Consulting with Craig Hammond

I’m currently open to limited consulting engagements. This page is intentionally brief as, if you found this, you probably already know me.

With over a decade of experience at some of the world’s largest tech companies, I’ve helped shape strategies, review critical designs, and build foundational systems. My experiences have spanned across aerospace, telecom, crypto/fintech, and advertising. I care deeply about building systems that work, not just for users, but for engineers and businesses alike. What use is building something if it’s not going to deliver meaningful value?

What I Do

I work across different roles, depending on what’s needed. Each is scoped and priced accordingly.

CTO / Strategic Advisory

• Align product and engineering efforts
• Define technical roadmaps and team strategy
• Assist with hiring processes and org design for startups

Architecture & Systems Design

• Take early ideas or RFQs and create scalable architectures
• Identify risks, tradeoffs, and phase deliverables
• Review and harden existing designs

Engineer

• Write high-quality backend, infrastructure, and (occasional) frontend code
• Build APIs, pipelines, or performance-critical services
• Assist or lead technical execution for milestones

General IT & Cloud Infrastructure

• Set up and manage cloud environments (I am AWS certified)
• Email, security, VPN, and compliance support
• Vendor and tool recommendations based on constraints

Mentor

• 1:1 coaching for engineers looking to grow into senior or staff roles
• Advice on navigating complex orgs, promotions, and influence
• Support for those facing performance reviews or recovery plans

Selected Work

These are a few brief snapshots of large (publicly available) systems I’ve helped design and build.

AWS Blockchain Query (Crypto / Fintech)

• Built financial-grade query service using modern cryptography
• Designed for 99.99% availability (<1hr downtime in a year) with compliance and security as core requirements
• Deployed in highly secure environments with sensitive data constraints
• https://aws.amazon.com/managed-blockchain/

Real-Time Behavioral Engine (Ad Tech)

• Architected a real-time distributed system for targeting decisions
• Evaluated over 1 trillion requests/sec with cell-based scaling
• Note: Still in use and scaling years after I left

High Throughput APIs (Secure Infrastructure)

• Built secure backend with 50K–150K TPS at low latency (<50ms)
• Cut costs by >70% with an algorithm redesign focused on dynamo (nosql) access patterns
• Seeded AWS Entity Resolution product
• https://aws.amazon.com/entity-resolution/

Amazon Ad Tag

• Designed plug-and-play tag with simple UX
• Engineered to integrate cleanly across browsers and tag managers
• Note: Scales to internet-wide usage
• https://advertising.amazon.com/help/GLZ54GXQW773A6MG

Growth Engineering – AMC Audiences

• Helped grow product revenue by over 10x in 2 years
• Designed and built UX update that increased successful usage by ~25% overnight
• Enabled sponsored ad integrations (multi-org engineering effort) that doubled traffic and revenue
• https://advertising.amazon.com/resources/whats-new/amc-audiences-for-sponsored-ads

Get in Touch

If you’re working on something and want feedback, support, or hands-on help, reach out.

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