James Szendel
Founder & Chief Technology Officer
James has over 20 years of technology leadership experience across fintech, lottery and gaming, manufacturing, and water utilities industries, having served as CTO and VP of Technology for global organizations where he's directed budgets exceeding $50M and led teams of 180+ across software, hardware, IT, PMO, and enterprise applications. This diverse industry background has equipped him with a unique ability to quickly understand complex business challenges and deliver immediately impactful solutions across virtually any sector.
Most recently as CTO of Neptune Technology Group, a technology leader serving 4,000+ water utilities across North America, James opened new revenue streams through agentic AI innovation, generated millions in annual savings by transforming enterprise systems, and achieved consistently high customer satisfaction with NPS. He led Neptune's digital transformation strategy by overseeing cloud migrations, infrastructure modernization, and launching Neptune 360, a multi-tenant IoT SaaS platform processing 1B+ daily transactions daily that enabled $20M in new subscription revenue.
Prior to Neptune, James spent 8 years at Scientific Games, a global leader in gaming and lottery industries, where he generated $40M+ in annual revenue by launching the industry's first white-label loyalty platform (Technology Associate of Georgia Product of the Year, 2014) and managed the platform for the first national interactive lottery game. Earlier in his career at Alogent, a market leader in deposit automation for premier financial institutions, James restored $5M in profitability while accelerating banking platform adoption for JPMorgan, Barclays, HSBC, and NCR. He's scaled organizations from scratch, building Neptune's Atlanta Innovation Center from the first hire to 60+ staff, and expanded teams tenfold at Scientific Games.
James specializes in rapidly assessing technology organizations, aligning strategy with business growth, and delivering secure, scalable platforms that create measurable outcomes. His expertise spans SaaS and IoT platforms, enterprise security compliance (SOC2, SOX, NIST), M&A technical due diligence, and AI/ML strategy.
A U.S. Marine Corps veteran with a B.A. in Cognitive Science (AI concentration) from the University of Georgia, James is passionate about mentoring emerging leaders and building resilient engineering cultures that prioritize customer outcomes above all else.
Specialties: SaaS & IoT Platforms | Enterprise Digital Transformation | M&A Due Diligence | AI Strategy | Team Scaling | Security & Compliance