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. 16 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. US LLC invoicing — IRS/IR35 safe for cross-border clients.
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
Refactored the backend architecture, making the system far more responsive and scalable for the growing user base.
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. US LLC — IRS/IR35 safe 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. 16 years, 250-plus projects, I have never ghosted a client or missed a launch date.
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