ENGAGEMENT

How a project actually runs.

No pitch decks, no discovery months. A clear path from the first email to a system your team owns.

HOW WE WORK

A deliberate, four-phase engagement.

No pitch decks, no discovery months, no army of juniors. A predictable path from the first email to a system your team owns.

Week 0

System audit

A focused, 5-day read of your architecture, code, and ops. I map the dependency graph, flag risk hotspots, and price the work. Free, no commitment.

Deliverables

Annotated architecture diagram
Prioritized risk register
Scope + fixed-price proposal

Week 1–2

Alignment & scope

We agree on outcome metrics, not ticket counts. Contract signed, access provisioned, Slack channel open. First commit lands before the kickoff meeting.

Deliverables

Outcome-based SOW
NDA + DPA signed
Shared observability dashboard

Week 2–10

Build & ship

Senior-only execution. Weekly demo, async daily updates. Your team pairs with me from day one — no handoff cliff at the end.

Deliverables

Weekly production releases
Paired PRs with your engineers
Runbooks as code ships

Week 10+

Handover & standby

System ownership transfers in full. I stay on standby retainer for 90 days at reduced rate — because real bugs don't surface until month two.

Deliverables

Complete handover doc
90-day bug-fix warranty
Optional advisory retainer

Every engagement begins with a free system audit. One week, one report, no obligation.

Request a System Audit

PRICING

Fixed-price. Outcome-gated.

Hourly billing creates the wrong incentives. Every engagement after the audit is fixed-price, invoiced against outcome milestones.

What's fixed

The contract.

The scope agreed in the SOW
The price — no surprise invoices
The timeline and milestone dates
The outcome metric the work is measured against

What's flexible

The execution.

Implementation details inside the scope
Stack choices where the SOW is stack-agnostic
Order of work — driven by risk, not a Gantt chart
Weekly priorities, adjusted from the shared dashboard

Milestones release on outcomes, not effort. If the metric moves early, the engagement closes early — and the remaining budget is yours to redeploy.

FAQ

The questions people ask on the first call.

The short answers. The long ones come in the audit.

Do you sign NDAs?

Yes, before the audit call. A standard mutual NDA is fine; I'll send one if you don't have a template. The audit itself is also covered by a confidentiality clause regardless of whether a contract follows.

Do you work with startups?

If the problem is real-engineering and not demo-building. I'm a poor fit for a prototype you plan to throw away next quarter, and a good fit for the rewrite that comes after the prototype stops scaling. Seed-stage with genuine systems complexity — yes. Pre-seed, vibes-driven, let's-ship-to-see — honestly, no.

Do you relocate / travel on-site?

Remote by default — the practice is set up to ship cleanly from Poland. For retainer clients in Europe I'll travel on-site roughly once a quarter at no extra cost; anything more than that is scoped and billed as travel.

Which stacks?

Day-to-day: Go, TypeScript/Node, Rust, Python. Databases: Postgres as default, with the usual cache and queue suspects. Cloud: AWS and GCP in depth. If your stack isn't on that list — Elixir, Java, .NET, mobile-native — say so on the intro call. I'll be honest about whether it's a fit or whether you want a referral.

Can you hire juniors under you?

No. The practice is senior-only by design, and adding a junior layer would break the promise the rest of the methodology is built on. If you need a team, I'll help you hire one — under your roof, not mine.

What's your typical rate?

Rates are fixed per engagement and scoped in the audit. I don't quote hourly because hourly billing rewards the wrong behaviour on both sides of the contract. Expect a single number tied to a single outcome, invoiced against milestones.

No obligation

Audit is free. Say hello.

One week, one report, no contract on the table. If the fit is wrong, you walk away with an architecture review for the price of an intro call.

Request a System Audit