Joel Small

Background

About Joel Small

I’m a technology leader with 20+ years’ experience driving growth, transformation, and innovation across startups, scale-ups, and global tech organisations. As CTO at Pickstar, I scaled the platform through major infrastructure modernisation, migrating application development in-house, implementing Infrastructure as Code, containerisation, automated CI/CD pipelines, and robust security frameworks, while building and mentoring the engineering team. At HappyCo, I am the Director of Delivery, leading global engineering and business enablement initiatives that improved developer velocity, streamlined build systems, and established scalable delivery practices for teams of 80+ engineers. Alongside this, I founded PremiumBreed, a SaaS platform for pedigree recording and membership management, now trusted by breed societies across Australia and New Zealand. PremiumBreed keeps me close to the tech in roles that would move my attention to people and strategy. I’m also the founding convenor of MadeInAI, Adelaide’s dedicated AI community, where I’ve built an ecosystem for knowledge-sharing and collaboration in artificial intelligence. Strengths & Focus Areas • Technology vision & strategy • SaaS & cloud-native architecture (AWS, GCP, Kubernetes) • AI adoption & integration • Scaling engineering teams & delivery practices • Security, compliance & risk management (AU, NZ, US) • Board & executive leadership I thrive at the intersection of technology and business strategy — aligning innovation with commercial outcomes, building high-performing teams, and delivering platforms that scale with ambition.