Technical/Architecture Consultation

This offering is for people who have specific architecture problems and want to brainstorm ideas on how to help.

My expertise is in de-risking product launches and also in secure and scalable web systems.

I cannot help you build a machine learning model to predict the future, (though I can probably help you find a better tech investment to make).

Some examples of things I've helped businesses with in the past:

1. I helped a non-technical regional manager from an oil company refine his concept of AI and brainstorm several ways in which tech could be used to streamline operations in his company. We also discussed a strategy to start with an internal MVP so he can sell the idea to executive leadership.
2. I helped a senior engineer refine his company's e2e testing strategy and enhance his company's ability to detect regressions in user flows that are embedded deep inside the app (stateful user flows which require the passage of time for certain events to trigger).
3. I helped a non-technical founder identify and hire a product manager, dev agency, and later a full time engineer. (This was a medium-term engagement over multiple hours)
4. I helped a tech business suffering from frequent outages stabilize their infrastructure by dockerizing and moving them from click-ops and EC2 to IaC and ECS. In the process, I greatly enhanced their security posture by getting rid of .env files with plain text secrets being shuttled around in CI.
5. I helped an engineer harness his CEO's high-level desire to "use AI" into something that is actually useful for the business, represents a significant technical challenge for the engineer, and is achievable with the resources the business has.
6. I helped an SMS marketing SaaS business suffering from scaling issues to move their SMS-sending workflows off host and into the cloud, so that they didn't compete for resources with the web application.

In my actual day job, I've also had a significant hand in product strategy (in AWS Systems Manager, AWS Verified Permissions, and Noom) and making systems more cost-effective.

I also have access to lots of CDK templates for launching infra as code that I've worked on over the years, and can help you at a higher level designing certain features that are difficult to design.