Experience
From telecommunications infrastructure to enterprise CTO and founder — a career built on delivering outcomes, not managing projects.
CAREER IMPACT AT A GLANCE
Timeline
Abnaasi Pty Ltd
AI automation and cloud infrastructure. Built from zero to profitability. Three industry verticals in the first six months.
● CURRENTNational retail and distribution enterprise
$60M–$70M enterprise. AU/UK operations. $735K in savings. $2M+ in Board-approved investments. AI enablement programme.
● CURRENTCentral Innovation
$30M+ organisation. 25+ professionals. Full technology agenda — cloud, security, data, and customer platforms.
Microsoft Australia
$2M+ budget. 200+ staff. M365 transformation that delivered 25% productivity improvement through adoption, not software.
Pinhole Media Pty Ltd
First business built end-to-end. Technology consulting for SMB clients across Sydney. The blueprint for Abnaasi.
Roads & Maritime Services, NSW Government
$5M+ infrastructure projects. Sydney Harbour Bridge operations technology. Where failure is not an option.
Nilsen Networks
Telecommunications infrastructure projects across Victoria. Where the pattern of outcomes-over-process began.
Key Roles
Joined as the first enterprise CTO this organisation had ever had — inherited a fragmented technology landscape with no cloud strategy, no AI programme, and no Board-level technology governance.
The starting mandate was clear: build what didn't exist. I established the Board-level technology governance framework, created the AI Enablement Program from zero, and built a cloud migration programme that had never been scoped. Every major decision required a business case that the Board could approve on first presentation — and every one was.
The delivery scope was wide. AI-powered operations intelligence. Intelligent document processing. Generative AI for customer service. A cross-continental product data deployment across AU/UK. A unified commerce platform spanning B2B, B2C, and marketplace. Accounts payable automation. All running in parallel, all delivered.
The commercial discipline was non-negotiable. $735K in cumulative cost savings — while simultaneously investing in transformation. The savings funded the AI and cloud programmes without requiring net new budget. Every investment case approved on first presentation. $2M+ in Board-approved technology investments over four years.
Founded not because I needed more work — because I wanted to stay close to hands-on delivery and serve a segment the big-4 don't reach and generic automation vendors can't handle.
Abnaasi is a specialist AI automation and cloud infrastructure practice for mid-market Australian businesses. Built from zero to profitability with full P&L ownership. Three industry verticals in the first six months — healthcare, professional services, and retail.
Every engagement starts with the operational problem, not the technology. For a healthcare client, 50+ clinical documents automated daily — eliminating 15 hours per week of manual handling. For a professional services client, an AI lead generation tool that produced a 15% qualified lead increase in the first quarter. For a retail client, intelligent invoice automation reducing processing time 40%.
Built an offshore delivery model integrating onshore client management with distributed engineering capability. Also built Abnaasi's own internal AI operations platform — eliminating 8 hours per week of manual administration. Profitable from the first invoice.
Arrived into a technology function that was reactive, under-resourced, and operating without a data strategy or security framework. Left it transformed.
Built and led a team of 25+ technology professionals across a $30M+ professional services organisation. Owned the full technology agenda — cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, data strategy, and customer platform delivery — alongside a $2M+ annual budget.
The transformation was comprehensive. A cybersecurity programme that reduced data breaches by 75%. A CRM implementation that didn't just install software — it changed how the sales team worked, producing a 25% increase in repeat customer revenue. Infrastructure modernisation that eliminated $250K in annual costs.
Introduced Agile delivery and automated testing across the engineering team — code defects reduced 30%, release velocity up 35%. Developed the enterprise data strategy and governance framework that improved data quality 45% and positioned the organisation for analytics-driven decision-making.
Managed technology operations for Microsoft's Australian business — where the standard for execution is set by the company whose software everyone else runs on.
Managed a $2M+ technology budget for Australian operations with full planning and ROI accountability. The role required operating at Microsoft's standard of operational excellence — rigorous, well-documented, and measurable.
The Microsoft 365 transformation was the defining project — a change management programme across 200+ staff that delivered 25% productivity improvement. The lesson that technology deployments are really behaviour change programmes, and that adoption is harder than implementation, came from this role. It has shaped every transformation I've led since.
The first experience building something from nothing. Technology consulting for SMB clients across Sydney — win clients, own the P&L, deliver the work, repeat.
Founded Pinhole Media after recognising that SMB businesses in Sydney were being underserved by generalist IT providers. Built a focused practice delivering IT infrastructure and digital strategy. First experience with every aspect of running a business — sales, delivery, finance, and client relationships.
This role shaped the commercial instincts that now underpin every technology decision I make. The discipline of only recommending what a business can actually sustain and maintain. The understanding that every technology investment must justify itself in commercial terms. The experience that made Abnaasi feel natural a decade later.
Government-scale infrastructure projects — where accountability is non-negotiable and failure has public consequences.
Delivered $5M+ infrastructure projects for NSW Government critical transportation systems, including Sydney Harbour Bridge operations technology. Government-scale project governance at an early career stage — complex stakeholders, inflexible timelines, and zero tolerance for scope surprises.
The discipline of risk quantification, stakeholder management, and structured accountability that this environment demanded has shaped every project governance decision since. The CTO who quantifies DR risk in dollar terms before presenting to the Board learned that skill here.
First professional role. Telecommunications infrastructure project management across enterprise clients in Victoria.
Led telecommunications infrastructure delivery projects for enterprise clients across Victoria. Foundation of technical project management — scope definition, vendor management, client communication, and delivery accountability.
Where I first observed that the gap between what technology promises and what it delivers is almost always a people and process problem, not a technology problem. That insight has driven every decision in the 18 years since.
LEADERSHIP APPROACH
Three operating principles that explain why the numbers look the way they do.
The infrastructure recovery time at LER was measured in days. Before I presented the case to the Board to invest in reducing it, I put a dollar figure on the risk. Not an estimate — a calculated exposure based on revenue per hour and regulatory obligations. That's why every Board investment case I've prepared in four years has been approved on first presentation.
The best engineers I've hired didn't have the longest CVs — they had the sharpest questions in the interview. I've built and led teams of 25+ across onshore and offshore delivery by focusing on potential, pairing people deliberately, and being honest about performance before it becomes a problem. Retention improved 30% not through perks, but through clarity.
The M365 transformation at Microsoft delivered 25% productivity improvement. The software took days to deploy. The adoption programme took months. The improvement came from the second, not the first. Every digital transformation I've led since has started with the behaviour change required, then worked backwards to the technology that enables it.
CURRENT THINKING
Three technology challenges I have specific views on. Not predictions — positions.
AI GOVERNANCE
I've seen organisations run 12+ AI experiments simultaneously with no shared governance, no ROI measurement, and no clear ownership. The technology worked. The programme didn't. The next three years will separate organisations that govern AI as a capability from those that treat it as a collection of tools. The difference is a Board-reported programme with defined standards — not a technology team running proof-of-concepts.
Governance is a Board agenda item — not a technology team experiment.
ERP & ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS
I'm currently leading a full enterprise ERP evaluation. The gap between what enterprise vendors promise and what mid-market organisations can actually absorb — in time, cost, and change capacity — is enormous. The CTO who presents an ERP business case to the Board needs to model not just the software cost but the organisational disruption cost. Most don't. The ones who do get approved on first presentation.
The disruption cost is always larger than the software cost. Model it first.
CLOUD & INFRASTRUCTURE
Most mid-market organisations that "moved to the cloud" lifted-and-shifted. They have cloud costs without cloud benefits. The second migration — from cloud-hosted to cloud-native — is where the real resilience and cost discipline is built. I'm building that foundation now. Zero-downtime architecture, automated failover, DR measured in hours not days. That's what cloud infrastructure should look like.
Cloud-native and cloud-hosted are not the same thing. Most organisations have the latter.
Credentials
THE FOUNDATION
Electronics & Communication
Sant Longowal Institute of Technology (SLIET), India
The engineering foundation. Electronics, circuits, systems thinking. The discipline of understanding how things work at the level where they break.
Microelectronics
Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne
Arrived in Melbourne in 2001 on a student visa specifically to complete this degree. The M.Sc. in Microelectronics became the technical foundation for everything that followed — and Melbourne became home.
ACTIVE CREDENTIALS
PRINCE2 Practitioner
APMG International
Diploma in Project Management
College of Adult Learning
Microsoft 365 Governance & Administration
Microsoft
ITIL Foundation
AXELOS
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