Expertise should outlive the expert's capacity to deliver it

Rational Boxes was founded by James Hickman, a full-stack software architect with over 16 years of experience building systems at the intersection of domain expertise and technical automation. He has spent his career partnering with specialists — sustainability researchers, compliance experts, field engineers — to multiply the reach of their expertise through platforms that scale.

Every field has practitioners who have spent years building judgment that is more valuable than any single engagement can capture. The problem is not the value of the knowledge — it is the delivery mechanism. Rational Boxes builds the delivery mechanism.

We are fanatical about one thing: the expert's methodology is the asset. We encode it faithfully and build around how they already work. We multiply the expert; we never replace them.

James is Fractional CTO and lead software architect at EcoSpex Inc., a platform for low-carbon building materials and technologies. At Green Canary Software he is technical co-founder, Fractional CTO, and software architect — a green building compliance SaaS deployed across more than one billion square feet of construction and adopted as the standard protocol by Portland Metro regional government, with deployments including the Portland Building historic renovation and Walmart's corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.

His technical expertise spans green building certification systems (LEED, WELL, Passive House, embodied carbon analysis), process automation, document processing pipelines, supply chain analysis, and full-stack platform development.

We are based in Washington state's beautiful lower Columbia region, a short way downriver from Portland, Oregon. This gorgeous and green area provides ample opportunities to decompress and recharge from the demands of creating innovative technologies. Located within easy reach of the technology hubs of Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, we enjoy the best of both the city and country.