Simon Hanmer

Custom software · Unique designs

Built to highlight the thingthat makes you different.

Most businesses do one thing that nothing off the shelf understands. Finding that thing is the first conversation — then I build around it, design through to deployment, on my own.

Start a conversationSee what I have built
  1. QUTBachelor of IT — Computer Science and UX DesignBrisbane, Queensland
  2. BPA AnalyticsSoftware Developer — electronic survey platformBrisbane, Queensland
  3. Hastings DeeringGraduate Program — Product Manager and Iteration ManagerBrisbane, Queensland
  4. Training ProfessionalsFull Stack Developer — multi-tenant RTO SaaS platformBrisbane, Queensland
  5. Aptium.aiLead Developer — multi-tenant medical imaging SaaS platformBrisbane, Queensland
  6. V Source DevelopmentLead Developer, and the company websiteBrisbane, Queensland

Brisbane · Queensland

Why custom is within reach now

I build my own tools. The component library your software is built from is mine — no Tailwind, no Material UI, no bought template. That costs me time up front, and it buys you two things: the interface gets designed for your industry instead of assembled from parts, and nobody else’s release schedule can break your product.

I also use AI heavily — scaffolding, refactoring, test coverage, getting through unfamiliar problems faster. It doesn’t make the decisions and it doesn’t carry the accountability. I do, and that matters more on regulated work than anywhere else. What it changes is the arithmetic: work that used to take a team months gets done properly by one person in weeks.

That’s the whole point. Genuinely custom software has been priced out of reach for most businesses, which is why so many end up bending how they work around a platform that nearly fits. It doesn’t have to be that way any more.

The hardest thing I build isn’t a website

Right now I’m building a medical device portal, regulated by the TGA. Regulation is mostly an evidence problem: it isn’t enough that the software works. You have to be able to demonstrate you knew it worked before you shipped it, and that you’d find out if it stopped.

That means documentation someone else can audit, tests that count as evidence, and a version history that survives scrutiny years later. I do that because some of my clients are held to it. Yours might not be — but it’s the same hands and the same habits building yours.

  • Lead developer on a multi-tenant medical imaging platform, regulated by the TGA.

  • Training Professionals

    Full-stack developer on a multi-tenant platform for registered training organisations.

  • Lead developer, and the designer and builder of the company’s own site.

  • My own component library — the design system every build starts from.

  • Your project?

    Tell me what you’re trying to build.

How it works

No fixed timeline, because nobody honestly knows one until there’s been a conversation. What you can count on is the order it happens in.

  1. Discovery

    You tell me what makes your business different.

    The process nobody else runs quite like you, the rule a platform keeps getting wrong, the thing your team works around every day. That is what the software gets built around. A conversation, not an RFP — and it usually changes the brief.

    Start that conversation

  2. Architecture

    You get architecture advice before you get a quote.

    Most of what I build runs on Next.js, React and TypeScript, with a Node API and a SQL database behind it. I’ll tell you whether that fits, whether AI belongs in your product and where it doesn’t — and if my stack is wrong for the job, or something off the shelf would do, I’ll say so and point you somewhere better. If it fits, you get a written scope and a price.

  3. Data

    The database is designed first.

    The data drives everything: what you store, how it relates, who is allowed to see it, and what has to be kept for years. Get the schema right and every layer above it is simpler. Get it wrong and every layer inherits the mistake.

  4. Design

    You click through it in Figma before it’s code.

    User flows and screens, designed in Figma around the data model and the people who will use it. Changing a screen here costs minutes; changing it after it is built costs days.

  5. API

    Then the API.

    Endpoints shaped by the schema and the screens, with validation, permissions and tests written alongside them, and documentation someone else can pick up.

  6. Interface

    Then the interface, on a real link.

    Built from my own component library rather than a bought template, and deployed early so you are steering a working product, not a status report. AI speeds up the scaffolding and the test coverage; the decisions stay mine.

  7. Handover

    You can prove it works, and you own it.

    Tests that count as evidence, documentation, and a history of every change — the habits regulated work demands. The code is yours, and nobody else holds your product.

Tell me what you are trying to build.

No sales process. You describe the problem, and I will tell you whether I am the right person for it and roughly what it costs.

Start a conversation