Gerard
Beckerleg
Fifteen years architecting cloud platforms on Azure and AWS, translating strategic intent into system behaviour, and designing interconnected systems that hold up over time.
Core Capabilities
Spec-Driven Execution
The bottleneck in modern work has shifted from producing outputs to defining what done looks like. Gerard writes the acceptance criteria, integration contracts, and testable conditions that make a specification buildable. Applied across dozens of enterprise projects, from a four-person team that shipped a car sales platform in ninety days to formal Architectural Review Boards in financial services.
Specifying Intent
Holding the strategic intent of a system and evaluating every decision against it. When a Korean engineering team, a Sydney agency, and a pharmaceutical compliance officer all need to understand what a system should do and why, Gerard is the person in the room making sure every output maps back to the original intent.
Systems Thinking
Building compounding systems rather than one-off deliverables. At Hyundai, Gerard architected an interconnected cloud ecosystem over eight years where the PIM feeds the website, ROAP feeds the pricing, D2C reads from both, and a universal identifier ties it all to a single customer moment. Defined inputs, rules, triggers, and success measures, then maintained when conditions changed.
Technical Translation
Engineers and executives both trust Gerard because he operates fluently in both worlds. CELTA qualified and formally trained to break down complex material and teach it to people encountering it for the first time. That skill shows up constantly when walking a non-technical stakeholder through an architecture decision or helping a developer understand what a client actually needs.
Team & Capability Architecture
Built a 35-person engineering operation across three countries using the same systems thinking applied to software: defined inputs, clear rules, measurable outcomes. Multiple team members have stayed for six to nine years in an industry where two is normal. Also built Java and PHP capabilities from scratch when strategic needs required it.
AI & Intelligent Systems
Fine-tuned OpenAI models with supervised learning, built BigQuery-backed data platforms using propensity modelling, and designed real-time data services. The value for an AI-native organisation is not in operating the model but in specifying what the model should do, evaluating whether it did it, and designing the system around it.
Specification, Intent & Systems in Practice
D2C Vehicle Sales Platform
Defined the complete specification for a direct-to-consumer vehicle sales platform: integration contracts with the DMS at every stage, acceptance criteria for the fully automated purchase journey, and load testing scenarios including simulated API failures and graceful degradation. Team of four. Ninety days from specification to launch. Subsequently specified the refactoring into a white-label platform now live for Genesis.
Tens of millions in vehicles sold on day oneEight-Year Digital Ecosystem
Specified and architected an interconnected enterprise ecosystem over eight years: brand website (enterprise CMS), owner portal (Keycloak SSO), D2C ecommerce, PIM, ROAP pricing engine, and Genesis brand site. Each system is a node in a larger architecture where the PIM feeds the website, ROAP feeds pricing, D2C reads from both, and the FSC universal identifier connects everything to a single customer record. Began as a project rescue. Grew into the longest running client relationship.
Embedded team of 14 to 15 people. Eight-year relationship.FSC Universal Key & Personalisation
Identified that every possible vehicle configuration could be expressed as a single unique identifier. Specified the complete personalisation flow: customer configures a car generating an FSC key, enquiry passes to Salesforce, which triggers a dynamically generated email showing the exact car configured, pulled from the CGI library and PIM. All technology already in place. Pure specification work. Now being positioned as the universal identifier across the entire Hyundai enterprise.
Enterprise-wide universal identifier from pure specificationEnterprise Data Mapping & Azure Platform
Ran stakeholder interviews across the entire enterprise to map every data source, owner, consumer and flow. Built a bespoke D3.js interactive graph visualisation tool to make the relational complexity comprehensible. Also specified an Azure-hosted multi-site platform: a cloud customer data layer for real-time personalisation, ML content recommendations, Okta SSO, ATDW integration, email service integration, and a Flutter mobile app.
Pitch win. Enterprise-wide data landscape made navigable.Architectural Review Board & Azure Platform
After the pitch win, the project required formal ARB approval. Documented every architectural decision, justified each against the strategic intent, and bridged Beyond Bank's enterprise architects with the development team, finding common ground without compromising the specification. Achieved sign-off. Delivered open banking integration for live product data and ML content recommendations.
Formal Architectural Review Board sign-offHCP Deep Linking & Weather-Driven Email
HCPs were bouncing off the login wall when clicking email links. Specified a deep linking system generating unique one-time-use tokens, coordinating BI's global messaging system with the local platform across teams in the US, Germany and Australia. Also specified weather-based dynamic email with content assembled per recipient at send time based on postcode weather conditions.
Measurably increased HCP content engagement. Established PHP practice.Endometriosis Diagnostic AI
Specified the complete AI pipeline: supervised learning approach, training data categories defined with a medical subject matter expert, labelled dataset assembly, fine-tuning methodology, and validation against a held-out test set. The fine-tuned OpenAI model identified symptom patterns indicative of endometriosis from natural language descriptions. Adoption prevented by legal constraints, identified and navigated honestly.
Complete AI pipeline specification from training data to validationPlatform Rescue & Operating System Design
Rescued a stalled cloud migration from a failed offshore provider. Beyond the technical rescue, specified the operating system around the platform: single point of contact for triage, problem definition before reaching development, regular deployment schedules, feature flags preventing incomplete work from blocking releases, and reusability standards. Designed a system with defined inputs, rules, triggers and observable outcomes.
Rescue turned into multi-year retained clientTechnologies & Platforms
AI, ML & Data
- OpenAI Fine-Tuning
- Supervised Learning / NLP
- Training Data & Validation
- Propensity Modelling
- Google BigQuery
- Real-Time Data Services
- Content Recommendations (ML)
- D3.js Data Visualisation
Cloud & Infrastructure
- Azure
- AWS
- Cloud Migration
- Docker / CI/CD
- Microservices Architecture
- Load & Resilience Testing
- Graceful Degradation Design
Architecture & Governance
- Solution Architecture
- Architectural Review Boards
- Enterprise Architecture Review
- Data Flow Architecture
- Build vs Buy Analysis
- Vendor Evaluation
- White-Label Platform Design
Integration & API
- Azure API Gateway
- REST API Architecture
- Open Banking
- Salesforce / HubSpot / Veeva
- DMS Integration
- CRM / PIM Integration
- ATDW
- ETL & Data Sync
Identity & Security
- Okta
- Auth0
- Keycloak
- ADFS / JWT / OWIN
- SSO Architecture
- PII Data Protection
- Pen Test Management
Languages
- .NET / C#
- Java / Java Spring Boot
- PHP / Laravel
- JavaScript / TypeScript
- Python
From writing code to defining what systems should do
Gerard started writing code at Welcome Software in England in 2006 as a web developer. After a career break teaching English in Italy, where he earned a CELTA qualification, he moved to Australia and joined SSW, a .NET consultancy in Sydney. At SSW he built enterprise applications, led Scrum teams, and lectured in .NET and SharePoint at the University of Technology Sydney. He also mentored on FireBootCamp, a nine-week full-immersion development bootcamp. Teaching changed how he communicates technical ideas. It trained him to break down complex material into pieces that people can actually absorb, something that comes up constantly when explaining architecture to clients or upskilling developers on unfamiliar platforms.
At Orchard he grew from Solution Architect to Technical Director. What the title never quite captured was what the job actually involved. Gerard specified intent. When a client said "we want to sell cars online", he translated that into integration contracts, acceptance criteria, load testing scenarios, and a specification precise enough for a team of four to ship a platform that sold tens of millions on day one, in ninety days. He defined what done looks like. Across dozens of enterprise projects he wrote the PRDs, specifications, and testable conditions that separated finished from shipped. He navigated formal Architectural Review Boards in financial services. He evaluated penetration test results and separated real vulnerabilities from noise. And he built systems rather than documents. At Hyundai, an interconnected ecosystem where the PIM feeds the website, ROAP feeds the pricing, D2C reads from both, and a universal identifier ties everything to a single customer moment.
He built the team to do it. From 10 people to 35, across Sydney, the Philippines and Colombia, using the same systems thinking: clear inputs, defined rules, measurable outcomes, and the psychological safety that keeps people for six, seven, eight, nine years in an industry where two is normal. He has fine-tuned AI models, built BigQuery-backed data platforms, and architected systems on Azure and AWS. The constant through everything is the same: specifying what systems should do, evaluating whether they did it, and designing the architecture that makes it repeatable.