01
Advisory
A senior second opinion
Architecture and code reviews, technology choices, cloud cost reviews, and a straight answer on whether a plan will work. Measured in days, not months.
Tom Chantler · Principal engineer & architect
Complicated software, made simple.
I help engineering teams make hard technical decisions, untangle systems that have grown too complex, and ship software that is fast, secure and economical to run.
Clients have included
- Microsoft
- ClearBank
- caffeine.ai
- Expana
- IMServ
- Virgin Experience Days
- Havas
- Thames Water
- Honda
- LeasePlan
Working together
Three ways to bring me in
02
Hands-on engineering
A principal on your team
I join your team as a principal or lead engineer: designing, writing and reviewing code, and raising the bar for the people around me.
03
Fixed-scope delivery
A defined outcome, delivered
For well-understood work, such as a migration, a modernisation or a new service, we agree the scope, the outcome and the price up front.
Selected work
Recent engagements
A command-line interface and an MCP server, built from scratch
I designed and built Caffeine’s CLI and its MCP server from a blank page, on my own. The MCP server lets AI assistants work directly with Caffeine, and I took it through to a listing in Anthropic’s Claude directory.
High-throughput data processing for a high-security government team
Embedded in a high-security government delivery team, I built production services in C# with performance-critical components in Rust and Go, integrating with Azure Data Explorer and Event Hubs, behind rigorous automated testing and deployment gates.
First member of a new department at a brand-new clearing bank
ClearBank was the UK’s first new clearing bank in over 250 years. As the first member of a new department, I led a team of five, solved difficult and often ill-defined problems, and built software and automation to keep the bank running accurately and efficiently.
Expertise
Where I’m most useful
- Architecture & simplification
- Removing moving parts and modernising legacy systems step by step, until they are cheap to change and easy to reason about.
- Cloud & cost
- Over ten years of Azure, plus AWS: architecture, migrations, cost reduction and, where it makes sense, moving workloads off the cloud entirely.
- Data & PostgreSQL
- Schema design, query performance and data pipelines on PostgreSQL and SQL Server.
- Delivery & automation
- CI/CD, infrastructure as code and security built into the pipeline, so that releases are routine rather than events.
- Modern engineering
- Rust by preference, plus Go, TypeScript and C#/.NET: services that are fast, safe and light on hardware.
- AI tooling & MCP
- MCP servers, CLIs and integrations that let AI assistants work with real products and data.
How I work
Principles, not process
- You get the senior person. The person you speak to is the person who does the work. When a job needs more hands, I bring in people I know and trust.
- Simple beats clever. The best system is usually the one with the fewest things that can go wrong.
- Honest advice. That includes “don’t build this” when it’s the right answer.
- Leave the team stronger. Decisions are written down and knowledge is handed over, so you don’t depend on me.
- Efficient by default. Saving time and money usually saves energy too. Why efficiency matters to me.
Background
- 1979
- First program, written aged three on a Commodore PET
- 2007
- Chantler Solutions founded with my father, Alan
- Six
- decades in which I’ve written software
Have a problem worth solving?
Tell me what you’re working on. A short email is plenty, and you’ll get a straight answer on whether I can help.