A senior engineer pairing with your clinical co-founder to ship a real MVP
Healthtech web app development on subscription. HIPAA-aware architecture, investor-ready speed, clinical-workflow depth. Pair with your clinical co-founder. $3,499/mo.
Who this is for
Healthtech founder with a clinical co-founder (pre or post-seed) who knows exactly what they want clinically but has no senior engineering on the team.
The pain today
- Clinical co-founder knows the workflow but no tech co-founder on board
- Freelancers have shipped unmaintainable code
- Need investor-ready MVP but compliance cannot be skipped
- Fundraising pressure — product has to ship soon
- Future hiring plan unclear — no one to take over code yet
The outcome you get
- Senior engineer as subscription co-founder at $3,499/mo
- Investor-ready MVP in 4 to 8 weeks (GigEasy pattern)
- HIPAA-aware architecture from day one
- Clinical co-founder paired weekly to reduce miscommunication
- Hiring and handoff plan built into the engagement
Why healthtech founders need senior engineering from day one
Healthtech moves fast pre-clinical and slow through regulation. The early product has to convince investors, pilot sites, and often a clinical advisory board. Poor engineering choices made in the first 90 days compound painfully — a wrong database schema can cost months to fix once real clinical data exists. A senior engineer from day one reduces that risk. You get HIPAA-aware architecture, clean documentation, and a stack that can scale to the next round. Compared to a junior freelancer at $30/hour, the subscription pays back in avoided rework alone within 3 to 6 months.
How I pair with clinical co-founders
Weekly live sessions (45 to 60 minutes) with the clinical co-founder walking through the next week's work. Async daily updates in Slack or Linear so the clinical founder can follow progress without joining every meeting. A shared 'clinical logic' document that captures rules (drug interactions, dosing, care protocols) as structured content the clinical founder can edit directly. This last piece avoids the translation-layer bugs that kill healthtech projects — clinical rules in a document maintained by clinicians, technical implementation in code reviewed by me, with a clear mapping between the two.
Technical decisions I make for you
Stack: usually Next.js + TypeScript + PostgreSQL + Prisma for web apps, or Laravel if the project benefits from deeper ORM and admin tooling. Hosting: AWS or Google Cloud with HIPAA-eligible services and a signed BAA. Database: PostgreSQL with column-level encryption for PHI. Authentication: Clerk, Auth0, or WorkOS for quick SSO and MFA. Monitoring: Datadog, Sentry, or a HIPAA-compatible equivalent with BAAs. These choices are documented as ADRs (architecture decision records) so future engineers inherit the reasoning, not just the code.
Pricing and engagement model
Standard $3,499/mo. Pro $4,500/mo. Pro is usually the right call for healthtech MVPs because cadence matters. 14-day money-back guarantee on month one. Cancel anytime after. 100 percent code ownership under Work Made for Hire. NDA and BAA standard. US LLC invoicing — IRS/IR35 safe for cross-border clients. For founders raising in parallel with development, I can structure the engagement around pitch milestones — demo-ready at week 3, pilot-ready at week 8, etc.
Case: GigEasy — 3-week MVP investor pitch story
At GigEasy I delivered a Barclays and Bain Capital-backed MVP from scratch in 3 weeks. The founders needed an investor-ready demo against a typical ten-week industry cycle. Stack: Laravel, React, AWS, PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker, Pulumi. Zero post-launch critical fires. The pattern transfers to healthtech — clear scope, aggressive prioritisation, senior engineer paired with the founder, daily async updates, zero ceremony. Healthtech adds the HIPAA layer on top. Same discipline, one more axis of rigor. GigEasy closed its investor round on the strength of the demo.
When you need a full team
A subscription engineer works for founders with 30 to 50 hours/week of senior engineering need, with a clear roadmap. Once you are raising Series A, serving multiple pilot sites, or shipping to multiple specialties, you probably need a team — lead engineer, mid-level engineers, DevOps. I help hire the team as part of the engagement (often through the Fractional CTO service). Many healthtech clients keep me as a Fractional CTO advisor after the team is hired — continuity of architecture decisions without the salary burden of staying solo.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Built and shipped an investor-ready MVP from scratch
Built the entire technological base and delivered MVP in just 3 weeks, enabling a successful rapid launch and investor demo.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- What about FDA regulatory path?
- I build code that can fit into a regulatory path — clean documentation, traceability, change control, risk analysis structure — but running the actual FDA submission is a specialist effort with a QA/RA advisor or consultant. Your clinical co-founder or a dedicated RA contractor leads that process. I build the evidence (change logs, design controls, software classification documentation) that the submission needs. For SaMD (Software as a Medical Device) clients, budget extra regulatory time.
- Do I own the IP?
- Yes, completely. Every engagement is Work Made for Hire — once you pay, 100 percent of code, design, and architecture artifacts belong to your company. I retain no rights. Git repositories in your organisation from day one. Documentation, ADRs, BAAs, contracts all transfer cleanly to a full-time hire or acquirer. For healthtech founders raising or preparing for acquisition, clean IP is a common due-diligence concern — my setup passes cleanly.
- How do you handle handoff?
- Every engagement assumes handoff from day one. Architecture decisions in ADRs. Code documented inline and in module-level READMEs. Onboarding guide updated weekly. When you hire full-time, the new engineer ramps in days because the context is captured. I overlap with the new team for 1 to 2 months then step out, or transition to Fractional CTO to stay involved at a higher level. No lock-in, no 'only I know this system' risk.
- Can you help with hiring?
- Yes. Interview loops, technical assessments, engineering leveling, compensation guidance. I have hired at W2O (led 15 devs) and at Imohub (CTO role). For healthtech founders, the common first hire is a full-stack engineer who can take over most of what I was doing. Second hire is usually a specialist — a clinical informatics engineer or a DevOps/security lead. I help with first two hires, then your team takes over.
- What about fundraising support?
- I can provide a technical diligence deck covering architecture, security posture, scalability, team plan, and cost structure. Investors often ask for a technical advisor conversation, which I can do. For formal technical diligence (reviewing the code against a checklist), some investors bring their own advisors. I prepare the artifacts they will ask for — ADRs, security controls list, cost model, roadmap — so due diligence is fast and clean.
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