Gordon Burgett
I spent the last few years leading engineering through the AI shift from the inside — most recently as Director of Software Engineering at an aerospace company.
Now, I help teams navigate the new reality of Software Engineering when writing code is no longer the bottleneck.
When the cost of writing code approaches zero, what else in your process breaks? What opportunities does that enable?
That's a leadership problem more than a technical one, and it doesn't take a full-time hire to solve. It takes someone with the standing to make a call and the context to make the right one.
I build relationships with your team, standing alongside your developers as we rethink Agile ceremonies, CI/CD pipelines, and review cycles. Realizing the full potential of AI assisted software takes real engineering effort and relational leadership.
Mostly cases where the call that mattered wasn't a technical one.
Read a full write-up →A mobile app built entirely by someone else
I carried the vision, the budget, the vendor choice, and the delivery oversight for an app used at congregation scale — without an internal mobile team to build it.
An AI agent that non-technical users trust
I set the design principles for a customer-facing agent at HealthShare — the goal being to make people more capable, not to put AI on the box.
A data import I deliberately kept boring
Messy PDFs and screenshots, and an obvious temptation to point an LLM at all of it. The interesting decision was where the AI stopped and ordinary code took over.
What AI does to how a team actually ships
What I worked through at Albers — including what happens to your planning cadence when a sprint of work finishes in an afternoon.
Who am I?
I've spent fifteen years building production software and the last several leading the people who build it — in aerospace, healthcare, nonprofit, and B2B SaaS. I've run in-house teams, chosen and managed outsourced ones, and inherited the results of both.
I still write code, which I think matters for this kind of work: it's hard to tell a team what's realistic with AI if you haven't recently found out for yourself.
Outside of work I'm in Dallas–Fort Worth with my family, an active member at Watermark Community Church, and building into missionaries in Albania.
Canoeing the Mountains
Bolsinger's premise is that Lewis and Clark set out to canoe to the Pacific and found the Rocky Mountains in the way. The canoes were excellent. They were also the wrong tool. What happens when everything that took you up to this point no longer adds value?
In the past, coding was leading. Writing the hard part yourself, being the person who could unblock anything — that was how engineering leaders earned the room. Post-AI, those tools are available to everyone. What happens to your processes, your team dynamics, and your sense of self-worth when the skills you used to pride yourself on no longer drive value in the same way?
The book is blunt about the cost of that. When the old map stops working, something in you has to die before anything new gets built, and replacing your own paradigm is both genuinely painful and completely necessary. Most organizations don't move until they feel that. I've come to think part of my job is naming it early enough that it's a decision instead of an emergency.
Two other things I've underlined. First: before people follow you off the map, you have to have demonstrated competence on it — which is a large part of why I still write code. Second: in uncharted territory, trust is the whole currency, and if it's lost the trip is over. That's why this work is measured in days spent alongside your team rather than decks delivered to them.
Things people usually ask me.
How is this different from an advisor who takes calls?
I believe transformational leadership requires trust and attention. That means sitting in your team planning meetings, understanding team dynamics, and shepherding the team to come up with their own answers. Guiding your people to their own transformation at a rate they can absorb.
How much of your time would we actually get?
Usually two to four days a month — a standing weekly block plus whatever comes up in between. Enough to steer things, not so much that I become the bottleneck.
We already have a CTO. Where would you fit?
Within their structure, not above or around them. Most CTOs at this size are already carrying platform, security, hiring, and team organization. I come inside that structure to provide process transformation through continuous improvement.
Could you work with our outsourced team?
Often that's the reason I'm called. I've chosen vendors, run the relationship end to end, and rebuilt the review and acceptance habits that make an outside team productive rather than expensive.
What if we end up wanting someone full time?
That happens, and it's fine. I've covered during searches and handed off to the permanent hire — sometimes sitting on the panel that picked them.
How does this work, practically?
A flat monthly rate rather than hourly billing, and thirty days notice on either side. What it costs depends on cadence and scope, so it is easiest to sort out on a call.
If any of this sounds like your situation, I'd enjoy the conversation.
Half an hour, no deck, no follow-up sequence. I'm happy to be useful on the call whether or not anything comes of it — and if what you need isn't me, I'll tell you what I'd do instead.