{shftwst} Development Inc.

Independent product engineering consultancy

AI product engineering for software where trust and accountability matter.

ShiftWest is the independent consultancy of Alec Hill, a staff-level full-stack product engineer with 21 years of experience across AI, fintech, regtech, mobile, web and backend architecture.

I build agentic systems that can take on increasing levels of autonomy while staying honest, by keeping evidence, diligence, decision-making, failure and human authority visible.

Discuss a role or project View open-source work

Ottawa, ON, Canada · Working internationally · British / Canadian citizen

Current focus

Progressively autonomous AI

I design systems that let AI agents perform more complex work without treating model output as proof of correctness. The work combines spec-driven execution, deterministic gates, evaluation, source-backed evidence and deliberate human oversight.

Open source · Apache 2.0

SuperDomestique (formerly known as `faff`)

A software delivery system that moves work from intent through specification, implementation, review and delivery. Its governance layer checks evidence at named gates, parks unresolved decisions and assigns autonomy per workload.

  • agent harnesses
  • deterministic governance
  • holdout evaluation
  • adversarial review
  • run evidence
  • human oversight

llm-wiki-gen

Knowledge bases that maintain themselves

Source-backed knowledge bases with conflict detection, privacy tiers, protected originals and self-improving retrieval.

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claude-box

Agent isolation without losing developer context

A container sandbox that preserves skills, plugins, MCP servers, credentials and persistent sessions while keeping the host protected.

View project →

Capabilities

One senior engineer across the product boundary

Hands-on delivery across product, design and engineering, from the first decision through production operation.

AI product engineering

Agent workflows, harnesses, evaluation, RAG, knowledge systems and human oversight.

Full-stack product delivery

Hands-on delivery from user experience through backend services, data and cloud, with technology chosen for the product, its users and its operating constraints.

Staff-level technical direction

Architecture, technical strategy, design reviews and difficult cross-system decisions.

Selected evidence

Twenty-one years of production engineering

Recent agentic work builds on over two decades of shipping software in regulated and high-scale environments.

Fintech

Co-led a banking platform that managed more than $2B in assets and reduced annual operating costs by $12M.

Regulated products

Delivered onboarding, KYC, IDV, AML, Open Banking payments, SCA, and data migrations for products handling sensitive regulated data.

Streaming services

Built technology at LOVEFiLM that became part of the technical foundation for Amazon Prime Video.

Current availability

Staff-level IC roles and selected consulting engagements

Alec is exploring permanent roles in AI product and platform engineering. ShiftWest remains available for focused consulting work.

Email Alec