A senior SaaS engineer on subscription, shipping every few days
Custom web-app development for SaaS founders without a senior engineer. Two to four-day delivery cycles, fixed monthly price, Cuez-level performance discipline. $3,499/mo.
Who this is for
Post-seed SaaS founder without a senior engineer, or a SaaS CEO whose one developer just quit and whose shipping cadence has stalled.
The pain today
- Shipping features slow — weeks per release instead of days
- Tech debt from an early freelancer is slowing everything
- Founder is doing code reviews and it is not a good use of time
- Existing engineer left and knowledge walked out the door
- Investors asking about engineering team and the answer is thin
The outcome you get
- Senior engineer shipping to your SaaS every two to four days
- First release inside 14 days of kickoff
- Technical debt assessment and triage plan within 30 days
- Clear code ownership and documentation your team inherits
- Predictable monthly cost, cancel anytime after 14-day guarantee
Why SaaS founders hire me
Two common situations. First, a founder who raised a seed round without a technical co-founder and needs real engineering to ship the next six months. Second, a CEO whose one engineer left and whose roadmap is stalled. In both cases, hiring a full-time senior engineer takes 90 days and costs $200k+ loaded. I am available inside a week, cost $3,499 or $4,500 a month, and ship to production in two to four days. 17 years of experience, 250-plus projects. I work like a senior staff engineer with a bias toward shipping small, provable increments.
Typical 90-day engagement
Days 1 to 14: discovery. Pair with you, review the codebase, talk to your users, produce a three-month roadmap with prioritised releases. Days 15 to 30: first release. One meaningful feature or fix shipped to production, ideally the one that unblocks your next sales or metric goal. Days 31 to 60: steady delivery — weekly releases, monthly roadmap review. Days 61 to 90: handoff readiness — every decision documented, onboarding guide written, so a full-time hire can take over without me. Most engagements extend past 90 days; some don't. Either outcome works.
Common SaaS features I build
Billing and subscriptions (Stripe, Paddle, Chargebee integration and in-app billing). Admin panels (internal tools, customer support interfaces, feature flags). Analytics and reporting (dashboards, exports, BI integration). Third-party integrations (Slack, Zapier, HubSpot, Salesforce). Role-based access control (RBAC) and SSO (Okta, Auth0, Google Workspace). Performance work — caching, query optimisation, API speed. At Cuez I took an API from 3 seconds to 300ms, 10x faster, with ~40 percent infra cost reduction. That discipline applies to every SaaS engagement.
Pricing — $3,499 standard, $4,500 Pro
Standard tier $3,499/mo. Pro tier $4,500/mo. Both cover 2 to 4-day delivery cycles, senior engineering, code reviews, and direct communication with me. Pro adds faster cycles, priority support, and deeper discovery work — used by teams shipping multiple features per week. 14-day money-back guarantee on the first month — full refund if you are not happy. Cancel anytime after. 100 percent code ownership under Work Made for Hire. NDA standard.
Case: Cuez — 10x faster API
At Cuez by Tinkerlist in Belgium I inherited a 3-second API that was blocking user growth on a broadcast-SaaS product. Through query optimisation, caching strategy, and architecture changes I got the API to 300 milliseconds — 10x faster — and cut infrastructure cost about 40 percent. Stack: Laravel, Vue.js, TypeScript, AWS, FFMPEG. The lesson: performance work in SaaS pays compounding returns. Faster APIs retain users, lower infra cost, and make the product feel professional. Every SaaS engagement I run includes a performance audit in the first 30 days — often the highest-ROI work we do.
When to hire full-time instead
A fractional engineer works for startups with roadmap clarity and 20 to 40 hours a week of real engineering work. If you need 60+ hours a week, you need a full-time hire. If your product has deep domain requirements where an engineer needs 6 months to ramp, full-time is better. I help with the hiring — interview loops, technical assessments, onboarding — as part of the engagement. Most clients keep me for 6 to 18 months then replace with a full-time hire as the team grows. That handoff is planned from day one.
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 the subscription work?
- Fixed monthly fee, month-to-month contract. $3,499/mo Standard or $4,500/mo Pro. I ship two to four-day delivery cycles, attend weekly sync, and communicate daily async. You get a senior engineer for the output you need, without the overhead of hiring full-time. 14-day money-back guarantee on month one. Cancel anytime after. Many clients stay 6 to 18 months; some use me for a single sprint. Both work.
- How do you handle handoff to a full-time hire?
- Every engagement assumes handoff from day one. Code is documented. Architecture decisions are written in ADRs (architecture decision records). Onboarding guide is updated weekly. When you hire a full-time engineer, they ramp in days because the context is already captured. I overlap with the new hire for one or two months to transfer knowledge then step out. No lock-in, no ego, no painful transitions.
- Who owns the code and IP?
- You do. 100 percent. Every engagement is Work Made for Hire — once you pay, the code, design, and all deliverables belong to your company. I retain no rights. Git repositories are in your organisation from day one. NDAs are standard. If you work with investors or acquirers who care about clean IP, I am set up to pass due diligence cleanly. IRS/IR35-safe B2B invoicing for US and cross-border clients.
- What stack do you use?
- I have shipped production systems in PHP/Laravel, JavaScript/Node.js, TypeScript, React, Vue.js, Next.js, NestJS. Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis. Infra: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes. At bolttech I ran a payment service integrating 40+ providers; at Cuez I rebuilt a broadcast-SaaS API stack; at Imohub I built a 120k-property real estate portal. For new projects I usually default to Next.js + TypeScript + PostgreSQL or Laravel + React, adjusted to what your team can maintain. I do not take projects in stacks I am not strong in.
- What if I am on vacation or out of office?
- Work continues. I keep shipping based on the roadmap we agreed and the current priorities. Daily async updates in Slack or Linear so you can catch up when you return. For urgent decisions I have a clear escalation path — usually a second founder or your ops lead. I do not pause the engagement when you are travelling. 17 years, 250-plus projects, I have never ghosted a client or missed a launch date.
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