Pricing
Three engagements. Honest ranges.
I price by outcome, not by the hour. The numbers below are real ranges from real engagements I’ve closed in the last 18 months. After a 30-minute call I send a fixed proposal with one number, not a range. No retainers hidden behind sales calls, no padded scopes.
Architecture Review
Two weeks. Fixed price. You get a written plan whether or not we work together after.
Single payment, paid up front
Best for
Teams who feel something is wrong, can’t articulate what, and want a senior engineer to read the code and tell the truth.
Includes
- 30-minute calls with up to 5 stakeholders
- Read-only review of repo, infra, ticket history
- Written report, 8 to 16 pages, lives in your repo
- Architecture diagrams, ADRs for the big decisions
- Ranked risk register with mitigations
- 60-minute readout call with Q&A
Delivered in 2 weeks from kickoff
Project
Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed end date. The default engagement for most teams.
Phased payment, 30 / 30 / 30 / 10
Best for
New product builds, AI features, system rewrites, payment integrations. Anything with a clear ‘this thing should exist’ outcome.
Includes
- 1-week paid discovery, written brief
- Full architecture and ADRs
- Implementation with weekly Friday demos
- Production deploy with rollback plan
- Runbooks, dashboards, recorded handover
- 30 days of bug-fix support included
6 to 16 weeks typical
Fractional CTO
Two days a week, ongoing. Architecture, hiring, vendor calls, the senior tech voice in the room.
Monthly retainer, 3-month minimum
Best for
Founders without a senior technical leader, or scale-ups bridging the gap before a full-time CTO. Pre-seed to Series B mostly.
Includes
- 2 days per week embedded in the team
- Architecture decisions and code review
- Technical hiring, interviews and scorecards
- Vendor and tooling decisions
- Quarterly roadmap and risk review
- On-call coverage during major incidents
Minimum 3 months, typical 6 to 12
Always included
The defaults that don’t cost extra
These come with every engagement, no matter the tier. They’re table stakes for me, not premium add-ons.
Free, on purpose
The conversation is always free
The first call is free. I’ll spend 30 minutes on the problem, ask four questions, and tell you whether I can help. If I can’t, I’ll tell you who can. That part isn’t a sales tactic, it’s the most useful thing I can do for you in that conversation if my reps don’t fit.
Same goes for follow-up emails. Send me a code snippet, ask me about a trade-off, get a real answer. I write a few of these a week. I’d rather be useful than guarded with my time.
Where the line is, paid discovery. Once we’re actually digging into your repo or interviewing your team, that’s a project, and projects start with a written scope and an invoice.
FAQ
What teams ask before they sign
If yours isn’t here, just email and ask.
Numbers fit? Let’s talk specifics
30-minute call, no slide deck. I’ll send a fixed proposal within 48 hours of agreeing on scope.
Or read the process and the case studies first.