Build the system your business will run on.
Embedded senior engineering for greenfield builds, distributed-systems work, and the hard middle years when your architecture has to grow up with your customer count.
The work itself. Four flavors of engagement, all shipping production code.
not pdfs, not decks
Cloud architecture & infrastructure design.
From cold start to multi-region. We design the foundation a system will sit on for years — and the migration path when the early choices stop fitting. AWS, GCP, Azure; Kubernetes, serverless, or the boring rectangle of EC2 and RDS when that's the right answer.
0 → 1 builds, prototype to first customers.
The first version that has to actually survive. We treat the foundation seriously even when the product is still finding itself — so you don't pay for a rewrite the quarter after you find product-market fit.
Event systems, data pipelines, multi-tenant platforms.
The shape of work where "naive" gets expensive fast: high-throughput ingest, durable workflows, idempotent webhooks, multi-tenant data isolation that holds at scale. We've shipped systems sustaining seven-figure-per-second throughput; we know what's worth caring about and what isn't.
SLOs, on-call, observability stack.
The plumbing that turns a system you hope works into one you can prove works. Defined SLOs, error budgets actually tied to release pace, paging that wakes people up only when it matters, dashboards that answer the question without three clicks.
Three shapes the work can take. Pick whichever maps to what you actually need.
switchable mid-engagement
Build
We ship a specific system, end to end. You set the outcome; we own the build.
- ›Defined scope, written deliverables, fixed-shape proposal.
- ›We architect, build, deploy, and document.
- ›Hand off with a recorded walkthrough and 30 days of post-engagement availability.
- ›Best for: discrete platforms, ingest pipelines, infra rebuilds, MVPs that need to survive.
Lead
We act as your senior engineering lead — making architectural calls and unblocking your team without hiring a permanent CTO yet.
- ›Sprint-level technical leadership for an existing team.
- ›Architecture reviews, code review of senior PRs, hiring loop participation.
- ›Direct line to the founder; daily presence in your engineering channel.
- ›Best for: post-seed teams growing from 2 → 8 engineers.
Embed
We sit on your team as a senior IC, owning a specific component or system inside your existing roadmap.
- ›Standups, shared Slack, code review, the works.
- ›You own the roadmap; we own a slice of the codebase.
- ›Same on-call and incident expectations as your full-time engineers.
- ›Best for: bridging a gap before a full-time hire, or when one senior pair of hands moves the quarter.
Stack & tooling. The vocabulary we work in.
working competency, ≥ 3 yrs each
How a build actually runs. From kickoff to handoff, the shape of the work.
scales linearly for larger scopes
Discovery & architecture.
One week of intensive scoping: customer model, data shapes, throughput targets, failure modes, SLOs. Output: a written architecture brief and an ADR set.
Foundation & first cut.
Infrastructure-as-code, CI from day one, observability before features, the first end-to-end vertical slice in production behind a flag. No work happens off of main.
Production build.
The bulk of the work. Weekly written updates, demoable progress at every interval, real customer traffic if available. Scope changes are written, not implied.
Hardening & handoff.
Load testing, on-call rotation handoff, runbooks, recorded walkthrough. 30 days of post-engagement availability for questions that surface after we leave.
When this is the right call. And when it isn't.
better than a discovery call surprise
This is right for you.
- +You're a founder or CTO who needs senior hands on a specific system, soon, and you'd rather have one strong engagement than five mediocre contractors.
- +You have a greenfield build and you want it laid right the first time — because the rewrite tax compounds.
- +You have an existing system that's about to face 5–10× the load and the answer is architecture, not headcount.
- +You're between a CTO transition and a full-time replacement, and you need a senior voice in the room until then.
This probably isn't a fit.
- —You need a body to take a ticket out of Jira. We don't do staff augmentation; you'll be better served by a contracting agency.
- —Your budget is below $18k / month all-in. Our minimums are real — but we'll happily refer you to people whose model fits.
- —You want a fixed-bid build with no scope conversation. We do fixed-shape proposals, not fixed-bid builds; the difference matters.
- —You're looking for a co-founder. Equity-only or equity-heavy engagements aren't what we do.
What this looks like in production. One representative engagement.
full deck on request
Capital-markets event ingest at sub-millisecond latency.
A Series-B fintech outgrew a brittle, single-region ingest pipeline. We re-architected onto a Kafka-fronted ClickHouse cluster, moved the hot path to Go, and held p99 latency under target while quadrupling sustained throughput.
What it costs. Written down, not on request.
final price = written proposal
- 01Embed. Starting at $18k / mo. Senior IC on your team, owning a slice of the codebase. 3-month minimum.
- 02Lead. Starting at $20k / mo. Acting senior engineering lead, embedded into your delivery cadence. 6-month typical.
- 03Build. Starting at $24k / mo. Owned end-to-end delivery of a specific system. Fixed-shape proposal up front.
- 04Discovery.Free. 30-minute call to see if we're the right fit before either side commits anything.
Bring us the system you need to get built right.
Either book a 30-minute discovery call or send a written brief — both end up in the same inbox, and either way you get a written proposal within five business days.