Steve Burtch — Principal

Document intelligence
for small and medium businesses

25 years of enterprise delivery. Affordable, secure, built to last.

I help businesses turn unstructured information into actionable knowledge

Document Intelligence

Turn document chaos into searchable knowledge. Deploy a reasoning engine that lets your team ask questions across all your files — PDFs, contracts, reports, spreadsheets — and get accurate answers with source citations.

Ideal for: Law firms, accounting, real estate, healthcare

Data Pipelines & Automation

Connect your systems, automate your workflows, and stop doing by hand what software should do for you. API integrations, data extraction, report automation.

Ideal for: Any business with manual data processes

Fractional Product Leadership

Senior product strategy and technical leadership, two days a week. I've led Agile teams of 5‑10, managed multi‑million‑dollar projects, and shipped 20+ enterprise applications.

Ideal for: Startups, small tech companies, gov contractors

Work

Production systems I've designed and built, demonstrating the kind of solutions I deliver for clients.

Featured Project

Universal Ingestion Engine

A production document intelligence platform that transforms any collection of documents into a searchable, AI‑powered knowledge base. Users ask questions in plain language and get accurate answers with source citations.

26K+
Lines of code
746
Automated tests
91%
Code coverage
10+
File formats
Documents PDF, DOCX, XLSX, CSV, HTML, MD, TXT, JSON Databases Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, SQLite Social & Web Twitter, Reddit, RSS feeds Extractors → Chunking → Embedding 5 strategies · dedup · 3 embedding providers (incl. free local) Vector Storage pgvector · JSONL · Parquet CocoIndex Incremental · fingerprinting REST API FastAPI · tenant-scoped Streamlit Portals Admin + tenant dashboards FileWatcher GUI Desktop · search · AI chat Multi-Tenancy Full isolation · 8 layers · 43 tests
Natural language search with source citations
Multi-turn AI chat with conversation history
Complete multi-tenant data isolation
Incremental processing — only re-indexes changes
Zero-cost embedding option (local models)
Docker deployment, production logging, retry logic

Mycomatic

Full-stack SaaS production scheduling platform for specialty mushroom growers. Backward-schedules concurrent cultivation runs from target harvest dates, with integrated yield tracking, culture lineage, and daily work orders.

Python · FastAPI · Next.js · TypeScript · PostgreSQL · Tailwind

Prompt Manager

Prompt version control with automated testing, live evaluation, human feedback loops, and embedded RAG.

Node.js · OpenAI · Express · YAML

20+ Enterprise Projects

BC government digital transformation, Microsoft Canada web development, WorkBC job board, and more — delivered over 25 years.

Government · Enterprise · Agile

About

I'm Steve Burtch, principal of Netscribe Communications — an incorporated consultancy based in Victoria, BC. I've spent 25+ years delivering complex IT projects — from BC government digital transformation to web applications for Microsoft Canada.

Now I combine that enterprise delivery experience with AI‑powered development tools to build solutions faster and more affordably than traditional approaches. I use tools like Claude, purpose-built RAG pipelines, and modern Python to deliver what used to take teams of people.

I've managed 10‑person Agile teams, multi‑million‑dollar contracts, and 20+ projects from requirements through production. I'm Prosci change management certified, experienced with Scaled Agile frameworks, and I write code that ships with 90%+ test coverage.

Python FastAPI PostgreSQL RAG / pgvector OpenAI / Anthropic Docker Streamlit Node.js Agile / Scrum Prosci OCM

Get In Touch

Currently accepting new clients for Q2 2026. Whether you have a specific project in mind or just want to explore what's possible, I'd welcome a conversation.

Email

steve@netscribe.ca

LinkedIn

linkedin.com/in/steve-burtch

Location

Victoria, BC, Canada

Quick ways to start:

  • 1 Send me an email describing what you need — I'll respond within 24 hours with initial thoughts.
  • 2 Book a free 30-minute call to discuss your project. No commitment, no pitch — just a conversation about your problem.
  • 3 Ask for an AI Readiness Assessment — a focused review of where AI could save your business time and money.