The Fractional Front Door
Meet the SHP panel
Senior technology, data and delivery professionals, principal to C-suite. People we know, people we trust, and experience you can put to work.
Most built their careers in Australian financial services. Fractional first: most are working elsewhere and have a day or two a week to give. Many are also open to contract or permanent roles.
“Every one is someone I have worked with, or who comes vouched for by people I trust.” David Wall, founder
How this works
- Every card is one person. Names and employers stay off the page until there is mutual interest.
- Start with What needs doing if you have a problem, Browse by role if you have a job title, or Pick a platform if you have a technology. The filters combine, and the search box covers everything on the cards.
- Found someone? Click Ask about their code, or email us quoting it. The full brief is in your inbox within a business day.
- If the brief holds up, you meet the person that week. No retainers, no exclusivity, nothing to sign to look.
- How engagements work, below the filters, sets out the terms. Rate bands on each card are indicative: our margin is inside; GST, and payroll and insurance costs where they apply, are on top.
- Nothing here fits? Email us the problem anyway. The SHP Network extends beyond the people featured here.
What needs doing
Or browse by role
Or pick a platform
How engagements work
Terms printed so you do not have to ask. 15% of the bill rate, plus payroll and insurance costs where they apply. After 60 billed days on the same engagement the 15% drops to 10%, however the days are spread. If you want to take someone permanent, you can after 40 billed days on the engagement: the fee is 10% of first-year base salary inside the first year, and 7.5% after that. The same fee applies if you hire them within twelve months of an engagement ending. Insurance is checked against your requirements for each engagement, before it starts. Rate bands on each card are indicative, day rate plus GST, with the 15% inside.
What our margin pays for. People we know or who come vouched for, a full brief within a business day, payroll arranged, and someone accountable if it is not working.
Most people here are also open to contract or permanent conversations. That is a separate discussion, priced separately.
Architecture
Principal Business Architect: operating model design, regulatory transformation
Designs operating models and capability roadmaps for financial crime and regulatory transformation.
- Designed a global financial crime operating model translating AML/CTF and sanctions into unified workflows
- Supported $100M+ programme funding through multi-year capability roadmaps tied to investment prioritisation
- Built enterprise customer origination models spanning multiple brands, products and channels
- Eight years in financial crime: value chains, investigation workflows, false-positive reduction
- Delivered training to 100+ participants and embedded business architecture as practice, not documentation
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract
- Capacity
- 1 to 3 days a week, from December 2026
- Rate band
- $1,600 to $1,800 + GST
- Location
- Central Coast NSW, hybrid
Principal Solutions Architect: hybrid cloud, infrastructure, connectivity
Sets the target state across cloud and on-premises estates, plans the moves, and keeps vendors’ designs honest.
- Hybrid and multi-cloud architecture across Azure, AWS, OCI and on-premises estates
- Migrated 400+ workloads with zero design defects, verified by 38,400 scripted connectivity checks before handover
- Architected the network foundation for a $183M transformation, cloud-to-cloud latency down 97%
- Led design and delivery teams for a greenfield multi-cloud build, on time and on budget
- Saved $200K+ (45%) per year by replacing legacy cloud connectivity with an elastic WAN
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract and permanent
- Capacity
- 1 to 5 days a week, from now
- Rate band
- $1,500 to $1,700 + GST
- Location
- Sydney, remote OK
Principal Payments & Integration Architect
Target-state and real-time payments architecture, including scheme, AUSTRAC, SWIFT and ISO 20022 change.
- 25+ years payments architecture, target-state design for an enterprise payments platform
- Architected a real-time payments gateway and secure infrastructure for the national scheme
- Led high-value payment transformation across 50+ processes and 80+ integrations, billions daily
- Delivered AUSTRAC reporting redesign, SWIFT CSP upgrade and ISO 20022 impact assessment
- Advanced automated reconciliation by a full business day through general ledger transformation
- Engagement
- Fractional
- Capacity
- 1 to 2 days a week, from now
- Rate band
- $1,800 to $2,000 + GST
- Location
- Sydney or remote
Principal Architect: data platform, regulatory technology
Group data platform roadmaps, regulatory data architecture (Open Banking, Basel III, IFRS9, BEAR, APRA EFS) and applied AI delivery.
- Owned a group data platform roadmap and cloud-native, AI-ready platform strategy across concurrent streams
- Accountable lead for 11 data architects, arbitrating workload placement between legacy and modern platforms
- Portfolio architect for all regulatory and compliance transformation, working with accountable domain architects on synergies, opportunities and risk
- Delivered APRA EFS reporting architecture and a target-state credit risk analytics platform
- Designed and runs a live multi-model LLM pipeline: CV-grounded document generation, automated claim verification, hiring-signal research
- Engagement
- Fractional
- Capacity
- 1 to 3 days a week, from now
- Rate band
- $1,800 to $2,000 + GST
- Location
- Sydney, remote OK
Principal AI & Decisioning Architect: ML integration, real-time personalisation, workflow automation
Cross-platform AI decisioning architecture - combining ML models, real-time engines, and contact centre automation for insurance and tier-one banking.
- Evaluated and selected complementary AI and decisioning platforms (ML vendor, decisioning engine, orchestration layer) as lead architect for a multi-brand insurer
- Five Pega architect and consultant certifications, published research on next-best-action decisioning, master's in analytics
- Grew a real-time personalisation programme from one use case to 42 across eight channels
- Designed contact centre AI automation layer: IVR decisioning, agent next-best-action, outbound lead orchestration
- Led a divestment data workstream migrating 5M+ customer records with full compliance sign-off
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract
- Capacity
- On request
- Rate band
- On request
- Location
- Sydney, remote OK
Principal Enterprise Architect: application, data and integration architecture
Stands up enterprise architecture practice, governs application and data architecture, and plans cloud migration across large estates.
- Stood up enterprise architecture practice, domain governance forums, pattern libraries and tooling
- Led technical accountability for real-time decisioning and next-best-action customer platforms
- Assessed 150+ on-premise applications and defined rehost, replatform, refactor and retire paths
- Delivered governance frameworks for customer analytics and real-time campaign platforms
- Designed BI reference architectures including single customer view and data-as-a-service
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract and permanent
- Capacity
- 1 to 2 days a week, from now
- Rate band
- $1,700 to $1,900 + GST
- Location
- Sydney, remote OK, will travel
Principal Enterprise Architect: finance systems, regulatory reporting, EPM modernisation including GenAI powered solutions
Connects the CFO office and architecture: finance platforms, regulatory reporting and controls for banks.
- CPA-qualified architect setting finance target-state blueprints and sub-ledger integration for tier-one banks
- Integrated 80+ ledgers and simplified the chart of accounts for a global consolidation program
- Turns IFRS 17, Basel and AASB S2 sustainability reporting into executable architecture and decision papers
- Designed financial controls and reconciliations for a $1.5bn business line sale at a major bank
- Led or architected 10+ EPM and consolidation rollouts on Oracle, SAP, OneStream, Anaplan and Workiva
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract and permanent
- Capacity
- 2 to 3 days a week, from now
- Rate band
- $1,700 to $1,900 + GST
- Location
- Sydney, remote OK
Data, Analytics & AI
Head of Data Engineering: platform ownership, agentic AI acceleration
Owns enterprise analytics platforms end to end and uses agentic AI to accelerate legacy ETL migration.
- 25+ years in financial services, insurance and banking, bridging the technical and executive divide from boardroom to architecture whiteboard
- Owns an enterprise analytics platform end to end, 30-person team, 4 business units, 1000+ users
- Migrating 20 on-premises systems to Azure, consolidating 20+ TB and retiring 4 legacy tools
- Designs LLM-orchestrated agents that automate legacy ETL code migration, targeting ~60% less effort per application
- Led data workstreams for two acquired life insurance book integrations, 24-month timelines, teams up to 40
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract and permanent
- Capacity
- 3 days a week, from now
- Rate band
- $2,000 to $2,300 + GST
- Location
- Sydney, remote OK, will travel
Head of Data & Analytics: regulatory analytics, cloud platforms
Rescues stalled regulatory data programs, brings delivery in-house and builds analytics functions from zero.
- Led a regulator's Databricks-on-Azure platform; replaced a failing fixed-price vendor with in-house delivery, saving ~$5M
- Led the end-to-end rebuild of an industry reporting solution, in-sourcing capability and saving ~$1M a year
- Turned around two failing APRA regulatory reporting programs under deadline and vendor transition
- Built an analytics function from zero, recruited the data science team, cut 900+ reports to 250
- Set the data governance strategy (ownership, metadata, quality) underpinning a regulator's AI-enabled capabilities
- Engagement
- Fractional
- Capacity
- 1 to 3 days a week
- Rate band
- $2,000 to $2,300 + GST
- Location
- Sydney, remote OK
Head of Data & Analytics, financial services: data and AI transformation, AI in production
Brought in to make data delivery cheaper and faster, speed up lending decisions, and move AI from pilot into real use.
- Led a $20M+ annual data portfolio and a 100+ person engineering organisation across four business divisions
- Cut mortgage decisioning from 10 days to 1: conversion up 15%, operating costs down 20%
- Built data products saving $4-5M a year, and reusable components that cut new initiative costs by 65%
- Reshaped a 120-person engineering group to under 85: throughput up 25%, delivery costs down 35%
- Used AI to map data lineage across 1,000+ code repositories and 15,000+ tables, supporting CPS 230 impact assessment
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract and permanent
- Capacity
- 1 to 5 days a week, from now
- Rate band
- $2,000 to $2,300 + GST
- Location
- Sydney, remote OK, will travel
Principal Data Architect: migration and legacy modernisation
End-to-end data migration and legacy modernisation in regulated environments, owning cutover not just the blueprint.
- 30+ years delivering end-to-end data migrations in regulated financial services and government
- Builds production ETL/ELT pipelines with reconciliation frameworks that survive audit
- Applies ML profiling, automated mapping and anomaly detection to accelerate discovery
- Produces conceptual, logical and physical models aligning migration to enterprise roadmaps
- Owns the pipelines, the reconciliation, the cutover and stabilisation, not just the blueprint
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract and permanent
- Capacity
- 1 to 3 days a week
- Rate band
- $1,700 to $1,900 + GST
- Location
- Sydney
Principal Data Architect: regulatory reporting, market risk analytics
Regulatory data governance, trade surveillance and market risk reporting across APRA, ASIC and global regimes.
- Established APRA CPG 235 data governance, critical data elements and lineage at a tier-one bank
- Led a trade surveillance platform from inception to BAU and delivered MiFID II trade reporting
- Built front-office and market risk regulatory systems covering CAD2, VaR and RWA
- Remediated reporting frameworks across APRA, ASIC, MiFID II, EMIR and Dodd-Frank regimes
- Developed AI-driven validation and reconciliation models on Azure AI and Microsoft Fabric, and delivered agentic data modeller solutions
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract
- Capacity
- 2 days a week, from now
- Rate band
- $2,000 to $2,300 + GST
- Location
- Sydney, remote or onsite
Program & Delivery
Program Manager: regulatory transformation, architecture-led change
Runs regulatory and architecture-led change across many platform teams without losing the engineering detail.
- Delivered APRA CDR enhancements coordinating 10+ platform teams inside a tier-one bank
- Led a bank-wide automation initiative removing 440 manual interventions from the general ledger
- CDMP-certified; designed common data models and a data reference architecture mapped to business capability models
- Migrated an enterprise data warehouse and integration workloads to AWS, batch to near real time
- Led and mentored 20+ onshore and offshore data professionals as chapter lead and scrum master
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract and permanent
- Capacity
- 1 to 5 days a week, 1 week notice
- Rate band
- $1,500 to $1,700 + GST
- Location
- Sydney, will travel
Program Director, Transformation Delivery: vendor-side commercial and services leadership
Turns analytics platform capability into funded, commercially grounded transformation roadmaps for executive sponsors.
- Ten years vendor-side in enterprise analytics software, delivering to transport, retail, banking and manufacturing enterprises
- Owned the APAC services and consulting revenue line, growing $7M to $13M ARR against an 89% retention target
- Led a cross-functional team of 10 across customer success, consulting and support, to an 80% utilisation target
- Trusted advisor to C-suite sponsors, turning platform capability into funded, commercially grounded transformation roadmaps
- Leads executive AI and GenAI discovery: readiness assessment, use case qualification, investment decisions tied to commercial outcomes
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract
- Capacity
- 1 to 2 days a week, from now
- Rate band
- $1,600 to $1,800 + GST
- Location
- Sydney
Program Director: enterprise finance, ERP and data transformation
Leads large finance, ERP and data platform transformations across banking and insurance, where controls, regulatory data quality and vendor cost all have to land together.
- Directed a $42M SAP S/4HANA cloud migration portfolio with finance controls remediation and M&A integration
- Directed a $49M data platform transformation, 60+ resources across seven concurrent streams
- Delivered APS220/BCBS239 data quality uplift across 500+ critical data elements, retaining Advanced ADI status
- Identified $1.6M annual OPEX savings, negotiated a $6.2M fixed-cost SAP agreement and $2.1M in SI vendor credits
- Partnered with CRO and CEO to design an enterprise governance framework meeting CPS220
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract and permanent
- Capacity
- 1 to 2 days a week, from now
- Rate band
- $1,700 to $1,900 + GST
- Location
- Sydney, remote or onsite
Program Director: technology transformation, risk remediation
Directs federated technology portfolios and risk remediation programs with executive steering accountability.
- Led risk management improvement across 17 trading platforms after material breach events
- Chairs executive steering committees with direct CFO, CIO and CPO reporting lines
- Directed $20M+ federated portfolios, 60+ onshore and offshore resources across five workstreams
- Led the roadmap for a ~$40M HR technology portfolio; directed a ~$15M recruitment transformation and ServiceNow HR service delivery
- Led APRA-driven remediation of a major bank's mortgage origination systems, three enterprise releases to Board commitments
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract and permanent
- Capacity
- confirming
- Rate band
- confirming
- Location
- Sydney
Engineering, MarTech & QA
Head of Enterprise ServiceNow Platform / Chief Platform Engineer
Leads enterprise ServiceNow platforms: ITSM transformation, CMDB and integrations.
- Leads ServiceNow architects and SMEs, setting design guardrails and standards in a tier-one bank
- Delivered a multi-phase legacy ITSM to ServiceNow transformation as lead ITSM architect
- Manages enterprise CMDB aligned to CSDM, discovery across Windows, UNIX, mainframe, AWS and Azure
- Designed real-time integrations across observability platforms and synchronised data repositories
- Overseeing platform-wide automation uplift and platform health and performance
- Engagement
- confirming
- Capacity
- confirming
- Rate band
- $2,000 to $2,300 + GST
- Location
- Brisbane
Head of Technology: operational resilience, architecture, technology risk
CPS 230 technology service chains, application portfolio rationalisation and technology risk at a tier-one bank.
- Led CPS230 technology service chain delivery across 11 critical operations at a tier-one bank
- Application portfolio management generating $20M annual decommissioning and $1M automation savings
- Built an enterprise architecture repository used by 5,000+ staff, linked to ITIL and Agile release
- Managed a 20-person cross-functional team across architecture, development and delivery
- Cybersecurity governance depth with hands-on judgement on process redesign versus automation versus AI
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract and permanent
- Capacity
- 2 days a week, from now
- Rate band
- $2,000 to $2,300 + GST
- Location
- Sydney, remote OK
Test Manager: migration assurance, automation-led delivery
Automation-led test management across migration programs, onshore and offshore.
- 16+ years in QA, 5+ of them in Australia, across retail, banking, insurance and reinsurance
- Owns test strategy, estimation and budget across the full delivery lifecycle for enterprise programs
- Integrated TOSCA with Azure DevOps pipelines for automated sanity and regression runs after each deployment
- Built Playwright automation with GitHub Copilot, and qTest with Gearset for non-production change
- Leads onshore and offshore test teams; certified Salesforce Data Cloud Consultant and PSM II
- Engagement
- Contract or permanent only, not fractional
- Capacity
- 4 weeks notice
- Rate band
- $1,350 to $1,550 + GST
- Location
- Sydney, remote OK
Chief Technology Officer: software, payments, fintech
CTO for post-acquisition integration, cloud migration and engineering organisation redesign in software and payments.
- Unified three predecessor companies post-acquisition and doubled the engineering team from 20 to 40 in 12 months
- Led a division's desktop-to-SaaS transition, up to 250 people in 28 teams; monthly releases from 10 to 300
- Lifted engagement scores from roughly 40% to over 80% through organisation redesign and transparency
- Accountable for technology behind 170,000+ payment terminals and 10M+ daily transactions; $15M budget, team of 60
- As a consultant, lifted on-time delivery to ~90% and rebuilt board trust in engineering through live reporting
- Engagement
- confirming
- Capacity
- confirming
- Rate band
- confirming
- Location
- confirming
Product & Technology Leadership
Chief Product Officer: product and technology executive, SaaS growth and AI
Takes SaaS businesses through scaling, AI adoption or turnaround, accountable to the CEO and board.
- Grew an edtech SaaS business from $5m to $25m+ revenue, loss-making to $5m+ net profit
- Led AI adoption across product and operations: $3m+ a year saved, every permanent staff member kept
- Cut customer feedback turnaround from 24 hours to under two minutes with AI, at 95% accuracy
- Took a digital health platform from research-led product to commercial SaaS in eight months
- Reported to the CEO and board; led 35 staff plus up to 1,500 contractors in five countries
- Engagement
- confirming
- Capacity
- Now
- Rate band
- confirming
- Location
- Sydney, hybrid or remote
Director of Digital Transformation: institutional banking platforms, enterprise architecture
Builds the digital foundations an institutional bank needs while new and legacy core systems run side by side.
- Delivered the institutional banking division's first automated workflow platform and its first app, with two-factor authentication
- Set architectural direction for a global bank's international consumer business, with a $700m, 17-market budget
- Open API strategy aligned to BIAN, delivering 200+ partnerships across transport, airlines, insurance and retail
- International CIO for a tier-one bank's overseas franchise: $20m+ budget, 30+ team, multi-regulator compliance
- Active-active design across 17 markets; ran a market's consumer-banking production from DR for five business days, zero customer impact
- Engagement
- Fractional; also open to contract
- Capacity
- 1 to 3 days a week, from now
- Rate band
- On request
- Location
- Sydney, remote OK
CTO and CDO: AI enablement, data monetisation, digital platforms
Launches digital platforms at pace, turns customer data into revenue, and now leads AI and data transformation as a consulting CTO.
- Launched a national sports streaming service in 9 months; its reusable stack made later launches 60% faster
- Built an advertiser data product on identity resolution and personalised advertising, delivering $50M+ in new revenue
- Led customer, data and advertising technology for 4M+ subscribers, with P&L accountability for a ~$100M+ annual budget
- Inaugural Chief Data Officer leading 150+ engineers and data specialists; real-time platform handling 3B+ monthly events
- Fully digital, AI-bot customer service at 92% satisfaction; McKinsey global best in class for data-driven CX
- Engagement
- confirming
- Capacity
- confirming
- Rate band
- confirming
- Location
- Sydney
No one on the panel matches that combination. Clear a filter, or ask anyway: the SHP Network extends beyond the people featured here.
Common questions
What is a fractional engagement?
A senior person working with you part of the week, usually one to three days, for as long as the work needs. You get the experience of someone who has done it before without a full-time hire.
Who is on the SHP panel?
Senior technology, data and delivery professionals, principal to C-suite, most with careers built in Australian financial services. Each one is someone our founder has worked with, or who comes vouched for by people he trusts.
What does it cost?
Each card shows an indicative day rate band before GST, with Steady Hand Partners' 15% margin inside it. Payroll and insurance costs are added where they apply. After 60 billed days on the same engagement the margin drops to 10%, however the days are spread.
Are they free full time?
Usually not, and that is the point. Most are working elsewhere and have a day or two a week to give. The Capacity line on each card shows how much, and from when.
Can we take someone on permanently?
Yes, after 40 billed days on the engagement. The fee is 10% of first-year base salary inside the first year and 7.5% after that.
How quickly can someone start?
Ask about a reference code and the full brief is in your inbox within a business day. If the brief holds up, you meet the person that week.
Why are names and employers hidden?
To protect the people listed. Names, employers and referenceable outcomes are shared once there is interest on both sides.