About

The team companies call when AI is too important to leave as a prototype.

Bottega8 brings principal-level engineering, AI and Agent governance, product judgment, and operating leadership into the same accountable engagement. Backgrounds from scaling engineering, product, and platform architecture at Microsoft, HPE, Walmart, and Groupon.

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Since 2012

From Bella Bottega theater off the Microsoft campus in 2012 to production AI systems built at scale.

Bottega8 began in 2012 in Redmond, WA down the block from Microsoft headquarters, founded by Microsoft software engineers. The name comes from Bella Bottega, the movie theater the partners frequented with their engineering teams while working at Microsoft. It reflects the spirit in which the firm was built: small teams, close working relationships, and ambitious software made together.

Bottega8 first built its reputation in product and engineering for venture-backed companies in Seattle and San Francisco. The work expanded into early cloud initiatives at Square and Disney, as well as product incubations that spun out as startups and were later acquired.

Today, Bottega8 is based in Austin, Seattle, and San Francisco. We help clients design, develop, and deliver software, from zero-to-one products and critical platforms to complex modernization and AI transformation programs. The throughline has remained constant: principal practitioners stay close to the work, carry consequential systems into production, and leave the client able to own what was built.

Who we work with

Series A through E, and enterprise divisions that have to hold up under scrutiny

We work with boards, investors, CEOs, CTOs, and founders in healthcare, fintech, regulated SaaS, legal, compliance, and workflow-heavy B2B software — where the objective is to move fast, get to production, and build something that holds up under enterprise and investor scrutiny. The most useful conversations start with someone already asking the harder question: not whether to do AI, but why the foundation keeps failing to hold.

The team behind Bottega8

Principal-level product, engineering, AI, and finance leaders who have built and scaled products, platforms, operating systems, and company economics for funded startups and enterprise divisions alike.

Nick Talwar

CTO & Partner

At Microsoft, Nick built Search and Recommendations backend systems and web services at global, Windows scale. As a multi-company CTO with 18+ years leading AI, ML, product, and engineering organizations, he connects technology and IP strategy to greenfield businesses, enterprise value, and operating economics.

Engagement responsibility: Executive AI strategy, interim CTO leadership, product and platform architecture, and accountable delivery
Specialty: Agentic AI systems, automation, platform architecture, IP strategy, and zero-to-one product development

Mark Hendrickson

AI Architect & Distinguished Engineer

Product executive, founder, investor, and advisor with 25+ years building and guiding technology companies. He designs deterministic memory, context systems, and agent Infra that turn model capability into durable products and production systems.

Engagement responsibility: Principal-level agent and product architecture, technical strategy, and production system design
Specialty: Deterministic memory, context systems, production agent Infra, and durable AI products

Matthew Kirk

Principal AI Architect & Advisor

An O’Reilly author, applied mathematician, and former financial quant, Matt brings deep machine-learning foundations to the design and delivery of modern AI products. As a CTO, Principal AI Architect, and hands-on engineer, he has led AI systems from product strategy and architecture through evals, production delivery, and scale.

Engagement responsibility: Principal AI architecture, applied modeling, eval strategy, and hands-on production delivery
Specialty: Agent systems, applied AI and ML, search and recommendations, evals, and production reliability

O’Reilly author ↗

Manju Abraham

VP, Engineering

Manju spent 30+ years as VP of Engineering at HPE and Delphix and in engineering leadership roles at NetApp and HP, delivering mission-critical compute, storage, and networking infrastructure products. She has taken organizations through major transformations, IPO readiness, platform modernization, and post-acquisition integration, building the operating discipline that lets complex enterprise systems ship predictably at scale.

Engagement responsibility: Enterprise engineering leadership, complex delivery, AI adoption, transformation execution, and executive alignment
Specialty: Product readiness, platform modernization, post-acquisition integration, and organizational transformation at scale

Amelia Leigner

Head of Product, Growth

Fractional CPO and multidisciplinary product and go-to-market leader with 10+ years guiding numerous startups from seed stage through exit. Amelia turns consequential opportunities into clear product decisions, adoption paths, and measurable outcomes, combining product strategy, customer research, product design, growth, and AI-native product operations to make forward-deployed engineering successful.

Engagement responsibility: Fractional product leadership, product strategy, customer discovery, GTM alignment, and adoption
Specialty: AI-native product operations, zero-to-one products, product-market clarity, growth, and user research

Todd Larsen

Principal Engineer & AI Partner

Hands-on principal engineer and engineering leader who turns complex product and architecture decisions into durable production systems. Todd leads principal-level implementation while aligning engineers, executives, and operators around governed workflows and measurable outcomes. Drawing on his Technical Leaders background, he also leads Bottega8’s training, education, curriculum, and organizational transformation practice, helping teams operationalize agentic systems and AI-native processes for sustained adoption and continued development.

Engagement responsibility: Principal engineering, hands-on architecture and delivery, technical enablement, and organizational transformation
Specialty: Agentic systems, AI-native engineering practices, technical leadership development, and durable adoption

Christopher Hobbs

Principal Engineer

Principal engineer with two decades leading complex refactors, product re-architecture, and greenfield development across AI, Agentic AI, and high-consequence production systems. He brings hands-on architecture and implementation depth to modernizing legacy platforms, building new products, and carrying systems from technical design through reliable production.

Engagement responsibility: Principal engineering, hands-on architecture, complex refactors, and greenfield AI delivery
Specialty: Agentic AI systems, product re-architecture, platform modernization, MLOps, and security

Public résumé ↗

Bill Zutter

CFO

CPA and corporate finance executive who brings the financial rigor and controls thinking that enterprise and investor scrutiny demands. His background spanning accounting, VP of Finance, and CFO roles gives him a full view of the financial engine, from operating plans and investment decisions to performance reporting and the underlying economics of product and technology transformation.

Engagement responsibility: Financial strategy, transformation economics, operating plans, and financial controls
Specialty: Corporate finance, accounting, investment analysis, performance reporting, and governance

Our thesis

Production is an organizational capability, not a demo milestone.

Almost every funded company today has an AI or Agent strategy. Many have pilots running. The board is excited and the demos look good. What most do not have is the foundation required to turn that ambition into something that ships, scales, and survives enterprise scrutiny.

That foundation is production architecture, governed data, evals, observability, trust controls, release discipline, and an operating model the team can sustain. We bring principal-level engineering, AI and Agent governance, and operating judgment in the same engagement. What we build is governable, auditable, repeatable, and scalable — built for regulated and enterprise environments from the first commit.

Operating principles

What remains true as the technology changes.

Foundation before capability

Architecture, data, and trust infrastructure built right the first time compounds. Built wrong, it has to be redone under pressure — usually right when a customer, a board, or an investor is watching.

The system around the model

Frontier model access is commoditizing fast. Durable advantage comes from proprietary workflow data, expert feedback loops, human control points, domain-specific evals, and auditability — the system around the model, not the model itself.

Principal-led, continuous ownership

The people who scope the engagement remain involved in the architecture, implementation, review, executive communication, and production decisions throughout the work.

We hand off ownership

We leave a running system, an internal owner, and a team capable of governing and extending it. Internal ownership is built from the start, not just transferred at the end.

Next decision

We would enjoy comparing notes.

A short conversation is the best next step. We will listen first and tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.

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