01
AI products & automation
Useful LLM workflows, agent systems, rapid prototypes, evaluation, human review, and a credible route to production.
Independent consultant
Cape Town · Working globally
I turn difficult software into momentum.
AI systems, product engineering, technical leadership, and software rescue for teams with ambitious goals and complicated realities.
20+
years in software
5+
business domains
End → end
strategy to deploy
Human
systems included
Casper Lotter
Lead AI Consultant
“Listen. Model. Ship. Learn.”
Experience across
Fintech
Tax technology
Recruitment
Messaging
Education
Simulation & games
How I can help
Senior judgement where the work is messy.
I’m most useful when the problem crosses boundaries: product and engineering, prototype and production, legacy and modern, people and systems.
02
Product & platform engineering
Production-shaped vertical slices across backend, frontend, data, integrations, testing, and deployment.
03
Modernisation & rescue
Untangle legacy systems, restore delivery confidence, reduce operational risk, and modernise without stopping the business.
04
Technical direction
Architecture, due diligence, engineering strategy, work-system design, and coaching that makes the team more capable.
Selected work
From legacy revenue systems to agentic engineering.
A sample of the systems and problem spaces in my recent orbit. Client work is described at a respectful, non-confidential level.
01
RustPhoenixReal-time systemsAI
Starstate — composable multiplayer simulation
A data-driven space simulation spanning an authoritative Phoenix server, a deeply modular Rust engine, networking, persistence, diagnostics, and AI-driven narrative systems.
02
ReactTypeScriptSymfonyOpenAPI
TaxTim — evolving a national-scale tax platform
Modern product engineering around a substantial tax platform: legacy Symfony and Vue systems, a new React application, contract-generated APIs, automated testing, and complex guided tax journeys.
03
RailsPhoenixSvelteKitFirebase
Leaply — recruitment, psychometrics & listing products
Full-stack work across a mature Rails recruitment platform, rich Vue interfaces, search and document generation, plus newer SvelteKit, Firebase, and Phoenix services.
04
LiveViewRust NIFsMulti-agentTypst
Skuld & Redo — engineering systems for engineering systems
An agent coordination control plane with code intelligence, plus a disciplined reverse-engineering workflow that turns existing applications into implementation-ready system specifications.
05
ElixirTelegramOCR & audioLLMs
Riabyte product lab — small systems with sharp purpose
Experiments and products spanning conversational invoicing, AI questionnaires, story and cookbook generation, work-system mapping, PDF publishing, OCR, audio transcription, and Telegram-first interfaces.
Also shipped: civic campaign sites, Firebase cloud functions, multiseat computing solutions, Telegram bots, document pipelines, mapping interfaces, Storybook systems, and high-confidence automated test suites.
Browse GitHubA useful first conversation
Start with the constraint, not the stack.
Choose the situation closest to yours. This small interaction is running on Phoenix LiveView—the kind of simple technology choice I favour when it fits the work.
A sensible starting path
Tailored live
A critical system is stuck
Find the constraint. Stabilise the system. Restore delivery confidence.
I work with the team to separate symptoms from causes, reduce operational risk, and turn the next release into an achievable plan.
01 / Listen
Map the failure modes, business pressure, and technical constraints.
02 / Model
Create a risk-ranked intervention plan with visible decision points.
03 / Ship
Pair with your team to ship the highest-leverage fixes first.
Working outcome
A calmer system, an explicit recovery path, and fewer expensive surprises.
Working toolkit
Polyglot by context.
Technology is downstream of the problem. I choose tools for feedback speed, reliability, team fit, and the cost of living with the result.
AI & automation
LLM integration · Agent workflows · Prompt systems · Evaluation · OCR · Audio · Human-in-the-loop design
Backend & systems
Elixir · Phoenix · LiveView · Rust · Ruby on Rails · PHP / Symfony · PostgreSQL · Redis · APIs · Real-time systems
Product interfaces
React · TypeScript · SvelteKit · Vue · Tailwind CSS · MUI · Storybook · Accessibility · Data visualisation
Delivery & operations
Docker · Kamal · CI/CD · Playwright · Vitest · RSpec · Firebase · GCP · AWS · DigitalOcean · Observability
Ways of working
Product discovery · Architecture · Technical due diligence · Agile coaching · Domain modelling · Legacy modernisation
Based in Cape Town. Comfortable joining a room, a repo, or a knotty system and making sense of what is actually happening.
About Casper
I love the hard technical problems. I never forget who they’re for.
I’ve spent more than twenty years helping businesses explore, expand, and extract value through software—across mining, fintech, messaging, recruitment, tax, education, and emerging AI systems.
I care about building the right thing, building it well, and leaving the people and system more capable than I found them. That means technical quality and candid conversations belong in the same engagement.
01
Empathy
Understand the work from every relevant seat.
02
Feedback
Shorten the distance between decisions and evidence.
03
Accountability
Make outcomes and ownership explicit.
What collaborators say
“Casper possesses a rare asset: understanding—both of the technical and motivational aspects of projects.”
“A high-quality software engineer with the discipline to build world-class code and manage it through design, testing, and release.”
Have a difficult problem?
Let’s make the next move obvious.
Send me the context, the constraint, and what “better” would look like. I’ll tell you candidly whether I can help.
Cape Town · Remote-friendly · Select consultancy engagements