The junior engineer used to be the safe first hire. Cloë Stanbridge says AI just made that job disappear, and that's only the start of what's rewriting tech hiring right now.

In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Cloë Stanbridge, Talent Lead at Airtree, one of Australia's most active venture capital firms. Cloë spends her days helping early-stage founders make their first engineering hires and helping later-stage companies scale their teams, work she's done from both sides, having previously led talent through a hypergrowth stretch at SafetyCulture and embedded inside scaling companies at The Lab17. They get into what actually makes a founder an "outlier" worth backing, why some founders eventually have to admit they've become the bottleneck in their own company, why the traditional junior engineer role is disappearing, and how Airtree's new Frontiers program is drawing hundreds of applications from engineers ready to go out on their own.

It's a hiring-trenches conversation full of specific, hard-won detail: the real numbers behind scaling a team from 60 to 350 people, why some recruiters place better talent because they simply know the team better, the AI tools on both sides of the hiring desk, and the line that sums up what's actually scarce in tech right now: everyone can build, not everyone can sell.

Chapters

0:00 Cold open: why the junior engineer is disappearing

0:40 What this episode covers

1:40 Welcome: Cloë Stanbridge, Talent Lead at Airtree

1:56 A day in the life of a VC talent lead

2:10 Investing from pre-seed to growth stage

2:57 How talent gets involved at each stage

4:15 What makes a founder an "outlier"

5:02 Hiring the first few engineers

5:48 Case study: scaling a young founder's team

7:39 When a technical founder gets pulled in every direction

9:01 Hiring junior engineers in the age of AI

11:03 Why "junior" now means doing mid-level work

12:05 The fear of hiring someone more senior than you

13:02 When founders step back into R&D

13:32 Zero-to-one vs. scaling personalities

14:08 Inside Airtree's Frontiers program

15:24 Why engineers are leaving big companies to found startups

15:57 Retention, ESOP, and leaner teams

16:45 Why managers now need to be hands-on architects

17:25 Why no job is safe from redundancy anymore

18:39 The squeeze on middle management

19:34 Hiring people leaders too late

21:34 What actually keeps people "sticky"

21:58 Leadership lessons from Brené Brown and Kim Scott

22:41 Embedding inside scale-ups at The Lab17

25:15 Setting a new hire up to succeed, or fail

27:49 How the market flipped after COVID

28:21 When a huge engineer salary is worth it

31:08 Competing with Silicon Valley salaries

31:37 How Linktree built culture as a differentiator

32:52 Cash versus flexibility in a cost-of-living crisis

33:40 Being upfront about the grind before they sign

35:20 Remote work and the culture question

36:55 Why go-to-market matters more than ever

37:46 Expanding into the US market

40:10 Do founders have to relocate for funding?

41:34 Bringing Australian talent back home

42:36 From 60 to 350: scaling at SafetyCulture

47:04 Why recruiters need to know "their dog's name"

47:46 Being a thought partner, not a salesperson

48:47 Hiring for potential over a checklist

50:39 Why problem-solving beats a technical checklist

51:47 How AI is changing technical interviews

53:38 Trial days: hiring by actually working together

55:25 Screening out "AI slop" in applications

56:21 Spotting an AI-written cover letter

57:34 Using AI without losing the human element

57:52 Where voice agents fit and where they don't

58:39 The AI tools Cloë uses to research candidates

59:25 Cloë's top 3 AI skills for recruiting

1:00:45 James's AI-powered morning brief

1:01:58 Wrap-up and thanks

1:02:11 James's takeaways from the episode

About the Guest

Cloë Stanbridge is Talent Lead at Airtree, where she partners with the firm's portfolio to connect founders with top talent, build scalable hiring processes, and develop playbooks that support sustainable growth. Before Airtree, she spent over four years at The Lab17, embedding inside scaling companies including Linktree and Immutable to build out their hiring practices, and led talent through a hypergrowth stretch at SafetyCulture, taking the engineering team from around 60 people to 350 in two years.

Links

• Cloë Stanbridge · Airtree · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cloestanbridge/
• James MacDonald — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-macdonald-au/
• NTP Talent: https://ntptalent.com.au/
• Day One: https://dayone.fm/

Hosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.

Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the production partner behind Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

Most organisations are asking which AI model they should use. Patrick McQuaid thinks that is the wrong conversation.

Patrick is Group Head of Data, Analytics & AI at NGM Group. He joins James MacDonald to explain how leaders can build practical AI capability without getting trapped by hype, vendor lock-in or an endless cycle of new tools.

They discuss how NGM approaches AI inside a regulated banking environment, where privacy, risk and customer trust make it impossible to turn a weekend prototype straight into production. Patrick explains why teams need both strong foundations and useful short-term wins, why the people closest to the work should own their technology costs, and where generative AI should not be used for decision-making.

The conversation also explores what AI means for technical careers. Patrick shares why he hires for attitude, curiosity and problem-solving ability, rather than waiting for candidates with years of experience in technology that has only just emerged. He and James discuss the continuing value of junior engineers, the rise of AI enablement and orchestration roles, and the human skills that remain difficult to automate.

If you are responsible for introducing AI into an established organisation, hiring a technical team or preparing your own career for the next wave of change, this episode offers a grounded alternative to the fear and hype.

Chapters

• 0:00 — Stop arguing about AI models
• 0:46 — What this episode covers
• 1:15 — Meet Patrick McQuaid
• 1:38 — Leading experts without being the deepest technical expert
• 4:37 — Deployment, flexibility and avoiding model lock-in
• 6:45 — Vibe coding versus production inside a regulated bank
• 8:30 — Shadow AI and choosing enterprise tools
• 10:10 — Junior engineers and hiring for attitude
• 16:15 — Who should own AI and token costs?
• 19:34 — Building, buying or partnering for AI capability
• 21:21 — Where generative AI does not belong
• 25:41 — Joining NGM during a major data transformation
• 30:17 — Building foundations and delivering quick wins
• 34:20 — Planning in a fast-moving AI market
• 35:45 — Agentic tools and the value of staying flexible
• 37:04 — Can specialist software companies defend their advantage?
• 39:18 — What organisations should and should not build themselves
• 41:33 — Technology's role in a human business
• 49:44 — The human skills AI cannot replace
• 52:33 — What AI could mean for the next generation
• 54:33 — Remote work, relationships and learning together
• 58:35 — Cutting through AI FOMO and LinkedIn hype
• 1:00:27 — The AI advantage for smaller organisations
• 1:01:24 — Managing legal, financial and reputational risk
• 1:06:43 — AI sycophancy and why chatbots agree with you
• 1:07:57 — The skills technology professionals should build now
• 1:09:26 — AI enablement and orchestration roles
• 1:12:46 — James's key takeaway

About the Guest

Patrick McQuaid GAICD is Group Head of Data, Analytics & AI at NGM Group, one of Australia's largest customer-owned banking groups. NGM Group operates the Greater Bank and Newcastle Permanent brands.

Links

• Patrick McQuaid — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-mcquaid/
• NGM Group: https://www.ngmgroup.com.au/
• National AI Centre: https://www.industry.gov.au/science-technology-and-innovation/technology/artificial-intelligence/national-ai-centre
• James MacDonald — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-macdonald-au/ · NTP Talent: https://ntptalent.com.au/
• Day One: https://dayone.fm/

Hosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.

Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the production partner behind Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

Every great team she has ever seen shares one trait: they are comfortable with discomfort. Claudia Barriga-Larriviere has spent nearly 20 years building people and culture inside startups and global enterprises — and she thinks most of the AI conversation is quietly dodging the hard, human questions. In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Claudia Barriga-Larriviere — people-and-culture leader and founder of Startup Flamingo — for a practitioner-to-practitioner conversation on how capable people actually build teams. They get into self-awareness as a muscle rather than a gift, why Australia's love of harmony quietly kills direct feedback, and the difference between a team that is genuinely high-performing and one that is just stressed and running fast off a cliff together. Then it turns to AI — not as weather to brace for, but as a tool you have to point somewhere. Are your people more productive, or just faster? What do you lose when you automate the uncomfortable parts of the job — the feedback loop, the one-on-one, the human connection — and who is a flattened, agent-run org actually built for? Claudia makes the case that AI should augment an already good team, that you have to build that team first, and that the leaders winning this moment are the ones asking better questions instead of racing to be first. It's a conversation about discomfort, storytelling, balanced teams, and keeping the human in a human organisation.

Chapters

• 0:35 — The one trait every great team shares: comfortable with discomfort (plus self-awareness)
• 1:46 — Is self-awareness born or built? Temperament, empathy and psychological safety
• 3:28 — Why leaders dodge the hard conversation
• 3:59 — Cutting her teeth on GFC redundancies: directness and an American education
• 6:04 — Australia's harmony problem vs direct feedback
• 6:43 — What "high performance" actually means (and what it doesn't)
• 7:42 — The feedback loops we outsource because they're uncomfortable
• 9:17 — Protect the plan, or chase the Nazis? An Indiana Jones lesson for leaders
• 11:18 — Read fiction: storytelling, empathy and depersonalising feedback
• 14:35 — Praise the person, critique the work — and when to call it out
• 16:55 — Overconfident founders and the case for yin-and-yang teams
• 18:39 — Powers of Two: debunking the lone genius (Lincoln, Lennon & McCartney, Jobs & Woz)
• 23:13 — Hire for change, not to fit in
• 24:20 — The maths of a founding team: builder, organiser, learner
• 26:41 — Glue vs grease: does your team need cohesion or speed?
• 28:53 — Project or person? The metabolism of a team
• 29:47 — AI is a tool, not the weather
• 33:16 — The narrative vs the technology — and the Tickle Me Elmo problem
• 41:14 — Slow down to speed up: when the market rewards layoffs
• 42:32 — The CPO's dilemma: more productive, or just faster?
• 45:04 — When is the risk no longer worth it? (You're paying by the token)
• 48:21 — Longevity isn't impact: off-ramps and the retention vanity metric
• 49:52 — Is AI making the manager redundant?
• 52:54 — The automatic ball thrower: what you lose when you automate connection
• 58:31 — AI augments a great team — but you have to build that team first
• 59:18 — Departing advice: play the tape to the end, and be in the business you're in
• 1:03:32 — Purpose over "who gets there first" — go touch some grass

About the Guest

Claudia Barriga-Larriviere is a people-and-culture leader with nearly 20 years building teams across startups and global enterprises, and the founder of Startup Flamingo.

Links

• Claudia Barriga-Larriviere — Startup Flamingo: startupflamingo.com
• James MacDonald — LinkedIn · NTP Talent (NewyTechPeople): ntptalent.com.au

Hosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.

Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the production partner behind Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

The business wants AI, and it wants it yesterday. But once the proof of concept works and the partner goes home, someone inside the company has to keep the thing running. Nathan Hill, Head of Telco at AWS and a 20-year veteran of the telco industry, joins James to talk about what actually happens when enterprises push AI into production — and why the scarcest asset in the room is still deep domain knowledge.

In this episode:

- Why "we need to do AI, the board's pushing for it" so often collides with the buy-versus-build question no one has answered internally.

- Where AI rollouts go wrong: over-engineering a basic problem, or buying an off-the-shelf tool and expecting it to be bespoke.

- The proof-of-concept trap — projects that "prove AI works" but were never built with a path to production.

- Why "AI native" doesn't translate cleanly to banks and telcos carrying 20–30 years of legacy and technical debt, and why the outcome should drive the tech strategy, not the reverse.

- The handover problem in one line: "If your chatbot starts spitting out Gordon Ramsay recipes instead of the answer, who in your organisation can fix it?"

- Centralise-then-seed: standing up an AI centre of excellence without creating an isolated team of "cool kids" cut off from the business (with a NASA analogy on risk).

- Why you can't take 20 years of experience, grab a dev and say "now you know telco" — and how the tooling finally lets domain experts build.

- Human-in-the-loop for critical infrastructure, digital twins of telco networks, and ICs becoming managers of agents.

- The question James keeps asking: if I'm managing a team of agents at 10x productivity, what should I actually be paid?

- Deep versus broad careers, how go-to-market has changed, and whether it's easier to teach a salesperson the tech or an engineer to sell.

Nathan Hill is Head of Telco at AWS, leading the company's engagement across Australian telcos. Before AWS he spent more than 20 years inside the telco industry — operations, engineering, pre-sales and sales — and ran sales and marketing for a challenger telco. He has a rare view across both the technical build and the go-to-market that sells it.

Building the team that has to make AI stick in production? This one's for you.

Connect with Nathan Hill on LinkedIn. Learn more about AWS in telco at aws.amazon.com.

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Episode Summary

The business wants AI now — but who keeps it running once it's live? Nathan Hill, Head of Telco at AWS and a 20-year telco veteran, sits down with James MacDonald to unpack what really happens when enterprises move AI from proof of concept to production. They dig into the buy-versus-build decision most organisations skip, why so many AI projects stall with no path to production, and the operating-model questions — who maintains it, who fixes it when it breaks — that companies leave until it's too late. Nathan makes the case that deep domain expertise is the asset AI can't replace: you can't grab a dev and say "now you know telco," but you can finally give 20-year network engineers the tools to build. They also get into human-in-the-loop for critical infrastructure, ICs becoming managers of agents and what that's worth, deep-versus-broad careers, and how the go-to-market function is changing now that the salesperson has to understand the tech. Practical, grounded, no hype.

Time Stamps

0:00 "I'm managing a team of agents now — what should I be paid?"

1:30 Meet Nathan Hill, Head of Telco at AWS

2:58 "The board wants AI": the buy-versus-build question

4:30 Where AI rollouts go wrong

6:35 Start with a use case — but build a path to production

8:09 Is "AI native" realistic for banks and telcos?

9:36 Speed versus security in regulated industries

11:56 The handover problem: who maintains it?

15:21 AI centres of excellence and the NASA analogy

18:26 "You can't grab a dev and say now you know telco"

21:30 Why agents won't replace engineers

23:41 Managing a team of agents — what's that worth?

25:03 Deep versus broad: staying in one vertical

27:08 How go-to-market has changed

29:59 Teach a salesperson the tech, or an engineer to sell?

32:58 Building a go-to-market function from scratch

38:03 Why the "SaaS apocalypse" is wrong

39:56 Upskilling into modern go-to-market

41:21 Career advice: back yourself

42:42 James's takeaway: domain experts who learn to build

About the host

James MacDonald is the founder and Managing Director of NTP Talent (Newy Tech People), an Australian tech and engineering recruitment firm headquartered in Newcastle with teams in Sydney and Melbourne. He hosts Building Tech Teams, helping companies up the East Coast of Australia find and recruit the best technology talent. Connect with James on LinkedIn (/JamesMacDonaldAU) or at ntp-talent.com.au.

About Day One Network

Day One is a podcast production company and trusted partner in the technology space, producing shows for founders, investors and operators across Australia and beyond. Building Tech Teams is part of the Day One Network, which cross-promotes episodes across a slate of technology and venture shows.

Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the production partner behind Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

The business wants AI now. The people who have to secure it are being told to move faster while their budgets shrink. Kevin Akermanis, Solutions Architect at Okta and a 15-year Salesforce veteran, sits down with James MacDonald to unpack what really happens when enterprises rush AI into production: security funding flatlining, breaches becoming the cost of doing business, and a collapsed architecture that pushes security down to the data layer. They dig into why AI agents are a new class of non-human identity that can roam anywhere, why guardrails are only suggestions for something non-deterministic, and the scoped, time-limited, valet-key approach that actually contains the risk. They also tackle the harder people problem: if juniors get automated out, who backfills the seniors, and why knowing what good looks like still beats anything you can vibe-code. Practical, sceptical, no hype.

Time Stamps

0:00 The business says "we need to AI now"

2:53 The real tension: speed vs protecting company IP

7:22 Security budgets shrink while AI gets the money

11:28 When breaches become the cost of doing business

13:42 New attack surfaces and the hiring-bot breach

18:14 Experience still matters: who backfills the seniors?

46:39 Agents as non-human identities: scope and guardrails

55:03 Where to start with AI safely

57:37 Why the Australian market cares about MCP

About the host

James MacDonald is the founder and Managing Director of NTP Talent (Newy Tech People), an Australian tech and engineering recruitment firm headquartered in Newcastle with teams in Sydney and Melbourne. He hosts Building Tech Teams, helping companies up the East Coast of Australia find and recruit the best technology talent. Connect with James on LinkedIn (/JamesMacDonaldAU) or at ntp-talent.com.au.

About Day One Network

Day One is a podcast production company and trusted partner in the technology space, producing shows for founders, investors and operators across Australia and beyond. Building Tech Teams is part of the Day One Network, which cross-promotes episodes across a slate of technology and venture shows.

Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the production partner behind Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

The first hire used to be an engineer. Michael Batko thinks that's now backwards — and that's just the start of how AI is rewiring the way you build a tech team.

In the first episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Michael Batko — who spent eight years as CEO of Startmate backing 240+ startups, and now runs the AI-native venture batko.ai. They get into what actually changes when the cost of building drops to near zero: why go-to-market now comes before engineering, why the 10x engineer is finally real, what "AI-native" means for a person and for a company, and how to lead a team through it without torching your culture.

It's a practitioner-to-practitioner conversation with real opinions and real scar tissue — hiring for attitude over skill, the rise of the AI chief of staff, the squeeze on middle management, and why your hard-won experience is the one moat AI can't copy.

Chapters

• 0:46 — Why James launched the show, and why Batko is guest #1
• 2:00 — The first hire has flipped: go-to-market before engineers
• 3:49 — Where real software engineers still matter (and the "vibe-coding" ceiling)
• 9:01 — What "AI-native" actually means — building your personal, then company, "brain"
• 12:06 — Agent hierarchies: one agent / one job, and the AI chief of staff
• 14:50 — Getting AI into a traditional business: permission to play + an AI policy (and the IP-leak risk)
• 17:25 — Quick wins: process-mapping by voice, and the dictation tool that changes the game
• 20:54 — Your first 5–10 hires: attitude over skill, hungry over proven, junior over senior
• 25:58 — Team size, layoffs, "AI-washing", and the shrinking PM-to-engineer ratio
• 34:55 — The one skill AI can't replace: people management
• 48:07 — Why you still want humans in the room: inspiration, fresh eyes, first-principles
• 51:40 — Facing the fear: lean in, automate yourself out, take the skills with you
• 58:33 — Taste, authenticity, and experience as your real moat
• 63:54 — Batko's playbook for any company starting now

About the Guest

Michael Batko spent eight years as CEO of Startmate, where he backed 240+ early-stage companies, and now builds AI-native tools for founders and businesses at batko.ai.

Links

• Michael Batko — batko.ai · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/batkomichael
• James MacDonald — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-macdonald-au · NTP Talent: https://ntptalent.com.au

Hosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.

Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the production partner behind Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

From a childhood without electricity to co-founding a listed betting company, Oliver Shanahan’s story is a masterclass in technical grit and commercial pivots. As the Group Head of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure at BetMakers Technology Group, Oliver traces his path from wiring up early ISPs and mining ERPs to building TopBetta from a two-person LAMP stack into an ASX-listed business. 

In this episode of Tech Execs, James MacDonald sits down with Oliver as he unpacks the high-stakes realities of bookmaking, the decision to pivot from B2C to B2B through acquisitions like Dynamic Odds, Global Betting Services, and Sportech, and why they rebuilt a legacy monolith into a cloud-native, multi-tenant platform that now powers 35+ sportsbooks. We also dig into ISO 27001 in practice, due diligence on tech debt, and how to use AI without leaking your IP. A candid, deeply technical blueprint for founders and engineering leaders navigating scale, regulation, and replatforming you won’t want to miss.

In this episode of Tech Execs, James MacDonald heads to Melbourne to sit down with Matt Vitale, former co-founder of Australia’s largest equity crowdfunding platform and now Executive Director at New Dialogue. Matt traces his winding path from nightlife promoter and sugarcane juice tinkerer to financial services lawyer, then startup pioneer, where he helped more than 300 companies raise over $250M. He shares the breakout Sheba Rideshare campaign, why storytelling and community trump slick code, and how a $300K LaunchVic grant sparked a hardware-focused angel network that became their most successful to date.

Tune in to hear Matt break down how enterprises can safely adopt AI by deploying open-source large language models inside their own secure environments—model-agnostic, auditable, and up in days, not months. He makes the case for bottom-up experimentation, rapid pilots, and why compliance-by-design will be the real moat as regulation catches up. Alongside the professional achievements, Matt also shares the daily practices (think meditation, breath work, and long works) that helped him reset following burnout. A must listen for those working in the rapidly evolving AI space.

Victoria Aspden, Executive General Manager - Digital & Transformation at Ampcontrol has had an unconventional career journey. Initially choosing technology for its earning potential, she managed to work her way through the field when recruiters valued her relationship-building skills over pure technical credentials. This pattern of people taking chances on her became a defining theme throughout her career.

In this episode of NTP’s Tech Exec podcast series, Victoria sits down with James MacDonald to discuss her diverse career and her core management frameworks, including ‘problem before solution’, ‘people, process, tech, data’ and their interconnectedness, and the ‘cone of uncertainty’. Victoria advocates for hiring people smarter than yourself and creating environments where vulnerability and honest communication are valued over technical expertise alone. Tune in to hear Victoria’s advice for leaning into your weird, and how challenging traditional gender roles in her family has allowed her career success. 

On the first episode of NTP’s Tech Exec podcast series, James MacDonald sits down with Andrew Cresp to talk about his journey through financial services technology leadership, from early days in the insurance industry, moving through major roles in banking, before landing as CIO at NGM Group. Having grown up in country South Australia, Andrew reveals his passion for making regional businesses world-class.

The conversation explores Andrew’s philosophy that technology strategy cannot exist independently, only business strategy enabled by technology, and the current implementations he’s seeing of AI in contact centres where systems provide real-time prompts to agents while automatically summarising calls. You don’t want to miss hearing Andrew’s approach to tackling the hardest projects others avoid, building resilience through marathon-like persistence, and finding mentors across all organisational levels. Tune in to gain practical advice on building a career in tech and hear about the importance of aligned teams for business success.

Ever wondered what it's like to transition from finance to IT, and from Sweden to Australia? On this episode of the NewyTechPeople podcast, Linda Apostolidis sits down with Margareta Bogatir Studdert, who brings her unique global experience to Newcastle. You'll hear about her fascinating career evolution and the surprising differences (and similarities!) of working cultures across continents.

Margareta explains her exciting work at NGM Group, where she merged two distinct IT support teams and is now leading a major strategic project. Margareta also sheds light on Sweden's progressive policies for working families and women returning to the workforce, which truly set them apart. She'll offer invaluable leadership lessons on cultural adaptability, delegation, and empowering teams to learn from mistakes. Plus, don't miss her thoughts on cutting-edge trends like AI for predictive health and automation, and how NGM is championing women in tech by collaborating with initiatives like Hunter WiSE. Tune in for an inspiring story of career growth, leadership, and the power of embracing challenges!