Contract tech lead
I join 2–3 days a week to run planning, set architecture and code standards, and mentor the team, until you hire a lead or no longer need one.
Book an intro callThe problem
Your team has grown past the point where everyone just knows what everyone else is doing. Planning takes longer, reviews pile up, every service is built a little differently, and the most senior engineer is also the bottleneck. You need a lead, but a full-time senior hire takes months to find, and you’re not sure yet whether you need one permanently.
How I approach it
- Week one: I read the code, join the rituals and talk to everyone on the team. You get a short written assessment: what’s working, what’s slowing you down, and what I’d change first.
- Planning and priorities: I run sprint planning with product and keep a visible balance between roadmap work and tech debt, so it doesn’t turn into a fight every sprint.
- Standards that enforce themselves: architecture conventions, code-first API schemas, and pre-commit and CI checks, so reviews are about design, not formatting.
- Mentoring: pairing, review feedback and knowledge-sharing sessions, so the team keeps getting better after I’m gone.
What it looks like
Usually 2–3 days a week, for as long as we agree, remote, as part of your team: in your standups, your repo and your planning. I’ve done this for a team of four on a full platform migration, and as temporary acting lead for seven engineers.
Case study
InYourPocket
Moving a 100+ city travel guide from Symfony to Next.js without losing search traffic
I led the redesign and migration of an SEO-heavy European city guide (around 100,000 URLs, 8M monthly search impressions) from Symfony to Next.js and NestJS, step by step behind redirects. Search rankings improved after launch.
Questions
How is this different from hiring a senior engineer?
A senior engineer adds capacity. A tech lead changes how the whole team plans, reviews and ships. I still write code, but most of the value is in the decisions and habits that outlast my time with you.
Will you work with our existing engineering manager or CTO?
Yes. Usually the CTO or founder keeps the people side and I take the technical direction, delivery and code quality. We agree on that split in the first week.
What happens when the engagement ends?
The standards, docs and processes stay with your team, and I finish with a proper handover of everything I've been carrying.
Remote-first, working in EU time zones (CET). On-site visits by arrangement.
Book an intro call