Equal Experts

🥐 Breakfast might just be the new dinner. There’s something about starting the day with fresh coffee, good conversation, and a room full of curious minds that sets a different tone. And our Expert Talks breakfast in Leeds didn’t disappoint. On 21st April, we brought together product and design leaders from across sectors including public sector, financial services, telco and media to explore a simple question: ➡️ How is AI really changing the way we design and deliver products? With Liz Leakey, our Global Head of Product & Design, leading the session, the focus stayed firmly on practical application over hype. Liz covered: •  AI as a partner in discovery, helping teams explore problems at a much broader scale • Faster idea generation and clearer alignment through rapid prototyping • New approaches to testing and iteration, reducing risk earlier • The opportunity to unlock legacy constraints and move with more confidence Attendee Rebecca Shaw shared this takeaway: “It’s less about using AI as a tool and more about integrating it as a core capability across the product lifecycle.” "That shift came through again and again. Not just doing things faster, but thinking differently about how products are shaped from the start." A big thank you to everyone who joined us and contributed to such an open and thoughtful discussion.

A huge amount of care, collaboration and engineering discipline went into this… and it shows. Modernising critical national infrastructure is no small task, especially when millions of users rely on it every single day. That was the challenge facing HM Revenue & Customs: migrating a legacy platform powering 450+ APIs… without disruption, and before key technologies reached end of life. Working as one team, HMRC and Equal Experts took a pragmatic, phased approach… combining deep platform knowledge with thoughtful delivery to move at pace while staying safe. The result? ✅ Zero service interruptions across a 15-month migration ✅ 450+ APIs migrated, supporting millions of daily requests ✅ Six-figure cost savings through platform optimisation Behind the numbers is what really matters… people working together, solving complex problems, and making sure the transition was seamless for every user relying on these services. A big thank you to everyone involved, this is what collaborative, low-ego delivery looks like at scale. Read the full case study here: https://lnkd.in/eAZUXem7

🚰 What if your biggest data bottleneck became your fastest win? For enterprise organisations, data engineering has always been the long game — complex legacy systems, manual schema mapping, and migration timelines that stretch into years. GenAI is changing that. 🇩🇪 Join us in Munich for a practical evening with data and AI leaders who are using GenAI to dramatically compress data engineering timelines — from source-to-target mapping, to legacy migration, to pipeline transformation. We’ll show you what’s possible when AI does the heavy lifting on understanding schemas, generating transforms, and writing the code.

Is 100% test coverage really the goal? In this Modern Software Engineering episode, Sam Newman takes on a familiar idea in software testing. ➡️ High coverage looks reassuring. But does it actually mean high quality? Through real examples and practical insights, Sam explores why chasing 100% can lead teams in the wrong direction, and why fast, meaningful feedback is what really matters! https://lnkd.in/eyqaxfzx

Meet Ben Wilkes, Principal Consultant Ben has been fascinated by technology since childhood — and twenty-five years into his career, that hasn't changed. He is currently working inside Equal Experts Office of AI, where the focus is simple yet ambitious: ⏩ Turning emerging capabilities into proven approaches. Right now that means exploring how organisations take AI agents from prototype to production: the architecture, the engineering, and the practices needed to make them work reliably at scale, including areas such as "Agent Oriented Architecture" and "Harness Engineering". His career began in 2001 at Logica, entering a graduate scheme straight from university. His first assignment took him to Brussels on an electricity deregulation programme, a year split between technical complexity and the delights of Belgian beer and chocolate. Since then, he's worked across many diverse sectors and engagements — always at the cutting edge of software delivery: Agile, DevOps, Cloud, and now AI. Most recently, he was Tech Lead on a major Government initiative integrating Generative AI into the software development lifecycle — helping real delivery teams adopt AI-augmented workflows, architecting and building AI-infused applications, and establishing early best practices for agentic AI. Across all of it, one lesson has stayed constant: ➡️ The hardest part of software is rarely the technology. It is the people. Teams succeed when they are empowered, trusted, and aligned around delivery rather than process friction. Outside of work, Ben keeps active — he used to compete in CrossFit, and still trains regularly. He also loves the great outdoors — hiking, climbing, mountain biking, and walking his dog. A good counterbalance to work-life at a keyboard. But his biggest focus is home. Being a father and husband is what he values most. His approach to work is shaped by the values passed down from his parents, and a Thomas Edison quote his father often shared: "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." He also carries a simple engineering truth through everything he builds: Any improvement anywhere except the bottleneck is an illusion. Ben also draws inspiration from software craft and systems thinking leaders such as Kent Beck, Martin Fowler, Bob Martin, and modern thought leaders such as Andrej Karpathy, Sebastian Raschka, and Simon Willison. He uses his own AI agent to stay on top of the fast-moving signal in the AI space. Australian-born with two passports, Ben brings a global mindset, hands-on engineering depth, and a calm focus on building real-world solutions. We are delighted to have him at the frontier of AI engineering, ensuring Equal Experts stays one step ahead of what our clients need. 💙 #MeetTheTeam

Beyond the expo floor: Building AI-ready health systems It’s been a month since Australian Healthcare Week 2026, and the conversation has shifted from the excitement of the AI-enabled 2040 vision to the reality of 2026 delivery. Looking back on our roundtable discussions and the conversations at the Equal Experts stand, Ken Gallacher shares his reflections on AI by Design in Healthcare. AI is now a strategic priority, but "readiness" varies wildly across the sector. Real progress this year won't come from the next shiny demo or a clever idea. It will come from: 🔹 Strengthening data foundations to ensure safety and scale. 🔹 Embedding governance into the core of the digital strategy. 🔹 Navigating practical constraints like workforce capacity, public trust and legacy tech. Read Ken’s reflections from the event and find out why organisations are assessing their AI readiness now: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e7qcCYav Healthcare 2040 Expo #AustralianHealthcareWeek #AIInHealthcare 📸 Emma Waddelow | Ken Gallacher | Andy Canning | Matthew Waugh | Kevin Ong | Prasanna Murugavel

Daniel Terhorst-North is here to challenge the myth that “AI can replace junior developers”. AI tools can generate code. But removing junior roles changes more than headcount. It shapes how teams learn, how knowledge is shared, and how future capability is built. Watch here: https://lnkd.in/eyyJZHXe Equal Experts is proud to sponsor Modern Software Engineering

We swapped pen-testing for pendulums. 🪄💻 Last week, our G-EE-K Sydney community gathered to explore a system more complex than any codebase: the human mind. Principal Consultant and clinical hypnotherapist 🔸️Andy Palmer took the stage to explain how hypnosis and neurolinguistic programming can actually make you a better tech consultant. Spoiler alert: It’s not about channelling your inner Svengali or getting people to cluck like chickens. 🐔 It’s about finding ways to connect with people. Want to learn how? From the powers of persuasive language to bridging the expert-novice gap, we’ve summarised Andy’s talk in our latest blog post. ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/ebjMqVAE #TechLeadership #SydneyTech #Communication

How do you build and launch a new, cloud-native integration for a major super fund in just 12 weeks? ⏱️ When CareSuper needed to urgently replace its highly valued Direct Investment Option (DIO) platform, it wanted more than a quick fix. The fund needed a partner to deliver a modern, resilient foundation while upskilling its team for the future and minimising disruption for its members. We worked alongside CareSuper's developers to deliver: ☁️ A resilient Azure-based integration with automated, self-healing transaction monitoring. ⚙️ Automated approval testing for faster feedback loops and robust regression testing. 💡 Hands-on capability building, laying the foundation for faster delivery in the future. Built in just three months, all 1,100+ members have been successfully migrated without disruption. CareSuper is now positioned to continue providing secure, engaging options for members to manage their retirement savings. 🚀 Check out how we accelerated CareSuper's digital journey: https://lnkd.in/eE_wceeA #Superannuation #DigitalSuperannuation #CaseStudy

From manual checks to AI-powered compliance… in just 6 weeks! Scaling compliance across hundreds of partner websites isn’t easy, especially in a fast-moving, regulated environment. That was the challenge facing PX.com Working as one team, PX and Equal Experts combined deep domain expertise with disciplined AI delivery to build a production-ready compliance audit platform, with just 2 people in 6 weeks. A lightweight proof point that showed we truly understood the problem set the tone for a genuinely collaborative partnership from day one. The result: ✅ Automated, scalable compliance across 1,200+ partner sites ✅ Reduced operational risk without adding complexity ✅ A flexible, future-ready platform built for growth Thank you to Mark van Heyningen and the team, a great example of how AI, applied thoughtfully, can move from idea to real-world impact fast, without cutting corners on engineering quality. Read the full case study here: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e6aX_HeH