I build things.
I can build anything you can put on a screen. Frontend, backend, firmware, infrastructure, ML pipelines. Jack of all trades, master of many.
I started The Field Company; a home for technology that works in the field, not just in a demo. I also run Cloud Intelligence; A software consultancy dedicated to shipping clean code.
When I'm not writing code I'm probably underwater. I'm a PADI scuba instructor trading dive training for boat time and free tank refills somewhere warm. I love being the first person to show someone what breathing underwater feels like.
I'm also a qualified butler, but I'll only butle my future wife or an adventure client who needs a mountain butler.
Hi, I'm Jimmy. Let's build something that matters.
@ Crossroads Health (via CloudIntelligence.africa) · 2020 — Present
Medical finance. Regulated. HIPAA. The kind of place where a typo costs real money.
Architected and shipped 4 greenfield platforms from discovery to profitable production. Led a team of 6 engineers, designers, and QA.
Built HIPAA-compliant systems where a typo costs real money — full audit trails, zero-downtime CI/CD. Was the person who said
"we can do this faster, safer, and cheaper" and then actually did it.
@ Prodigy Finance, Analytix Engine, S.A. Taxi, DotModus, Google, Booking.com, Skimlinks, Hout Bay Academy, MTN, Dentsu Aegis · 2013 — 2020
I've built data pipelines that process petabytes daily, a startup's entire technical stack from zero, and an offline-first research app that runs on boats with no signal for two weeks. I've walked into technical disaster zones that made senior engineers quit and walked out with systems that haven't failed in years — event-driven IFRS9 engines, Go-based MQTT handling 30,000 concurrent streams, a 3PB/day pipeline migration from AWS to GCP under deadline. Taught A-Level Computer Science at Hout Bay Academy — students now hold PhDs and senior engineering roles worldwide.
Here are some things I've built. More on GitHub.
Field Log · active work
Offline-first research logger for conservation fieldwork. Built because fieldwork happens where there's no signal. IndexedDB, camera integration, GPS tagging. Runs for weeks without a network, syncs when one appears. Working on getting it into real hands.
data-migration · 2022
Walked into fourteen MSSQL servers, each with its own schema and a week-long ETL process. The senior DBA had just quit. Built a custom migration pipeline (Python, SQLAlchemy, Alembic, PostgreSQL, pandas), unified fourteen schemas into one, and moved it live in production. One week per run became one minute. The system has run untouched for years—the only updates have been adding new clients.
dev-games · minigames
A collection of games and game-related tools I've built for developers. Each one scratches a different itch — password cracking, competitive code benchmarking, buzzword bingo, and even office foosball scoring.
whereami · iot
Live satellite tracker via SPOT beacon with HTML5 map rendering. Built to track me across the world doing remote fieldwork. The internet made the hardware obsolete but the code still works.
Wildbook & wildbook-ia · contributing
Contributing to the Devops for wildbook. Infrastructure automation, data pipeline support. Computer vision for endangered species tracking.
I'm looking for a co-founder who can do the things I can't.
You handle the fundraising, the partnerships, the grant applications, the legal structure. You have the conservation connections I don't. You know how to sell a story. I'll build the thing—the whole thing, from firmware to cloud; and make sure it never breaks in the field.
I'm also open to senior IC or technical leadership roles at conservation organizations with messy, interesting technical problems. If your data is a disaster zone and you need someone to clean it up, we should talk.
I travel full-time and work remotely from wherever I am. I trade dive instruction for boat time and tank refills, so I might answer your email from a deck chair in Mozambique. However, I'm always open to relocating for the right problem.
hello@jimmyb.co.za · +27 65 244 2069 · github.com/James-Burgess