I design production AI and cloud solutions at Large Corporations—and bring
the same hands-on architecture discipline to teams that need senior capability on demand.
The architecture capability you need—without another permanent layer.
I work at the join between business intent and engineering reality, helping teams make decisions they can operate, explain and evolve.
01
⌁
Architecture review
Find the hidden fragility, expensive complexity and delivery friction in your current estate.
Current and target state
Risk and dependency map
Prioritised recommendations
02
◇
Cloud & platform design
Build a practical foundation for reliable products across AWS, Azure, Kubernetes and hybrid environments.
Platform patterns
Security and observability
Resilience, capacity and cost
03
✣
AI integration
Move AI from experiment to useful capability inside the systems and workflows your business already relies on.
Use-case and readiness review
Agentic and model integration
Controls and measurable value
04
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Delivery transformation
Shorten the path from commit to confidence with better automation, standards and operational feedback.
CI/CD and infrastructure as code
Quality and security gates
Developer experience
02 / FIELD EXPERIENCEJohann KorfAI Solution Architect · Cape Town
“I’ve spent a career making technology work where failure is visible, expensive and never theoretical.”
Today I architect AI and automation for Old Mutual Corporate. Before that: trading systems, national biometric platforms, telecoms, digital banking, payments and cloud migrations.
Designing text and voice AI agents for WhatsApp and call-centre service, targeting 60% workload relief, 24/7 availability and costs at one-third of current expenditure.
Architecting AWS Bedrock solutions with RAG, MCP servers, LiveKit, Nova Sonic and supervisor, human-in-the-loop and observer controls.
Taking solutions from business context, TCO and ROI through architecture governance, detailed design, engineering and deployment.
2025—NOW
Founder, AI Architect & Consultant
Tinrobot · Applied AI products and advisory
Building domain-specific RAG, fine-tuned models and predictive products with Python, PyTorch, Hugging Face, LoRA and Ollama.
Audited and improved HOSTAFRICA’s SDLC while advising on AI adoption, architecture and governance.
2021—2025
Solution Architect
Capitec Bank · Card-Not-Present and QR payments
Owned platform and solution designs, cross-team impact analysis and architecture reviews.
Led production readiness, observability, capacity and cost planning across Kubernetes, Terraform, Azure, .NET and Java.
2020—2021
System Architect / Engineer
Computicket · Cloud migration and platform reliability
Led an on-premises-to-AWS migration and introduced CI/CD, high availability and disaster-recovery practices for a microservices estate.
Built operational monitoring, runbooks and handover around Kubernetes, Terraform, Istio, Kafka and the Grafana/ELK/Prometheus stack.
2019—2020
Solutions Architect
Discovery Vitality Group · Enterprise solution design
Delivered business, data, application, integration and deployment architecture within enterprise standards.
Operated TRB/ARB governance and advised on performance, scalability, reliability and security.
2018
Solutions Architect
TymeBank · Greenfield digital banking
Architected savings and lending products from business design through implementation for a digital-only bank.
Designed cloud infrastructure, customer origination, decisioning, payments, collections and risk-model execution across distributed international teams.
2010—2017
Architect, CTO & Delivery Leader
Face Technology, SCS Consulting and Vodacom
Designed the world’s first commercial multi-modal ABIS combining fingerprint, iris and facial recognition.
Built enterprise JEE/SOA and private-cloud platforms; delivered national identity, licensing, voter-registration and tax-revenue systems across Africa.
Led consulting, pre-sales, platform performance, SDLC automation and distributed operations teams.
03 / THE FIT
Useful when the stakes have outgrown the current architecture.
A strong fit
Your platform needs to scale without becoming brittle.
A migration or modernisation has stalled between strategy and delivery.
You need senior technical judgement across teams and vendors.
You want AI in production—not another disconnected proof of concept.
Probably not a fit
You need a slide deck with no ownership after the presentation.
The solution has already been chosen and only needs a rubber stamp.
More ceremony is valued above measurable delivery progress.
You are looking for the cheapest pair of hands.
04 / HOW IT WORKS
Small start. Clear scope. Useful output.
Engagements are shaped around the decision or delivery constraint—not an off-the-shelf consulting package.
01
Frame the problem
A focused conversation about the business outcome, current landscape and where confidence breaks down.
02
Make it visible
A rapid review of systems, constraints and trade-offs, ending in a shared picture of what matters.
03
Move with intent
A defined engagement: decision support, target architecture, delivery guidance or ongoing fractional leadership.
YOUR NEXT DECISION
Bring me the problem that keeps resurfacing.
We’ll spend 30 minutes finding out whether sharper architecture can unlock the next move.
