I learned this work where the stakes were high: HBO on premiere nights, and police dispatch software that couldn’t go down.
You run the business. I’ll handle the AI.
I’m Peter Alcock. I help small and family-run businesses put AI to work on the jobs that eat the week: answering calls, handling paperwork, following up with customers. No tech team needed. I customize the tools to fit how you already work.
More than fifteen years in technology: HBO, Turner, Mark43, a string of startups, and my own fractional CTO practice since 2018. Most small businesses don’t have a CTO. That’s who I work with.
How I help
The problems owners bring me, and what I set up to fix them.
-
“I miss calls when I’m busy, and every missed call is lost business.”
An AI receptionist
It picks up when you can’t, takes down the details, and texts back every missed caller so they hear from you before they call someone else. Each business gets its own private setup and phone line.
-
“We’re buried in paperwork: invoices, work orders, receipts.”
Paperwork that files itself
Documents are read, sorted and entered automatically into a spreadsheet or database your team can search, instead of being retyped by hand. I used the same document-reading technology at checkout in an online-store rebuild for Visionary Optics, and sales grew 3× in six months.
-
“The same customer questions come in all day long.”
Customer questions, answered
An assistant that knows your business answers the routine questions and drafts replies to the rest, inside your inbox or help desk. As Head of AI at Deed, I delivered automated support that removed the bulk of manual triage.
-
“My staff want to use ChatGPT, and I don’t know what’s safe.”
Training and guardrails
Hands-on training for your team on the AI tools that fit their jobs, plus a short, plain-English policy on what customer information can and can’t go into them.
-
“We pay for five apps that don’t talk to each other.”
Your apps, connected
New leads land in your calendar and customer list on their own, follow-ups go out on schedule, and nobody types the same information twice.
-
“I don’t even know where AI would help us.”
A plan before any spending
I look at how your business actually runs and tell you where AI is worth it, where it isn’t, and what each piece costs. It’s the same advice I’ve given executive teams on where automation pays back.
Skills
What I bring, in plain English first and then the specifics.
-
AI and automation
AI that answers, reads, writes and sorts, set up for your business.
Language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and Mistral, through AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI or their own APIs. Retrieval over your documents with Pinecone, Weaviate and pgvector. Agent frameworks, the Model Context Protocol, n8n workflows, and Twilio for voice and text.
-
Security and privacy
Your data and accounts protected to the standard regulated companies are held to.
SOC 2, HIPAA and NIST 800-53/CSF programs. Single sign-on and identity (Auth0, SAML), device management (JumpCloud), password management (Bitwarden), written policies, incident response and vulnerability management.
-
Cloud and infrastructure
Systems that stay up and don’t cost more than they should.
AWS and GCP, Docker and Kubernetes, Terraform and Ansible, CI/CD with zero-downtime deploys, CDNs and global load balancing, logging and monitoring with Splunk, ELK and Datadog. Infrastructure spend cut by ~30% and platforms scaled 10×.
-
Custom software and integrations
Custom tools, and the glue between the apps you already pay for.
Python (Django, Flask, FastAPI), Ruby on Rails, Go, TypeScript and Node.js, React and Java (Spring). REST and GraphQL APIs, SQL and NoSQL databases, WordPress and WooCommerce.
-
Planning, budgets and training
Plans with real costs, and someone accountable for getting them done.
Technology roadmaps, build-versus-buy and vendor decisions, budget ownership, hiring, mentoring and staff training, and turnarounds for stalled teams and vendors. I’ve built and led organizations of 50+ people.
-
Industries
Experience in industries where mistakes are expensive.
Healthcare, public safety, media and streaming, advertising technology, financial technology, e-commerce, nonprofits, and federal and state contracting.
Experience
-
Eclectic Labs LLC2018–present
Principal consultant and fractional CTO
Rebuilt Visionary Optics’ online store with prescription reading at checkout, and sales tripled in six months. Shipped Task Force, a gig-economy platform that cut fulfillment time 30%, and moved TokenTax from Heroku to AWS.
-
Televeda2025–2026
Fractional CISO and staff engineer, on contract
Built a HIPAA- and NIST-aligned security program for a healthcare SaaS platform: the core policies, identity and access management, and the audit trail behind HIPAA business associate agreements.
-
Deed2024
Head of AI
Set the AI strategy, chose AWS Bedrock, and shipped automated customer support on Bedrock and Zendesk that removed the bulk of manual triage. Wrote the company’s AI data-handling and security policy.
-
TeamSnap2022
Staff software engineer
Built Ruby on Rails services behind advertising revenue and ran the weekly Ruby guild.
-
Mark432016–2018
Senior DevOps manager and engineer
Kept police dispatch and records software up 24/7/365 under strict SLAs, joined police, 9‑1‑1 and evidence systems with single sign-on, and achieved and maintained SOC 2.
-
HBO2014–2016
Senior infrastructure engineer
Key contributor to the global AWS content network that absorbed spikes of ~5% of U.S. internet traffic on Game of Thrones premiere nights.
-
Turner Broadcasting2014
Senior software engineer
Built real-time ad-performance dashboards for executives and moved ad platforms to DoubleClick for Publishers.
-
Visikard2011–2014
Engineering manager
Led a 30-person product and engineering team, offshore staff included. Introduced NLP models for message analysis that lifted engagement 25%.
Education
-
Boston University2011
Graduate Certificate, Business and Entrepreneurship
-
Suffolk University2010
B.S., Media Communications
Tell me where your week goes. I’ll show you where AI fits.
- Email me a few lines about your business and what eats your time.
- We walk through how your week actually runs. You don’t need to know anything about AI.
- You get a plan with costs. If it makes sense, I set up the tools and train your team.
Running a startup or a larger company? Email me about fractional CTO work, technical due diligence or an architecture review.