David Cheal
CTO / Principal Consultant
I’m a hands-on CTO / Principal Consultant who enables businesses to succeed, by establishing secure, scalable and cost-effective technology. Over 12+ years I’ve led AWS migrations, built consultancies (one acquired by Deloitte), and delivered secure, high-availability systems in finance and ecommerce. I now run my own business, building an AI-driven education platform end-to-end. I’m practical, delivery-focused, and comfortable owning both technical decisions and commercial outcomes.
Core Strengths
- Cloud architecture & delivery
AWS-first design, migrations/modernisation, scalable systems, reliability/cost control, serverless
- Engineering leadership
Hands-on CTO, pragmatic delivery, hiring/mentoring, stakeholder management
- Security & governance
Least privilege, DevSecOps, controls, platform hardening, risk-based decision making
- Product engineering
TypeScript/Node backend, React SPA, CI/CD, monorepos, testing, vendor service integration
- AI integration
LLM workflow/orchestration design, prompt/tooling patterns, production concerns (quality, cost, observability), governance and security
Professional Experience
Sole Director / CTO — Thermite Consulting
2020–Present
Founded and operated a business focused on engineering, security, delivery, and AI.
Product Development
Fairywren
Voice-preserving AI writing platform | SaaS
- A multi-tenant SaaS platform that builds a measurable “writing fingerprint” (quantitative stylometrics plus an LLM-extracted qualitative profile) from a user’s writing samples, then rewrites AI-assisted drafts in that user’s authentic voice.
- Designed and implemented end-to-end platform foundations: authentication, subscription billing with tiered quotas, a staged CI/CD release pipeline, observability, and automated testing.
- Built LLM orchestration pipelines with multi-provider routing via an AI gateway, runtime-configurable model catalogues, tiered model escalation, and closed-loop stylometric output scoring with targeted retry and deterministic guardrails (length-fidelity, expansion, and non-rewrite response guards).
- Large-scale research into LLM voice replication: deterministic voice-match scoring (Burrows’ Delta z-scored function-word similarity), cross-model comparison harnesses running the production rewrite pipeline, and real-model calibration suites for prompt and preference tuning.
Technologies
Maverick
AI Software Development Framework | Open Source
- An open-source Claude Code plugin and CLI that enforces quality, security, and operational best practices during autonomous AI-driven development
- 28 built-in skills covering logging, alerting, testing, CI/CD, git workflows, and security governance; plus an upskill system that auto-generates project-specific guidance by scanning the codebase
- Autonomous agents for code review, testing, and technical documentation — isolated from implementation to avoid self-assessment bias
- Dual workflow modes: fully autonomous (from GitHub issues) and guided (with human checkpoints at design/planning phases), plus local task support without requiring GitHub
- Enforcement hooks that prevent dangerous operations (commits to protected branches, secret exposure) at the tool-call level
- Built with Python 3.10+, boto3, Jinja2; includes optional AWS infrastructure provisioning for remote autonomous workers
Client Projects
SelfWealth
- Complete AWS security review and recommendations.
- Oversaw and assisted in implementing a secure multi-account architecture aligned with the AWS Well-Architected best-practice pillars.
- Implemented a Salesforce ETL pipeline service using AWS serverless and Node.js.
Presspay
- CI/CD workflows.
- Established documentation and operations practices.
- Node.js backend development, running on AWS serverless Lambda.
TDM Growth Partners
- Completed merger and acquisition assessments to identify technology suitability.
Consulting Services
- Merger and acquisition technology assessments.
- Cybersecurity assessments and uplifts, including mission-critical systems for ASX trading and accounting platforms.
- Application and DevSecOps solutions development for a financial loans platform.
Co-Founder / Director / Lead Architect — NC Group
2017–2020
Created a consultancy to deliver ecommerce and ordering/delivery platforms (team ~8 engineers, including offshore staff).
- Led architecture and hands-on implementation of a scalable serverless AWS platform.
- Established delivery practices around automation, DevSecOps and agile execution.
- Managed key client relationships; led hiring and delivery staffing (local + offshore).
Director / CTO / Lead Architect — Strut Digital
2014–2017
Grew from ~4 to ~25 staff over 3 years; delivered a wide range of AWS projects (from small builds to complex regulated/high-availability environments). Business ultimately acquired by Deloitte.
- CTO/lead architect for client engagements: solution design, technical leadership, delivery oversight.
- Designed and implemented AWS platforms across ecommerce, banking, and airline-related systems (incl. work involving Qantas systems).
- Partnered with Amazon Web Services sales and stakeholders to support adoption and migration programs.
- Shared responsibility for operations: hiring, contracts, finance/legal, vendor management.
Co-Founder / Principal Consultant — Krunchtime
2013–2014
Started an AWS migration and implementation consultancy (2 founders, later hired junior engineer) during early AWS adoption in Australia.
- Owned solution design and hands-on delivery across core AWS services and automation.
- Ran client management and business operations alongside delivery.
Career Timeline
