Clermont Digital just tripled, and our newest developer never had to leave town
By Steven Coochin — 2026-08-02
Robert grew up right here in Clermont, and he's just joined us as our first Junior Developer. Like a lot of young people in this region with technical ambition, he'd resigned himself to moving away to do the very thing we just hired him to do. There was only ever a handful of options out here, and we all know the mines aren't going to be here forever. So he'd made his peace with leaving. He wanted to build software, mobile apps, whole platforms, and he'd figured the only way to learn was somewhere else.
He figured wrong.
He's also not the only new face around here. Clermont Digital has recently tripled in size, and half of us are now locals. People are building tech careers in Clermont, and why not? It's the best little town around!
I'd been mentoring Robert through some of the tech basics before he joined, and every session he turned up keener than the last. Apps, software, internet of things (IoT) devices; he wants to build all of it. Watching someone light up when a thing they built works for the first time never gets old, and Robert beams every time.
His first day ended in a way only a Clermont tech job could. Emma has grown some ripper pumpkins this season, and we're carrying a hefty excess, so Robert headed home from day one of his new developer career with a laptop bag in one hand and a homegrown pumpkin in the other. That, after all, is the country way.
Building differently
So how does a small team in Central Queensland pull this off?
I've spent more than 20 years in tech, building systems for some of the biggest names going and standing on stages around the world representing them. The lesson I keep coming back to is simple. The best software gets out of people's way. Most people I meet have a story about a system that made them work its way instead of theirs, and at Clermont Digital we flip that around. Sometimes that means connecting systems that should have been talking to each other all along. More often it means rebuilding them entirely, custom-fit to how a business actually runs. Sit down with someone, understand how their day really works, then build the thing that gives part of that day back.
The other half is how we build. Over the last year and a half, I've been developing AI-driven development pipelines, a genuinely different way of putting software together. Not faster versions of the same old approach. Different. They let a team our size deliver whole platforms and mobile apps at a pace and quality that would normally take a floor full of developers in a capital city. The AI makes us fast. The experience makes it right, because after 20-plus years you know which components to reach for at the very beginning so a system can scale when the time comes.
The bit I'm proudest of isn't the speed, though. It's that everything we build stays extendable. As a business grows, its software grows with it. I like to think of it like a blacksmith reshaping a piece of metal. The material's already good. You just work it into whatever the job now calls for.
All of it comes back to one thing. Time. Every system I've ever built, from enterprise IoT deployments to the stocktake that used to eat someone's whole weekend, has really been about giving people their hours back. Hours for the work that matters, for time with the family, or even just for pottering around the shed.
Hands-on from day one
I've never put much stock in resumes. A code repository tells me more in five minutes than any cover letter could, because it shows what someone builds when no one's asking. And Robert's fingerprints are already on the software we ship.
AERIS is the big one. We built it right here in town to take the daily grind out of stock and sales management, and it's since become its own company, rolling out to businesses across Australia alongside its Android and iOS apps. Robert's been testing and debugging it ahead of that rollout, and there's a symmetry in that I really enjoy. Software built in Clermont, made ready for the country by a developer who grew up ten minutes from where the code was written.
Then there's Plot Planner, our property-planning software for mapping and tracking your farming infrastructure. That one's headed for a global audience, and with the team flat out, Robert's careful testing and debugging has been a big part of getting it through the final stretch before wider release.
That's a Junior Developer, early days in, already helping refine products for release across Australia and around the world without leaving Clermont. The skills he's building now are exactly what this region will need as we head into the commercial robotics era. And yes, we've got more to say on that front soon.
Robert is also the first step in building out our scalability. The pipelines only take us so far on their own. Growing from here means growing people, developers who learn our way of building and then build alongside us. He's the first, and where he goes, others follow.
Putting Clermont on the tech map
Here's the bigger picture. We're here to put Clermont on the tech map, and everything above is how we do it.
Every technically minded young person who stays in the region adds to it. The skills compound locally. Businesses get access to people who understand both the technology and the place, because the people building the tools live down the road from the people using them.
Robert put it better than I could: "I grew up in Clermont, so I've got a boots-on-the-ground view of how this community works. I know what'll actually be effective for the people here."
Pair that local talent with the way we've learned to build, and the effect multiplies. Teach those methods to the young people already here, the ones with the curiosity and work ethic this region breeds naturally, and what you end up growing is an industry.
That's the bet we're making. Robert is the first developer we've trained from the ground up in the region, and he won't be the last. More people are relocating to Clermont to join us soon, our interstate team members among them. And there's a new face we'll be announcing shortly. People are moving here to build software! It's wild; it's not something I'd have imagined, and yet here we are.
We want everyone along for this, right up to the top. And while I might still be waiting for our region's mayor to accept my LinkedIn request, I'm always up for a yarn, especially after we unexpectedly ended up in the media together earlier in the year around the floods. To be clear, we're going to do this either way. It would just be nice to have some backing and amplification behind it, because we know the industry this can and will be. We've helped build tech movements before; this is not our first rodeo.
Our next hire might be reading this
If you know your way around code, content, marketing, design, or anything digital in between, or you're still working out which one's yours, we'd love to hear from you. You might be job hunting, self-taught, halfway through a course, or curious about what a tech career looks like without leaving Central Queensland. You might even be where Robert was a year ago, quietly assuming you'd have to leave town to do the thing you love. You don't, and I'd be glad to show you why.
So come have a yarn. No two of us took the same road into digital, and odds are someone on the team has walked something like the one you're weighing up. Worst case, we spend an hour geeking out over whatever you've been building, and you head off knowing there's a tech industry taking root right here, one worth sticking around for.
Tell us where you're at, and one of the team will get back to you. No resume, no obligation.
Talk careers with the team