About Dan
Thirty-five years across technical delivery, cloud architecture, machine learning, and enterprise sales. Currently: Wellington, New Zealand. Available globally.
What AutoOracle demonstrates
The usual way to demonstrate capability is a CV. AutoOracle is a more direct demonstration. It is a production cloud platform, built solo over 18 months, covering every discipline required to ship a data product: data engineering, taxonomy design, machine learning, LLM integration, API development, frontend, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, and B2B product design.
18+ months of market data from two major NZ car-market sites, incremental collection, deduplication, and a longitudinal price record with change tracking.
Nine-model competition run per training iteration. XGBoost selected for Iter 2.1. Market-source models reached R²=0.893 (RMSE $5,296) and R²=0.844 (RMSE $5,821).
Multi-provider LLM classifier (4 models evaluated). Interactive enrichment pipeline via Anthropic API. RAG prototype with LangChain. OpenAI-compatible provider abstraction.
AWS CDK in TypeScript. ECS Fargate, RDS PostgreSQL, S3, CloudFront, Secrets Manager. All infrastructure as code. No manual provisioning.
FastAPI, JWT authentication, 4-tier role-based access control enforced per endpoint, Pydantic response schemas, 10+ endpoint groups covering prediction, analytics, and export.
React 19, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind CSS, TanStack Query v5, Recharts, Radix UI and shadcn/ui. Multi-screen family deep-dive views and a Streamlit admin layer.
19k vehicle families, 85k variants, NZTA 3.86M fleet records linked via FK resolution. Year-aware taxonomy lookup resolving three incompatible source naming systems.
4-tier access model from Trial through to Dealer Guide and Admin. B2B Car Price Guide covering 85k variants with ML fallback for sparse data. Role-gated routes and components throughout.
Commercial track record
Dan spans both the technical and commercial sides of enterprise technology: building the solution and closing the deal.
35+
Years in technology
4
Countries worked: NZ, AU, UK, USA
MBA
Victoria University of Wellington
Career
Technical foundations (1987–2005). The first phase was grounded in technical delivery. Ten years at ROCC Aramis across the UK and New Zealand built the core: systems installation, customer support, and field engineering. Exor followed as Senior Consultant and North American Technical Lead, working across NZ, UK, and the United States on enterprise information management deployments.
Enterprise sales and business leadership (2000–2023). The second phase moved into sales and commercial leadership. IBM solutions at ExpressData, then territory growth at Solnet from $800K to $4M gross margin. A decade in enterprise software: Sales Specialist at Oracle, Pre-Sales at SilverStripe, Business Development at Intergen, Country Manager at Sitecore, General Manager at Syl (full P&L, nine enterprise search deals), and building the commercial operation at Runn from scratch to 400% revenue growth. A return to sales at Fujitsu and solution architecture at GoCloud for MoJ closed this phase.
Building and consulting (2019–present). Since 2019, Dan has operated under Fresh Tracks Consulting. The primary focus has been AutoOracle: an 18-month solo build covering data engineering, machine learning, LLM enrichment, cloud infrastructure, API, and frontend. Alongside that, the Lightomation IoT practice has grown to 50+ bespoke hardware commissions with its own companion software product.
Skills and qualifications
Python (ML pipelines, APIs, data engineering, AI applications), SQL and PostgreSQL, React 19 and TypeScript, FastAPI, Streamlit, LangChain, Selenium, Alembic, JavaScript.
AWS (CDK, ECS Fargate, RDS, S3, CloudFront, Secrets Manager). Azure (Container Apps, PostgreSQL Flexible, ACR, Blob Storage). OCI certified. Docker, Docker Compose, GitHub Actions.
scikit-learn, XGBoost. Multi-provider LLM integration: OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic. RAG system design with LangChain. Batch classification pipelines. OpenAI-compatible provider abstraction.
ServiceNow (Partner, Pre-Sales, Sales, and AI certified). Oracle WebCenter and ECMaaS. Microsoft Dynamics CRM. SilverStripe CMS. JIRA Service Desk ITSM configuration.
Wellington-based, MBA-qualified technologist with 35 years spanning technical delivery, enterprise sales, and software engineering. Currently looking for the right opportunity to put the full range to work. ServiceNow, Oracle, OCI, and SilverStripe certified, with AWS AI Practitioner in progress. Dual NZ/UK citizen, no visa sponsorship required, available globally.
IoT and embedded systems
Dan also builds physical hardware. Lightomation is a boutique IoT product and custom electronics practice designing and manufacturing bespoke lighting installations based on ESP32/ESP8266 microcontrollers running the WLED open-source firmware platform. Fifty-plus commissions delivered to residential and commercial clients.
Each installation is custom-designed hardware: enclosures, wiring rigs, power distribution, and individually addressable RGB LED arrays with music-synchronised animations. A companion software product, the Lightomation Configurator, provides a Python/FastAPI backend, web frontend, documentation site, and sample data modules so non-technical clients can manage their own preset libraries.
This work builds on a background in Arduino-based device design, sensor integration, and embedded systems prototyping. The same instinct for building well-engineered, usable products applies here as in software.
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