James Tobin

James Tobin — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 10:49:53 +0000

Work grounded in communication, judgement, and the ability to read tone and intent in conversation.

Armed with an early passion for technology, I began my career in recruitment over 18 years ago, developing expertise in talent advisory and commercial strategy, quickly establishing my own firm.

I moved into mobile and telecommunications during the growth of premium-rate entertainment services — an early precursor to social entertainment — contributing to the development and commercialisation of interactive voice response and speech recognition products. Alongside this, I explored the internet economy — trading domain names and building a subscription content platform around flat-rate billing, undercutting the pricing competitors relied on.

I then returned to recruiting, bringing experience from technology and creative industries into a more commercially informed approach. My practice has always taken me to whatever continent or country it needed to go — contract developers for a tier-one investment bank, a Head of IT Security for a bank, PKI security architects for a trading startup, outsourced development for a telco, marketing leadership for a listed mobile content provider, and some of the earliest talent scouting across the MySQL world, before it had anything like a conventional hiring path, as well as a long-term relationship with a financial trading firm. And that's just a taste of it.

None of it has been confined to one location or one method — headhunting, advertising, direct search, whatever was and is needed.

Today, I incubate early-stage ventures and experiment with voice as a creative medium, alongside continuing to run camalyn.

A fuller picture of all of it lives at jamestobin.work

DEV Community: James Tobin

James Tobin