Open for Select Engagements

Fractional Staff Engineering & Technical Advisory

I help technical leaders turn opaque, high-risk codebases into understandable, observable, and reliably shippable systems.

Senior technical advisory, legacy architecture discovery, and fractional engineering leadership for founders, CTOs, and engineering leaders navigating platform transitions.

The IEA Method: Inventory, Evaluate, Address How We Work

"What part of your system are you currently most afraid to touch?"

Every production system eventually outgrows the people who built it. We start with a confidential conversation between technical peers about where the system fights back, where deployments feel risky, and what questions the team needs answered.

  1. 01 · Inventory / Inquire
    What you know and experience

    We talk through your lived experience of the platform: where the system fights back, where deployments feel risky, and what questions you and your team are asking behind closed doors.

  2. 02 · Evaluate / Engage
    Honoring what is already there

    We look at what you already carry: the tribal knowledge in your team, the informal documentation, and the telemetry you already trust. We evaluate the organizational and technical reality together before deciding where to look next.

  3. 03 · Address / Apply
    A clear map and the freedom to choose

    We synthesize the findings into a clear modernization roadmap. Then you decide the best pace: packaged as a self-guided map your team can execute internally, or a hands-on engagement with me embedded alongside you.

Ready to explore the pressure in your system?
No formal RFP required. Start with a 30-minute discovery conversation.

When Technical Leaders Call Me

Targeted problem domains where engineering craftsmanship and system cartography deliver high leverage.

Internal Tech Communities & Mentorship Systems

Build strong, durable, and adaptable communication channels inside engineering organizations. Using a Team Topologies-informed enablement model, help stream-aligned teams build the skills, shared language, and working agreements needed to collaborate without a permanent central bottleneck. Establish communities of practice, mentorship relays, teach-back loops, SME delegation, and handoff mechanisms that distribute context without creating a permanent central bottleneck.

Proof Point: Trained engineering leaders and mentors at Groupon; founded resilient communities through Geekfest@OMF, OTel WG, and successful user-group organizing.

Founder & Leadership Transitions

Rapid 30-to-90-day system inventory, access boundary auditing, component ownership visualization, and release risk governance following founder departures or acquisition transitions.

Proof Point: System Cartography & platform stabilization across legacy multi-tenant SaaS environments.

Monolith & Subsystem De-risking

Eliminating unhandled lateral state mutations across complex multi-step Rails state machines, decoupling core transaction flows, and executing zero-downtime database migrations under load.

Proof Point: Eliminated data corruption failures across core loan acquisition workflows at OneMain Financial.

Observability & Telemetry Overhaul

Architecting OpenTelemetry tracing across microservices and third-party supply chain boundaries to convert dark system behaviors into quantifiable telemetry and reduce incident diagnosis time (MTTD).

Proof Point: Founded and led OpenTelemetry deployment, establishing real-time service maps and trace visibility.

Technical Due Diligence & Risk Audits

Constructing end-to-end dependency models (interaction surface, lateral state, full-stack topology, supply chain exposure) to give executive leadership empirical proof before major modernizations.

Proof Point: Constructed comprehensive architecture risk models for enterprise financial and platform systems.

Engagement Models

30 to 90 Days

Internal Community & Mentorship Design

Best For: Engineering organizations that need stronger cross-team communication, durable communities of practice, or a repeatable mentoring model.

Key Deliverables:

  • Current-state map of communication paths, ownership gaps, and coordination load
  • Community operating model with roles, meeting rhythms, feedback loops, and shared artifacts
  • Mentorship relay and teach-back model for developing mentors and distributing capability
  • SME delegation and stewardship handoff plan that makes the practice resilient and adaptable
30 to 90 Days

Legacy Architecture & Risk Audit

Best For: Founders, PE/VC firms, or engineering leaders needing rapid system legibility and risk containment.

Key Deliverables:

  • Full-stack dependency map (browser interaction surface to DB / lateral state)
  • Operational risk model & third-party supply chain boundary audit
  • Component ownership visualization & release verification gates
  • Modernization roadmap with explicit sequencing (Strangler-Fig milestones)
Ongoing (3 to 12 Months)

Fractional Staff IC / Architecture Retainer

Best For: Scale-ups needing experienced architectural leadership without executive management overhead.

Key Deliverables:

  • Cross-team architectural direction, ADR authoring, and RFC reviews
  • Incident escalation point & telemetry architecture (OpenTelemetry, MTTR reduction)
  • State machine de-risking & zero-downtime database migration execution
  • Agentic tooling, MCP server architecture, and bounded AI workflows
Monthly Retainer

Architecture Advisory & Risk Retainer

Best For: Executive teams seeking ongoing architectural oversight and risk governance.

Key Deliverables:

  • Regular architectural review board participation
  • Third-party vendor & API integration security reviews
  • Zero-downtime migration and database performance guidance

Direct Inquiry & Consultation

To discuss an advisory retainer, fractional role, or architecture modernization audit, schedule a 30-minute technical discussion on Calendly or send a direct email with your system context.

📅 Book a 30-Minute Discovery Call → ✉️ Email Direct Inquiry → 🔍 View Case Studies