Building Tech Teams is a weekly podcast on how Australia hires, builds, and leads tech teams in the age of AI. Host James MacDonald sits down with the founders, CTOs, VPs of Engineering and People Leaders building Australia's best tech teams, from startups to enterprise, on what actually works. How they hire, how they build and lead their teams, and the calls that made or broke them. It is built for the leaders making the hire and the tech professionals making the move. Building Tech Teams is…
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Eight guests into Building Tech Teams, one theme has shown up in every single episode: money. A principal software engineer who now manages a team of agents asks what he should be paid, and nobody in the room has a clean answer. AI has changed what one person can produce, and salaries have come off the rails behind it. In this best-of episode, James MacDonald pulls together the sharpest thinking…
Most companies treat compensation as a math problem: get the number right and the rest takes care of itself. Matt McFarlane says that’s backwards, and it’s the reason so many pay conversations go sideways even when the number itself is fair. In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Matt McFarlane, founder of FNDN, the compensation consultancy he built after years…
Most technical interviews still ask a candidate to write a function on a whiteboard. Adam Witanowski says that question is already obsolete, and what should replace it says everything about how AI is changing who gets hired. In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Adam Witanowski, AI Architect at nib, where he has spent the past several years building the insurer's…
The junior engineer used to be the safe first hire. Cloë Stanbridge says AI just made that job disappear, and that's only the start of what's rewriting tech hiring right now. In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Cloë Stanbridge, Talent Lead at Airtree, one of Australia's most active venture capital firms. Cloë spends her days helping early-stage founders make…
Most organisations are asking which AI model they should use. Patrick McQuaid thinks that is the wrong conversation. Patrick is Group Head of Data, Analytics & AI at NGM Group. He joins James MacDonald to explain how leaders can build practical AI capability without getting trapped by hype, vendor lock-in or an endless cycle of new tools. They discuss how NGM approaches AI inside a regulated…
Every great team she has ever seen shares one trait: they are comfortable with discomfort. Claudia Barriga-Larriviere has spent nearly 20 years building people and culture inside startups and global enterprises — and she thinks most of the AI conversation is quietly dodging the hard, human questions. In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Claudia Barriga-Larriviere…
The business wants AI, and it wants it yesterday. But once the proof of concept works and the partner goes home, someone inside the company has to keep the thing running. Nathan Hill, Head of Telco at AWS and a 20-year veteran of the telco industry, joins James to talk about what actually happens when enterprises push AI into production — and why the scarcest asset in the room is still deep domain…
The business wants AI now. The people who have to secure it are being told to move faster while their budgets shrink. Kevin Akermanis, Solutions Architect at Okta and a 15-year Salesforce veteran, sits down with James MacDonald to unpack what really happens when enterprises rush AI into production: security funding flatlining, breaches becoming the cost of doing business, and a collapsed…
The first hire used to be an engineer. Michael Batko thinks that's now backwards — and that's just the start of how AI is rewiring the way you build a tech team. In the first episode of Building Tech Teams , James MacDonald sits down with Michael Batko — who spent eight years as CEO of Startmate backing 240+ startups, and now runs the AI-native venture batko.ai. They get into what actually changes…
From a childhood without electricity to co-founding a listed betting company, Oliver Shanahan’s story is a masterclass in technical grit and commercial pivots. As the Group Head of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure at BetMakers Technology Group, Oliver traces his path from wiring up early ISPs and mining ERPs to building TopBetta from a two-person LAMP stack into an ASX-listed business. In this…
In this episode of Tech Execs, James MacDonald heads to Melbourne to sit down with Matt Vitale, former co-founder of Australia’s largest equity crowdfunding platform and now Executive Director at New Dialogue. Matt traces his winding path from nightlife promoter and sugarcane juice tinkerer to financial services lawyer, then startup pioneer, where he helped more than 300 companies raise over…
