Senior velocity in the 3 months it takes to hire one
Applications Pro at $4,500 a month. 2-4 day delivery cycles, senior engineer integrated into your team, cancel anytime. No recruiter fees, no equity ask.
Who this is for
Seed-stage founder with 1 junior engineer or no technical hires yet. The post-seed roadmap exploded and the team needs senior throughput now.
The pain today
- A full-time senior engineer takes 90 days to hire and close.
- The board wants velocity, the team is one junior engineer deep.
- Recruiters want 20-25 percent of first-year salary to source a mid-tier candidate.
- The stack choices are locking in without a senior voice at the table.
The outcome you get
- Senior engineering every week, starting inside two weeks.
- Stack decisions that survive the 18 months to Series A.
- Ownership transfer on the first full-time senior hire.
- Monthly cancellation so the retainer ends cleanly the week the hire lands.
The seed-stage velocity trap
Seed-stage founders hit the velocity trap at month two. The round closed on a roadmap that assumed full senior hiring inside 30 days. Hiring takes 90. The board expects milestones on the 30-day cadence. The founder either slips the roadmap (bad signal) or over-promises (worse signal). A senior engineer on retainer at $4,500 a month fills the gap: shipping velocity from week one, no recruiting cycle, no equity dilution. Most seed-stage clients keep me on for 4-9 months while the permanent team lands.
Monthly retainer vs contract-to-hire
Some seed founders try contract-to-hire through staffing agencies. The math rarely works: agency markup, 6-month minimums, no real senior candidates willing to convert at the salary band. The monthly retainer at Pro ($4,500) gives the founder one senior engineer, cancel anytime, Work Made for Hire. The total cost over 6 months is $27,000, versus $50,000+ in agency markup for the same calendar time. The velocity is higher because the engineer is direct, not filtered through an account manager.
What to ship in the 6 months between seed and Series A
The seed-to-Series-A window is about proving the core loop at scale. The shipping list is usually short: get to 50-100 paying customers, integrate the three platforms your ICP uses, turn the demo into a real product, and stand up the first metrics dashboard that tells the Series A story. I help founders cut from a 40-item list to these five in a two-hour call, then we ship. Cuez hit Series A readiness on a similar disciplined cadence.
A stack that survives the next round
Seed stack choices lock in for two rounds minimum. Rewrites at Series B cost 6-9 months. I pick Next.js, Laravel or NestJS, PostgreSQL, Redis, and AWS or Vercel because they scale through Series C with discipline. I avoid the current flavor-of-the-quarter framework unless there is a specific reason. Durability beats novelty at seed stage.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Rescued a slow API that was blocking user growth
Cuez is a live broadcast production tool used by TV teams on air across Europe. I inherited a backend API averaging 3 seconds per response and cut it to 300ms, while reducing infrastructure costs by 40% and leaving the system stable under real production load.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- How does this compare to hiring a full-time senior engineer?
- Faster (1-2 weeks vs 90 days), no recruiter fees, no equity, cancel anytime. Trade-off: you give up long-term dedicated headcount. Works best as a bridge for 4-9 months.
- Can I add a second engineer?
- I am a solo practice. If you need 2+ engineers, I recommend pairing my retainer with a second senior from my network or a direct hire.
- How do you integrate with my existing team?
- GitHub, Jira or Linear, Slack, standups if you want them. I follow your conventions, not mine. Code review is a collaboration, not a handoff.
- What if the full-time hire lands fast?
- I hand over cleanly: docs, a week of pair-work, architecture walkthrough. Cancel end of month, no penalty.
- Can you own a full product area?
- Yes. Most seed-stage clients hand me one area (billing, auth, an integration layer, a reporting module) and let me own it end to end.
Ready to start?
Tell me what you need in 60 seconds. Tailored proposal in your inbox within 6 hours.