IT services consultancy · London

Outcome-led software for the London Market, AI, and the work in between.

Windlead is an IT services consultancy founded by Claudio Zera. We supply experienced IT professionals for internal programmes and technology roadmaps, and bring senior hands to hard problems - market integration, applied AI, and the engineering discipline that holds it all together.

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The practice

Three places we do our best work.

Most engagements sit cleanly in one of these areas - and the interesting ones sit at the seams between them.

London Market | Insurance

Integration, transformation, migration

For carriers, brokers, MGAs and vendors entering or modernising in the London Market. We help teams turn market requirements into systems that hold up under audit, scale, and the next standards refresh.

Market entry & integration patterns
EDI ↔ REST trade-offs, USM/SCM lineage
Async workflow & state management
Compliance, audit & risk frameworks
Transformation readiness & migration planning

Applied AI

Production-grade AI applications

LLM and agent-based systems built to live in real products - with the evals, guardrails, cost discipline and humility about model limits that distinguishes a working tool from a demo.

Agent & tool-use architecture
Retrieval, grounding & evaluations
Cost, latency & reliability engineering
Safe rollout, observability & feedback loops
Human-in-the-loop workflow design

Software engineering

Architecture & delivery for hard problems

Senior hands for the work that doesn't fit a template: API and data design, distributed systems, knowledge transfer, and shepherding teams through the bits where engineering culture gets tested.

API, data & domain modelling
Distributed systems & event-driven design
Audit, compliance & operational readiness
Team scaling, mentoring & knowledge transfer
Pragmatic architecture review

IT resourcing

The right people for your IT programme.

Windlead works with a network of experienced IT professionals. We place them with Insurance clients on fixed-term contracts and similar arrangements, so internal programmes and technology roadmaps have the people they need to deliver.

Individual specialists

Fill a key role

One experienced professional, added to your team for a fixed term to close a skills gap or to add capacity at a critical point.

Fixed-term contracts
Roles matched to your programme and stack
Quick start, clear exit

Programme teams

Staff a wider programme

A group of professionals selected to work together on one programme or roadmap stage, from first design to delivery and handover.

Teams sized to the programme
Scale up or down as the roadmap changes
Knowledge transfer to your permanent staff

Technical leadership

Senior oversight included

Windlead's technical leadership stays involved. We help to define each role, select the right people, and keep the work aligned with your outcomes.

Role definition with your stakeholders
Technical selection of candidates
Regular engagement reviews

Tell us what your programme needs. We will propose people and a contract arrangement that suit it.

LM Workshops

Training that goes beyond the deck.

Intensive, cohort-based workshops for IT and software teams entering or building for the London Market - two- and three-day sessions that distil thirteen years inside the market's systems, standards and habits into something teams can act on the week after.

Explore LM Workshops →

About

Senior practitioners, not a deck.

Windlead started as Claudio Zera's independent practice. It is now a consultancy with a wider network of IT professionals, which lets us support bigger programmes. Claudio still leads the technical work and delivers engagements himself.

Claudio Zera

Founder & Tech Lead · Windlead

Claudio brings 20+ years in IT and architecture, 13+ years in the London Market. He has guided dozens of teams through successful market entry, and understands both the technical depth and the market psychology that decide whether an implementation lands.

He has worked across the full stack - from API design and data transformation to distributed systems, compliance frameworks and team scaling - with a proven track record of translating tangled market requirements into production-ready software.

More recently, that practice has extended into applied AI: bringing the same engineering discipline to LLM- and agent-based applications, where the difference between a demo and a dependable product comes down to evaluations, guardrails and operational craft.

Today Claudio leads Windlead's technical work. He shapes each engagement, helps to select the professionals who join client programmes, and stays hands-on in delivery and in the LM Workshops.