Johannesburg · Gauteng
Custom business systems for Johannesburg businesses
Most of my work is for Gauteng companies: lending infrastructure, training operations platforms, booking and enquiry systems, integrations between things that were never meant to talk. I am John Montgomery, a developer of twenty years. I am based in Pretoria, not Johannesburg, and the page says so because it makes no practical difference to the work.
What Johannesburg businesses have actually asked me for
This is not a list of services. It is the work itself, each one written up in full including the parts that went wrong.
- OPL, digital lending infrastructure
OPL was re-keying one loan application into seven lender portals by hand and phoning the customer back the next day. Now one form fans out to seven APIs, normalises seven different sets of nonsense, and returns ranked offers in about four seconds. Adding an eighth lender is a day, not a project.
- WECOZA, adult education and training
An operations platform for a training provider: agents, learners, classes, sites, exams, placements, attendance, all of which have to reconcile. WordPress runs the admin screens and a 43-table Postgres schema holds the business data, so it survives whatever happens to the CMS.
- Triple E Training (eee.co.za)
Adult literacy training delivered at over 12,000 workplaces. Three enquiry paths that were tangled into one form are now separate flows with their own routing, and the proof sits in the first screen because a compliance buyer decides there.
- 41 on Sloane
Serviced office space in Bryanston. Six kinds of space, each with a real page rather than a swapped heading, ending in one action: book a tour, with the space type already attached to the enquiry.
Being in Pretoria instead of Sandton
I am fifty minutes up the N1 and in the same time zone, the same working week and the same country for data residency. For systems work that is the whole of it. Almost all of this happens over a call and a shared screen regardless of who is where, and it did before 2020 too.
When an in-person meeting is genuinely useful, usually at the start of something complicated, I will come to you. What I will not do is bill you for a standing weekly meeting that exists to justify an account layer.
If you would rather work with someone in Johannesburg, that is a reasonable preference and there are good people there. I would rather say that than pretend a Sandton mailing address would change what gets built.
The question worth asking before you sign anything
Not what it costs. What happens afterwards. Most of the rescue work I get called into is not a bad build, it is a fine build nobody can now change.
| Ask | The answer you want | What it usually means otherwise |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns the code? | You do, from the first commit, including the repository and credentials | Hosting and source are being held as leverage, and leaving will cost you a rebuild |
| Is the price fixed or an estimate? | Fixed, in writing, before the work starts | Scope creep is your problem and the meter is running |
| What happens when it breaks at 16:00 on a Friday? | Someone who understands the system reads one log line and tells you what broke | A ticket queue, and a developer who has never seen this codebase reproducing it from scratch |
| Who actually writes the code? | A named person you have spoken to | A resource who may change mid-project, briefed by someone who is not you |
What this is not
I am one developer, not a team, and there are jobs that genuinely need a team. If you need branding, campaign design or copywriting, I do not do those and will say so rather than quietly subcontract them. If you need twenty people on site for six months, that is an agency job and I will tell you that on the first call.
What I am good at is the part where a project stops being a website and starts being software: the data model, the integration that has to not lose a record, the failure handling built before the features rather than after the first incident.
Questions worth asking first
You are not in Johannesburg. Does that matter?
For systems work, no. I am in Pretoria, fifty minutes away, in the same time zone and the same country for data residency. I will travel for a first meeting when it is useful. Most of my Gauteng clients see me rarely and that has never been the thing that went wrong on a project.
How long does a build take?
Integration work is typically two to five weeks and custom applications four to ten. That is elapsed time on a scoped build. If something in that range has been quoted to you at twelve weeks, the difference is usually an account layer, a project manager and a contingency buffer rather than more engineering.
Can you work with our existing developer or agency?
Often, yes. A fair amount of my work arrives through agencies who need the difficult part built under their brand. If you already have people, I am happy to be the specialist on one piece rather than take over the whole thing.
What if we need changes in two years?
Come back and I will quote them, or take the repository to somebody else. The documentation is written for a developer who has never met me and I do not use proprietary tooling only I can operate. One system I built ran for four years under my maintenance and was then sold to an insurance consortium, which is the only real test of whether a handover works.
Do you sign NDAs and work under our contracts?
Yes to both. Agency work is usually under the agency’s paper and behind its brand, and I do not approach its clients. For direct work I am happy to use your contract rather than insist on mine.
Tell me what’s broken.
A few lines about what you’re trying to build or fix is enough. It lands in my inbox and I reply within the business hour, honestly, including whether I’m the right person. If I’m not, I’ll say so and point you at someone who is.
I reply to every enquiry within one business hour.
Prefer email? support@yourdesign.co.za· (+27) 079 177 1970