Senior SaaS engineering on a flat monthly subscription. First release within 14 days. No agency markup, no hiring queue. $4,999/mo.
- Scope
- Ship
- Iterate
monthly subscription
Who this is for
Post-seed SaaS founder who raised money without a technical co-founder, or a SaaS CEO whose one engineer just left and whose roadmap is now stalled. You need real custom web app development for SaaS — not a dev agency that disappears after handoff, and not a $200k full-time hire you won't find for 90 days.
The pain today
- Features take weeks to ship instead of days, and the backlog keeps growing
- Early freelancer code left behind technical debt that slows everything now
- No one owns the architecture — decisions get made ad hoc or not at all
- Founder is doing code reviews instead of talking to customers
- Billing, RBAC, and third-party integrations are half-built or brittle
The outcome you get
- Senior SaaS engineer shipping to your product every two to four days
- First production release within 14 days of kickoff
- Technical debt triage and 90-day roadmap within the first 30 days
- Documented architecture so your team inherits the codebase, not a mystery
- Fixed monthly cost — no surprises, cancel after the 14-day guarantee
Why SaaS founders hire me instead of an agency
Two situations come up repeatedly. First: a founder who closed a seed round without a technical co-founder and needs real custom web app development for SaaS to ship the next six months. Second: a CEO whose one engineer resigned and whose roadmap is frozen.
In both cases, a full-time senior engineer takes 90 days to find and costs $200k or more loaded. A dev agency marks up 40-60% and hands you something at the end. I am available within a week, ship to production in two to four days, and cost $4,999 a month flat. 17 years of experience, 250-plus projects delivered. No middlemen — you work directly with me on every decision.
Senior SaaS engineer shipping to your product every two to four days
SaaS-specific work I do from day one
Generic web development and SaaS product engineering are not the same thing. SaaS products have specific requirements that trip up generalist developers: multi-tenant data isolation, subscription billing with Stripe or Paddle, role-based access control, SSO (Okta, Auth0, Google Workspace), webhook reliability, and API performance under real user load.
I have shipped all of these in production. At Cuez by Tinkerlist I inherited an API running at 3 seconds per response — it was blocking user retention. Through query optimisation, Redis caching, and architecture changes, I got it to 300ms. That is 10x faster, with about 40% infrastructure cost reduction. Performance work like that is SaaS-specific: faster responses reduce churn, lower your AWS bill, and make the product feel like a professional tool. Every SaaS engagement I run includes a performance audit in the first 30 days.
3s → 300ms: API response time.
Common SaaS features I build
Billing and subscriptions: Stripe, Paddle, and Chargebee integration, including in-app upgrade flows, trial management, and failed-payment recovery. Admin and internal tools: customer support panels, feature flags, audit logs. Analytics and reporting: dashboards, CSV exports, BI integrations. Third-party integrations: Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier webhooks. RBAC and SSO: per-user role management, team workspaces, Okta and Auth0. API performance: caching, slow-query elimination, rate limiting.
Stack I default to for new SaaS projects: Next.js plus TypeScript plus PostgreSQL, or Laravel plus React, adjusted to what your team can actually maintain after I hand off. I do not take projects in stacks I am not strong in.
Typical 90-day engagement
Days 1 to 14: discovery. I pair with you, review the codebase, talk to users if possible, and produce a three-month roadmap with prioritised releases. The goal of the first two weeks is not to build — it is to build the right thing.
Days 15 to 30: first production release. One meaningful feature or fix shipped to real users, ideally the one that unblocks your next sales or retention goal.
Days 31 to 60: steady delivery. Weekly releases, monthly roadmap review, async daily updates in Slack or Linear.
Days 61 to 90: handoff readiness. Every architecture decision documented in ADRs, onboarding guide written and updated, codebase in your Git organisation from day one. Most engagements extend past 90 days. Some don't. Either outcome was planned for.
Pricing — Standard $4,999/mo, Pro $5,499/mo
Standard tier at $4,999 per month covers 2 to 4-day delivery cycles, senior engineering across your full SaaS stack, code reviews, and daily async communication directly with me. Pro tier at $5,499 per month adds faster cycles and priority support — used by teams shipping multiple features per week.
14-day money-back guarantee on the first month. Full refund if you are not satisfied. Cancel anytime after. 100% code ownership under Work Made for Hire — once you pay, the code belongs to your company. I retain nothing. NDAs are standard in every engagement, and invoicing is IRS/IR35-safe for US and cross-border customers.
When a full-time hire makes more sense
A subscription engineer works best when you have 20 to 40 hours of real engineering work per week and a roadmap with reasonable clarity. If you need 60-plus hours a week continuously, a full-time hire is the right answer.
I help with that transition too. Interview loops, technical assessments, onboarding documentation, overlap handoff — it is all planned from day one. Most customers keep me for 6 to 18 months before growing to a full-time team. That outcome is a success, not a loss. The goal from the start is to make myself replaceable on good terms.
Technical debt in SaaS is a revenue problem
Technical debt is not abstract. In SaaS it translates directly to slower feature velocity, higher bug rate, and longer onboarding time for new engineers — all of which cost money.
In the first 30 days of every engagement I do a debt assessment: which parts of the codebase are slowing you down the most, what the fix costs versus the ongoing drag cost, and what the triage order should be. The output is a written plan, not just a verbal walkthrough. Founders are often surprised at how concentrated the problem is — usually two or three areas account for most of the drag. Fixing those first produces compounding returns across the rest of the roadmap.
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.
Read the case studyKeep reading
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
My subscription is $4,999 per month for the Standard tier or $5,499 per month for Pro. Compare that to a full-time senior SaaS engineer in the US at $180k to $220k loaded, or a dev agency at $150 to $250 per hour with a 40-60% markup. The subscription model covers senior engineering, daily async communication, and 2 to 4-day delivery cycles — no recruiting lag, no agency overhead, no long-term commitment beyond month one.
It depends on scope, but a focused SaaS MVP with core features, billing, and basic RBAC typically takes 8 to 12 weeks at two to four-day delivery cycles. At GigEasy, a Barclays/Bain-backed fintech, I delivered an investor-ready MVP in 3 weeks — against a typical 10-week benchmark. That speed came from tight scoping in the discovery phase. The first two weeks of any engagement I spend making sure we are building the right thing before writing production code.
Agencies give you a team but add markup, handoff friction, and account managers between you and the code. Full-time hires give you depth but take 60 to 90 days to find and $200k-plus loaded. A subscription developer like me gives you senior-level output, direct communication, and a short commitment — best fit when you have 20 to 40 hours of real work per week and need to ship quickly. Most customers start with me at the seed stage and hire full-time once they reach Series A headcount.
Multi-tenant architecture, subscription billing (Stripe, Paddle, Chargebee), role-based access control, SSO integration (Okta, Auth0), API performance optimisation, webhook reliability, admin tooling, and third-party integrations (Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce). At Cuez I took a broadcast-SaaS API from 3 seconds to 300ms — 10x faster — with roughly 40% infrastructure cost reduction. That kind of SaaS-specific performance work is included in every engagement.
I do a written debt assessment in the first 30 days: which parts of the codebase are generating the most drag, what fixing them costs versus leaving them costs, and a triage order by business impact. Most of the time two or three areas account for the bulk of the problem. I fix the highest-drag items first, document every decision, and treat the codebase as something your team will own long-term — not a short-term customer project.
Your company owns 100% of it. Every engagement runs under Work Made for Hire — once you pay, the code, architecture decisions, and all deliverables belong to you. Git repositories are in your organisation from day one. NDAs are standard. For customers working with investors or in M&A processes, the IP structure is clean and built to pass due diligence. IRS/IR35-safe B2B invoicing for US and cross-border customers.
Yes, and I plan for it from kickoff. Architecture decisions are documented in ADRs throughout the engagement. The onboarding guide is updated weekly. When you hire a full-time engineer, they ramp in days rather than months because the context is already captured. I overlap with the new hire for one to two months to transfer knowledge, then step out. Most customers run this transition somewhere in month 6 to 18. No lock-in, no ego about it.
The subscription model works best for ongoing SaaS development where you have a continuous backlog. If you need a single sprint — a specific integration, a performance fix, or a technical audit — reach out and describe the scope. I take limited project work when the fit is right and my schedule allows. The 14-day guarantee applies either way: if the first two weeks do not deliver what you expected, you get a full refund.