James Walker, PhD · Work
Work
Case studies from founding-engineer and CTO work, plus live products I run. The pattern is the same each time: prove the idea works, then build it to survive real users.
Case studies
4 engagementsCompanies I co-founded, advised, or built as fractional CTO.
Founding Engineer & CTO
OnceHeld
Digital & Physical Archiving for Touring Artists
Provenance, condition history, and multi-location tracking for valuable collections. In live use by major artists on world tours; the company closed its seed round on the strength of the build.
Non-Exec Director & Engineer
Recyclr
Waste Management Tech
Digital waste tracking platform helping carriers comply with the UK's 2026 Defra mandate. Seed-funded and pre-launch, with 12,000 UK carriers indexed and ready for rollout.
Founder & CEO
Curiosity Software
Enterprise Test Data Platform
Founded and scaled an enterprise software company from startup to international presence, serving major enterprise clients.
Founding Engineer & CTO
OneHundred
AI-Powered Visa Management Platform
Intelligent visa management platform for sports teams and musicians, automating evidence collection and streamlining the O1 visa process. In live internal use; the build helped close the company's seed round.
Live products
3 liveProducts I built and run on my own time — proof I ship end-to-end, not just advise. Each link goes directly to the live site.
HallMatch
UK Venue Discovery
Comprehensive UK directory for booking village halls, community centres, and hireable venues — 13k venues, 120k+ monthly visitors, free to search.
GoMask.ai
Synthetic Data Marketplace
Synthetic data marketplace — 2,000+ AI-generated datasets across 19 categories, serving 2,000+ registered users for AI training, software testing, and development.
PodRescale
AI Content Repurposing Platform
AI platform that transforms one podcast episode into 30+ branded content assets across 13+ platforms via 11 specialised agents — replacing six standalone tools.
Experiments
3 experimentsThings I built to learn — nights-and-weekends bets on a new capability, taken far enough to prove they work.
Self-directed experiment
Mainframe Connectivity for AI Agents
An MCP server that lets an LLM agent safely drive IBM 3270 green screens
A spike answering one question: what should sit underneath 'mainframe connectivity for AI agents'? A clean agent layer — screen identity, field semantics, wait-discipline, redaction — over the battle-tested x3270 engine, exposed as MCP tools.
Self-directed experiment
Agentic Marketing Pipeline
An agent that turns a URL into an ICP, buyer personas, and ready-to-post content
A self-directed experiment: point an agent at a company's website and it builds the first month of go-to-market — an ideal customer profile, buyer personas mapped to real prospect filters, brand voice, and social content — as a tracked, multi-step job.
Self-directed experiment
Generative Image Pipeline
Teaching myself AI image generation by shipping a book-writing agent
A self-directed experiment: an agent that turns a single title into a print-ready, 30-page illustrated book — end to end, no human in the loop.
Writing
3 articlesEssays on building with AI — adoption, architecture, and delivery.
The Compounding Change Tax on Software Delivery
AI made writing code ~10× faster but deployment only ~20% faster. The new bottleneck is coordination, not code — especially for data products.
Read on LinkedInAI Can't Read Your GUI — Why I've Moved (Almost) Everything to "As Code"
Every interface that isn't code is a wall your AI assistant can't see past. Why I now spec, test, and build almost everything as code.
Read on LinkedInCrossing the AI Chasm — Why Catalogs Are the Key
Most orgs use AI for meeting notes, not growth. The missing layer is a catalog of your own assets — relationships and context, not a directory.
Read on LinkedInWhere it runs
Systems I've built run in production at banks, telecoms, and global enterprises.
