Technical Rescue
When something is broken and nobody can tell you why — production issues, failing integrations, mystery bugs, stalled projects. I find the cause and fix it.
Auckland, New Zealand · Systems builder & technical problem-solver
I'm Craig Barker. I help businesses, agencies, and founders fix broken systems, automate manual work, and ship practical software — hands-on, from diagnosis to working delivery.
Services
Whether something is broken, manual, slow, or still just an idea, the job is the same: understand the real problem, then build the smallest useful system that solves it.
When something is broken and nobody can tell you why — production issues, failing integrations, mystery bugs, stalled projects. I find the cause and fix it.
Websites, web apps, admin tools, and API integrations — built end to end and left in a state your team can run and maintain.
Replacing manual, repetitive work with reliable automation and practical AI-assisted workflows — applied only where they measurably help.
Making your data visible and usable: reporting dashboards, internal apps, and small tools shaped around how your team actually works.
Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, DNS, SSL, Nginx, Node services, deployment pipelines, and production troubleshooting.
Contract and project-based technical leadership: roadmapping, vendor evaluation, and translating between business goals and technical delivery.
Selected Work
Challenge: Businesses need to understand how AI and search systems interpret their online presence, but the work was ad-hoc, consulting-style guesswork.
Solution: A repeatable diagnostic workflow backed by web-based tooling infrastructure.
Result: A fuzzy consulting task became a clear, tool-led process that can be run consistently and explained to non-technical clients.
Challenge: Founders were juggling planning, pitching, investor discovery, coaching, and financial modelling across scattered documents.
Solution: A multi-sided platform with user roles, payments, search, notifications, and structured business tools.
Result: The founder journey runs through one system instead of a pile of disconnected spreadsheets and templates.
Challenge: Build a polished Android experience with onboarding, preferences, theming, AI-generated content, and repeatable releases.
Solution: Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, DataStore, Material 3, and AI API integration with a managed release workflow.
Result: A production Android app with a maintainable codebase and a release process that doesn't depend on heroics.
How I Work
I start with the operational shape of the problem, then design the smallest useful system that can be shipped, measured, and improved — and left in a state someone else can maintain.
About
I'm based in Auckland, New Zealand and work with small businesses, agencies, founders, and teams that need a reliable technical person — not a big-agency process. My strongest work is turning ambiguous problems into useful systems that people can actually run, maintain, and improve. I'm comfortable owning a problem from first diagnosis through to deployed, working software, and equally comfortable explaining it in plain language along the way.
Contact
A few lines is enough: what you're trying to do, what's in the way, and any deadline. I'll reply with an honest read on whether I can help. I take on technical rescue work, web systems, automation and AI workflows, dashboards, and contract or project-based technical roles.