Services
I take on engineering organizations that are stalled, scaling, or rebuilding around AI, and get them delivering.
Situations clients bring me
Delivery
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A program over budget or behind schedule
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A system stuck short of production
- Delivery cadence that has slipped
- Vendor or offshore delivery that isn't working
Organization
- An engineering org that has outgrown its structure
- A gap at the CTO or VP level
- A next layer of leaders not ready to step up
- A hiring plan that doesn't match the roadmap
AI
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AI spend with no measurable return
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AI-generated code failing in production
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Build, buy, or hire decisions on AI workloads
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Governance ahead of regulatory deadlines
01. Stalled programs back in production
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Fractional CTO or SVP of Engineering. Part-time executive ownership of your engineering organization, from org design and hiring to delivery cadence and board reporting.
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Program rescue. A diagnosis of what's broken, a plan that cuts what isn't needed, and a system in production. At BP I took over Well Advisor, a stalled $128M program, and delivered it with 10x ROI in its first six months. In an earlier BP role I recovered $9M in overspend on a delayed gas scheduling system.
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Organization turnaround. At Calpine I rebuilt the trading systems as the company emerged from bankruptcy, and trading revenue grew 50% in two years. At Vroom I took a 51-person engineering organization from startup to product company ahead of IPO.
02. AI that works in production
Agentic systems that hold up in production, AI-assisted development your team will adopt, and repair of AI-generated codebases that failed. I also run AI spend and governance reviews built on the method in my whitepaper.
03. Leaders who can run what we built.
An impartial, confidential sounding board for CIOs and CTOs, on retainer. Leadership programs for engineering teams, modeled on the one I designed at JPMorgan, which ran for three years and became central to the firm's technology leadership pipeline.
"Dave has been the most influential mentor in my life. When others point out my strengths, I am often reminded of a lesson learned from my teacher. I hold Dave in the highest regard and believe he could bring a step change to any organization."
Bryan Millstein,
Co-Founder & CEO of Cobalt