You're at an inflection point. A principal engineer left. An AI rollout is on the table. I step in as your senior technical partner: in your repo, on your PRs, owning the hard calls and unblocking delivery.
Senior technical partner across architecture, delivery, and AI engineering leverage. For CTOs, CPTOs, and founders. I work in your repo, on your PRs, and in your RFCs. Hands-on when you need it, strategic when you don't.
15+ years as Staff / Principal engineer. I help solo founders, early-stage startups, Series A teams, and scale-ups up to ~150 engineers. Deep background in distributed systems and production AI.
I lean toward simple, reversible solutions, sized to your stage.
Remote-native. Teams across France, Malaysia, Spain, Germany, and beyond.
Marseille · Remote-first · EN / FR
Senior technical partner, 1–3 days/week, 3–12 months. Faster, cheaper, and lower-risk than a 6-month senior hire.
Week 1: I'm in your repo, your PRs, your roadmap, and your 1:1s. I take the hard calls, mentor your senior engineers, and ship code when the stakes demand it.
Alongside whoever's leading engineering, not above them.
2 days, fixed price. One hard technical decision, driven to closure: stack choice, monolith vs services, AI integration path, vendor selection, post-mortem follow-up. Pre-work, structured working session, written recommendation with trade-offs.
For when your team is stuck and the decision can't wait another sprint.
2–6 weeks. Full audit of your stack, delivery bottlenecks, and the risks ahead. You walk away with a prioritized action plan, a working session with your team, and a clear answer to “what do we fix first.”
How I work, not a bolt-on service. I integrate coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) into your operating model: review pipelines, RFC workflows, evals, and clear ownership when agents commit code.
Recent result: 40% faster RFC-to-merge on a Series A team, senior oversight intact.
For non-technical founders: scope an MVP around coding agents instead of a full team.
Hands-on support for high-stakes initiatives: cloud migrations, re-architectures, scaling crises, post-acquisition integrations.
Scoped to the initiative, focused on the decisions and delivery risks that actually move the needle.
Start here
A free 30-minute call to talk through your situation and see if there's a fit. If we keep going, the natural next step is a focused 2-hour paid diagnostic: deep dive into your architecture, the bottlenecks you're seeing, and the decisions ahead. You leave with 2–3 concrete recommendations and a written summary the day after. Fixed scope, fixed price.
Book a 30-min intro call →Recent engagements
Scale-up · Engineering unblocked
Engineering velocity declining for 6 months; legacy services blocking new feature work. Led a system re-design and incremental rewrite; set up a platform team with clear service ownership.
Series A SaaS · Scaling without a rewrite
Monolithic backend hitting limits as traffic grew; a full rewrite was too risky. Designed an event-driven decomposition and observability layer; coached the team through the migration.
Early-stage · New conversational LLM product
New product line built around a contextual LLM chatbot; no LLM platform in place. Architected the conversational LLM platform (event-driven, horizontally scalable, context management, evaluation + guardrails) and led the build team.
What people I’ve worked with say
“We were stuck. Delivery in freefall. Nobody on the team would call the rewrite we all knew we needed. Ben framed the trade-offs in two weeks, drove the decision, and we shipped the migration without losing engineers. The kind of person you call when nobody dares to decide.”
“I'm a non-technical solo founder and I was about to commit to the wrong stack and an expensive agency. Ben spent two weeks with me: scoped a lean MVP, picked a stack I can actually maintain, and set up an agentic coding workflow so I can ship without a full team. Six months of detours avoided.”
“Ben quickly became the natural technical leader on the most critical parts of our platform. Deep ownership, bias for action, and a reliable advisor in a fast-evolving product. We trust him with the decisions we can't afford to get wrong.”
Part-time, remote-first. Currently taking 1–2 new engagements.
If you're a co-founder, CTO, engineering leader, or non-technical founder facing a technical inflection point (delivery slowing down, a senior leadership gap, an AI rollout, a post-acquisition integration), let's talk.
FAQ
Before the burn, not during. Best triggers: a senior leader just left, a major platform, stack, or vendor decision is coming, an AI rollout is on the table, or scaling problems are outpacing what your team can solve. If you wait until the fire is out of control, you'll get less leverage from any senior partner.
No. I work alongside your CTO or whoever leads engineering. I take ownership of specific calls (architecture, AI integration, delivery blockers), but the strategic direction stays with your leadership. For founders without a CTO yet, I help you build the technical foundations and shape the hiring profile of the CTO you eventually bring in.
Yes. Common pattern: 2 weeks scoping a lean MVP, picking a stack you can actually maintain, and setting up a coding-agent workflow so you can ship without a full team. Then 1–2 days/week as your fractional technical lead. Saves months of wrong-stack rebuilds.
Yes. I'm in your repo and your PRs. I write code when the stakes demand it: critical migrations, architecture spikes, AI integration scaffolding. I won't be your full-time engineer. That's not the leverage. But "advisor only" is not how I work either.
It's a core part of how I work. I help your team get real engineering value from Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor: review pipelines, RFC workflows, evals, guardrails, and clear ownership when an agent commits code. For founders, agents can replace a full early-stage team when scoped right.
Yes. This is often the highest-leverage moment. Architecture decisions made at 5 engineers compound over the next 50. I help teams shape solid foundations now so they don't pay for them with a painful rewrite at Series A.
From solo non-technical founders (no team yet) up to scale-ups of ~150 engineers. Sweet spot: 5–80 engineers, where one senior technical operator can move multiple decisions in parallel.
30-min intro call: free. 2-hour diagnostic: paid, fixed price. Decision Sprint: 2 days, fixed price. Architecture & Platform Review: 2–6 weeks. Fractional Principal Engineer: 3–12 months. Each engagement is scoped to a clear outcome, not a fixed package.
Fixed price for the 2-hour diagnostic and Decision Sprint. Daily or weekly rate for Architecture Review and Fractional Principal engagements. Always agreed in writing before any work starts.
Remote-first, EN or FR. On-site visits available for kickoffs, or when a complex decision benefits from being in the room together. Based in Marseille, comfortable across European time zones.
Stack-agnostic. I've shipped production systems across TypeScript, Python, and Go, on modern cloud and infra setups. The senior judgment travels; I work in whatever your team is already using.
Either a diagnostic call or a short scoping discussion to align on goals and constraints. Then a written proposal: scope, deliverables, timeline, and price. No work begins without explicit agreement.