Christian Payne

Fire and Rescue NSW

Provided technical leadership and software development support in the E000 Comms Centre, ensuring the stability, security, and functionality of mission-critical applications used in emergency response operations.

Key Achievements:
✔ Led the development & deployment of a web-based incident tool, consolidating multiple stakeholder requirements while ensuring privacy, security, and solution design constraints.
✔ Managed penetration testing for an internally developed application, working with external security specialists to ensure compliance with cybersecurity standards.
✔ Oversaw technical decision-making for internal tools, balancing conflicting short-, medium-, and long-term priorities to optimize resource allocation and project feasibility.
✔ Modernized legacy systems by migrating critical tools from VB5 & VB6 to .NET Core, including fire alarm emulators for training and call recording/playback tools.
✔ Adopted Agile methodologies, utilizing JIRA for task & issue management and Scrum project management to prioritize and deliver features efficiently.
✔ Collaborated with Cyber Security & Support teams to ensure compliance with policies, risk management strategies, and regulatory reporting requirements.
✔ Converted & optimized legacy desktop applications into web-based solutions, leveraging React, Web APIs, and cloud-ready architecture for improved accessibility and maintainability.
✔ Implemented automation & DevOps practices, streamlining daily system checks, RFC documentation, and change management processes via Fire & Rescue’s CAB (Change Advisory Board).

Tech Stack:
✔ Backend: .NET Core 8, Web API
✔ Frontend: Angular 17, React.js, TypeScript
✔ Cloud & Infrastructure: On-premise with cloud migration readiness
✔ Automation & DevOps: CI/CD (TeamCity), MS Test
✔ Security: Penetration testing, risk management compliance
✔ Project Management: JIRA, Scrum, Agile methodologies
✔ Database: MS SQL 2019, MongoDB, MySQL

Principal Engineer

Origin Energy

Software Engineer

Fantastic Furniture

Senior Software Engineer

Tanngo 

Technical Product Manager

Humaniti

Humaniti helps consumers by providing a budgeting tool & cash for surveys.  It helps our customers by providing data insights.

I was Humaniti's first technical hire where I built the dev. team from scratch.  We released MVP (desktop) in 5 months, and then added mobile (iOS & Android) 6 weeks later.

Next phase was to take ownership of our internal processes and procedures.  I implement traditional Software Development practices (SCRUM etc.) and fill the product pipeline.

From there my focus was on scale & growth - increase velocity (more features more often) while reducing bug count,

Tech stack is AWS, Python, Angular & ionic with Postgres & Snowflake.

HR functions included recruitment and defining personal & team KPI's.

10 head count including Dev, Support & QA.

Chief Technology Officer

Fin Coach

- Define and manage product road map.
- Released MVP in 3 months
- Liaise with internal & external stakeholders
- Develop content for product and company collateral
- Sales, trend, and profitability analysis
- Researching, reviewing & reporting on competitors & rival products

Product Manager

Moneysoft AU

Head of Development

Rugby Rank

The aim of Rugby Rank is to deliver maximum benefit, with minimum fuss at a price which makes high end data analysis available to all clubs/schools/universities at all levels of the game. 

The interface has been rigorously tested by highly qualified junior representative and senior coaches and is designed to provide the maximum benefit to the user.

I.T. Manager

eSavvy Pty Ltd

Developed products for Dynamics CRM
Managed a portfolio of +25 products
Developed & deployed web & mobile solutions

SAI Global

Responsible for Standards database
- including Australian, US, UK and European Standards
- managed KPI's for data accuracy and completeness

Data Team Leader (Publishing)

I help teams ship software that actually works - scalable, maintainable, and built to last. 

With 25+ years in tech, I’ve seen every software disaster imaginable - from legacy code, nobody dares to touch to cloud migrations that “should be easy”. My job? Keep teams focused, stakeholders informed, and software delivered- while still being hands one and without unnecessary drama.

My expertise is modernising legacy systems, integrating cloud solutions, and leading teams through complex software transitions. I’ve worked in startups, government, and large enterprises, where I focus on removing bottlenecks, streamlining development, and helping all do their best work.

Great software is as much about people as it is about technology. A good plan, clear priorities, and a team that understands the goal make all the difference. Whether it’s technical strategy, stakeholder alignment, or making tough decisions that keep projects moving, I thrive in bringing structure and clarity to software delivery.

Founder

Scouut

We're Scouut: builder of world class startups and Talent Partner for Eucalyptus, Bugcrowd, Citro, Medinet and Sauce (to name a few), as well as ventures from Paloma, AirTree, Startmate, x15 and many more.

Succeeding as a start-up really boils down to two things:

- Making the right decisions at the right time.
- And hiring great people who can execute them.

We guarantee the latter half of that.

Fancy doing the former? Reach out any time, any day:

0477 622 408
Matt@scouut.com.au
https://scouut.com.au/

Co-Founder & Director | Startup Scaler

Discovered People

Practice Lead | Software Development Recruitment

TheDriveGroup.

Principal Consultant | Software Development Recruitment

Rubix Solutions Pty Ltd

Divisional Manager | Software Development Recruitment

On Target Recruitment

Business Development Manager | Sales & Technical Recruitment

Ebury

Lead FX Broker

Senior FX Broker

FX Broker

Junior FX Broker

Start building ELITE startup teams with The Startup Hiring Playbook: https://amzn.asia/d/57UUFJr

Building the best Software & Design teams in Australia's start-up & scale-up ecosystem is what we do.

Partnering with 100+ start-ups & scale-ups, and with an expert team that's placed into Canva, Atlassian, Eucalyptus, Bugcrowd, Kolmeo and Milanote to name just a handful, as well as portfolio companies from Blackbird, Paloma, AirTree, Startmate, x15 and more, we know a thing or two about hiring in the space.

We help our clients to:

- Find and attract the best talent in the country
- Perfect their interview processes
- Offer over 1 in 3 candidates they meet via Scouut
- Secure roughly 90% of the candidates they make offers to
- Have an unbeatable EVP
- Retain their best employees in a candidate short sector
- And more!

Companies that choose to partner with Scouut have an unmatched advantage when it comes to all things hiring.

Fancy joining them? 👇

0477 622 408
matt@scouut.com.au
https://scouut.com.au

Matt Cook

Engaging a recruiter is a little bit like ordering Uber Eats... (bear with me)


Services like Uber eats make money because people are willing to pay for a level of convenience. 

Some make a claim that they are buying back their time, but 99% of the world pays for Uber Eats because they simply don't want to make something at home, or go to the effort of collecting it themselves.

It's convenience, plain and simple.

Recruitment fees, for *almost* all roles, are the same. 

You can pretend that paying $25K to 'save time interviewing' is worthwhile, but you can do the maths and realise very quickly it's not. 

You could say that recruiters bring in better candidates than other options, but just like Uber Eats, if you really tried, you could do the same, or better, at home.

Convenience is a fine justification to use a recruiter by the way. It's a legitimate reason to pay for something, who doesn't like a bit of convenience? Just understand what you're paying for.

It's certainly not a necessity. It's just a nice to have, if you can afford it. Because 80-90% of your hiring could be done just fine at home, if not even better, for a small fraction of the cost. 

But what about the other 10% of hires? 

The 10% is the fine dining experience that you should probably never attempt to replicate at home, because you'll burn the house down trying.

It's the critical roles that directly impact your startup's success or failure, the hires that just so happen to be the most difficult to get right, as well as the most likely to get wrong.

The roles that, even with the time, patience, attention, effort, and all the will in the world, should still be left to someone who's done it 100s of time before.

We generally won't help you with the 90%, because we're not who you engage if you simply want convenience.

But when you want certainty, specifically for the hires you simply can't afford to get wrong, that's where you'll find us.

Preventing Mis-hires For VC Backed Startups Through Design First Hiring & Critical Team Design

Noticed something interesting when doing an end of year database clean a few weeks ago...

Specifically, this is our client contact database, so it's almost entirely founders and tech leaders working in the startup & scaleup space, and it's separate from our candidate database.

Anyway, we keep it mostly up to date manually throughout the year, especially for those we're having conversations with, but things like locations, job titles, promotions etc. -  it's hard to stay on top of that in real time.

So every year we'll enrich the database to bring it back to full accuracy, and then those that have moved out of the startup scene or who are no longer in our ICP for whatever reason get removed (aside from some edge cases).

This year, more than 10% of all contacts in the database have left Australia to move overseas (it's based on LinkedIn location so it's not 100% accurate, but it gives a decent idea at least).

There's ~6,000 people in this database, for reference.

So that's 600+ of Australia's founders and tech focused startup operators leaving our market to build their's or someone else's startup elsewhere.

Over half have gone to the US, perhaps unsurprisingly - but I'd also assume the US locations are least likely to be accurate, as lots of people put SF on LinkedIn even though they still live here (make sales & funding easier, perhaps). 

But there's also lots of London, New Zealand, India, and even a couple now in Brazil!

I talk a lot about how Australia is losing talent to other geographies and how concerning it is - I've also talked about how the best founders and the most successful startups we have typically rush to the US as quick as they can. 

At times I wonder if I'm just being a bit alarmist - but then you have to ask...

Have we imported 600+ founders and tech operators of similar quality to replace them? I'd be surprised.

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Christian Payne

Matt Cook

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taplio

The Battle

Christian Payne

Matt Cook

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Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Matt Cook's LinkedIn Performance

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