Every engagement starts with a conversation. But to give you a sense of scope and format, here are the services I'm most commonly engaged for.
Engagements range from a focused two-week audit to ongoing fractional CTO arrangements.
A structured, written assessment of your system design: data flows, service boundaries, database schema, and failure modes. Delivered as a prioritised set of findings and recommendations.
Best for teams about to enter a significant growth phase, or those experiencing reliability problems they can't explain.
1–2 week engagement · Written report + 90-min review session · Fixed fee
A deep read of your existing codebase: identifying tech debt with real engineering cost, security surface areas, test coverage gaps, and patterns that will slow you down at scale.
Common triggers: pre-acquisition due diligence, onboarding a new CTO, or preparing for a major feature milestone.
1–3 week engagement · Annotated findings document · Fixed fee
Targeted investigation and remediation of latency, throughput, or cost problems. Covers API response times, database query plans, caching strategy, and infrastructure sizing.
Delivered as measurable improvements against a baseline, not just a report with recommendations.
2–4 week engagement · Profiling report + implemented fixes · Day rate
A senior technical review of an acquisition target or investment candidate. Covers architecture, code quality, security hygiene, team capability, and the hidden costs in the technical roadmap.
Written for both technical and non-technical stakeholders, with a clear risk register and cost-to-remediate estimates.
1–2 week engagement · Executive report + technical appendix · Fixed fee
Working alongside your team on a specific delivery: architecture decisions, code review, pairing sessions, and knowledge transfer. I become a senior member of the team for the duration.
Best for teams that need an experienced senior engineer for a specific sprint or milestone — without the overhead of a hire.
4–12 week engagement · Part-time or full-time · Day or weekly rate
Ongoing strategic technical leadership for early-stage companies that need senior guidance without a full-time executive hire. Covers hiring, architecture, vendor selection, and engineering culture.
Typically 1–2 days per week. Best for seed to Series A companies building their first engineering team.
Ongoing retainer · Monthly commitment · Minimum 3 months
Architecture patterns and engineering discipline translate across stacks. If your system is primarily Python, Java, or Node, I can still add genuine value — I'll be transparent about where the depth is shallower. If I'm not the right fit, I'll tell you.
Short fixed-scope engagements (audits, reviews) are priced as flat fees scoped in the discovery phase. Longer delivery work is day-rate or weekly. Retainers are monthly. I quote transparently and won't expand scope without explicit agreement.
Usually within 1–2 weeks of a signed agreement. For urgent situations (pre-acquisition diligence, incident response, imminent launch), I can often accommodate a faster start. Mention your timeline in the initial message.
Yes — a mutual NDA is standard for all engagements. I take confidentiality seriously: client systems, data models, and business logic are never discussed or referenced with other clients.
Primarily UTC+5:30 (India Standard Time), with scheduled availability for European and US Eastern mornings. Async-first, with calendar-blocked overlap windows for architecture sessions.
Both, depending on what the engagement calls for. For embedded engagements I write production-quality, reviewed, tested code. For audits and architecture work, the deliverable is documentation and recommendations. We define this clearly in the scope document.
The best way to start is a short email describing the problem — not a job description or a feature list, but the actual pain: where things break, where the team is slowing down, what you're worried about at scale.
I respond to all enquiries within one business day. If we're a good fit, we'll schedule a 30-minute call to map out a scope.
Accepting new engagements starting April 2026. One fractional advisory slot available from March 2026.