Discovery sprint
1 week$X,XXX
Fixed fee, credited against the build if we continue.
The cheapest way to find out what you are actually buying. We turn a half-formed idea into a written specification with a price attached.
Best for
You know the problem but not the shape of the solution, or you have been quoted wildly different numbers by different people.
What’s included
- Two to five days of working sessions, recorded
- The workflow mapped as it runs today, including the bad days
- Feature list split into v1 / later / not doing
- Technical approach and the risks visible from here
- Fixed price and dated milestones for the build
You walk away with
A findings and scope document that is yours to keep — specific enough to hand to another engineer if you decide not to work with me.
MVP build
4 to 8 weeksIdea to a live product real people use. Fixed scope, fixed price, and a working demo on a staging URL every week.
Best for
You have an idea that has not been built, or a product half-finished by someone who left.
What’s included
- Discovery and scope first, always
- Weekly demos with a written update
- Web and mobile where the product needs both
- Deploy, monitoring, and documentation at launch
- Thirty days of fixes after launch
You walk away with
A live product in your accounts, in your name, with a recorded handover.
AI feature or automation
2 to 4 weeksAn AI capability or an automated workflow dropped into a product or a business that already exists, without disturbing what is already running.
Best for
A process eating your team's week, or an AI feature that got as far as a demo and never shipped.
What’s included
- Integration with the systems you already run
- Evaluation before it goes anywhere near a customer
- Fallbacks for when the model is wrong
- Handover documentation for your team
You walk away with
The manual work gone, measured against how long it used to take.
Ongoing engineering partner
Monthly$X,XXX / month
Capacity-based. Cancel with 30 days' notice.
A reserved block of my capacity each month for new features, maintenance, and the things that come up once real customers are using the software.
Best for
You have shipped and now need someone who already knows the system.
What’s included
- An agreed number of days each month
- Priorities set by you, re-set whenever you want
- Same weekly demo and written update rhythm
- No minimum term beyond the first month
You walk away with
Software that keeps moving instead of quietly rotting.
Every engagement starts with discovery. If you already have a written specification you are confident in, we can shorten it — but I will not quote a fixed price against a brief I have not stress-tested. See the full process.
When a project needs more than one engineer.
Some briefs are genuinely bigger than one person — a product that needs real design work, a web and mobile build running in parallel, or a deadline that will not move. For those I bring in specialists I have shipped production work with, and I lead the engagement myself.
- Product and interface design
- A second or third engineer
- Mobile specialists (iOS, Android, Flutter)
- QA and release testing
- Data and ML engineering
- You meet everyone in week one
- The people on your project are named and introduced before the build starts. Nobody appears in week four, and nobody is replaced by a cheaper pair of hands halfway through.
- I stay the person you talk to
- One point of contact, one thread, one set of decisions. You are never asked to brief three people separately or to chase a team for an answer.
- The commercials do not change
- Still one written scope, one fixed number and one date, whether that is delivered by me alone or by four of us. A larger team is how a deadline gets met — not a reason for the price to move.
- It stays a team, not an agency
- No account managers, no bench to keep busy, no layer of process between you and the work. Everyone on the project is doing the project.
If your brief needs this, say so on the intro call and I will tell you honestly what shape of team it takes and what that does to the timeline — before anyone quotes you a number.
What I don’t take on.
Saying this here saves us both two calls.
- Rescue projects where nobody can give me access to the source code.
- Hourly staff augmentation, or sitting inside someone else's sprint board full time.
- Work where nobody on your side can be reached for a decision. Weekly demos and a fixed date only hold together if someone can answer a question within a day or two.
Not sure which one you need?
That is what the intro call is for. Describe the problem and I'll tell you which of these fits, what size of team it takes, or that none of them do.
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