Engagements
Bring me the problem, not the spec.
Most of the interesting work starts before anyone knows what to build. I help shape the architecture and the product requirements, then build the system — rather than waiting for a finished technical specification to implement.
This tends to fit when
- The project is technically ambiguous and nobody has written the spec yet.
- Several disciplines intersect — product, AI, infrastructure, data, interface.
- The system needs AI and conventional software engineering working together.
- Nobody internally owns the whole technical problem end to end.
- An experimental prototype has to become production software.
- You need speed without immediately staffing an engineering team.
- The problem involves an unusual computational or long-running workflow.
What I take on
Custom full-stack products
Web applications built through the whole stack: interface, APIs, data model, auth, background processing, infrastructure and deployment.
AI products & agentic systems
LLM features that survive contact with real users: agents, tool calling, retrieval, structured generation, evaluation, human review loops.
Asynchronous & long-running systems
Queues, workers, generation pipelines, scheduled processing, event-driven workflows, and the observability to know they're working.
Scientific & computational platforms
Simulation infrastructure, numerical workflows, visualization, AI4Science, and interfaces researchers will actually use.
Internal tools & automation
Replacing spreadsheet-and-manual-step operations with software that connects the systems you already run.
Prototype to production
Notebooks, demos and proofs of concept turned into dependable systems with real deployment, testing and maintenance paths.
Engagement size
Best suited for substantive builds and ongoing technical engagements. New custom development engagements generally start around $30,000.
I work on a small number of projects at a time, so I'd rather go deep on a system than bill hours against a task list.
Not sure how to scope it yet?
That's normal, and it's usually the best time to talk. Describe the situation and I'll tell you what I'd build and how I'd approach it.