↳ Risk & security assessment
- ↳ Build-vs-buy advice
Selected work
Trusted by
Beach Finance
NHS
Dept. for International Trade
FCDO Services
Shell
Security & Risk Management
Bahrain Int. Circuit
Life Sciences
Race At Your Pace
A bit about me
I've been doing this since 2006. The early years were the unglamorous projects that teach you the most: rescuing stalled work, dragging print-era systems into the web era, helping small businesses ship things they didn't think they could.
Since 2014 I have led engineering at Browser Group, eventually as Technical Director and CTO. I've architected mission-critical, complex systems for clients who couldn't afford them to go wrong, including platforms streaming millions of documents a month through NLP and AI tooling.
I'm happiest getting to grips with a new domain, learning it well enough to make the right calls quickly. Coming up to speed fast, then delivering, is a lot of what I bring.
Outside the specifics, I'm a firm believer that the best technical decisions are usually the ones that read, written down, like common sense.
Got something you'd like to talk through?
A short email is plenty. Tell me where you are and what you're wrestling with. I'll usually reply within a working day, with either an honest yes, an honest no, or an honest question.