Senior AI SaaS engineering, before you're ready for a full-time CTO.

Two practical differences. First, I'm shipping production code at BFEAI (Be Found Everywhere) every week — a 7-app multi-tenant AI SaaS platform that I co-founded and run as CTO. The work I do for clients is the work I'm doing on my own platform, so the engineering judgment is from someone who's currently making the same tradeoffs you're making. Second, I take on one or two clients at a time. Agencies and marketplaces match you to whoever's available; I either have the capacity or I don't, and you know which side of that you're on before we sign.

Architecture audit engagements are 1 to 2 weeks fixed. Build engagements are typically 6 to 8 weeks per phase, billed hourly with a hard cap per phase. Fractional CTO retainers are month-to-month with a 30-day notice on either side. If we're a fit, most engagements grow from an audit into a build phase, then into a retainer. If we're not, the audit deliverable is yours to act on with someone else, and you owe nothing past the original audit fee.

Yes to NDAs, standard mutual-NDA template or yours. Yes to IP assignment of work product I do during the engagement — that's table stakes. I push back on (a) non-compete clauses that try to restrict my work with other clients in adjacent industries, (b) IP assignment of pre-existing tooling I bring to the engagement, and (c) penalty clauses that aren't reciprocal. Almost every client agrees to those carve-outs on first read.

Yes for most states. I'm a single-member LLC (BoostFrame, LLC) based in New Jersey. California has its own AB5 considerations — I can still work as a 1099 there for B-to-B engineering work that meets the ABC test, but if you're in CA and concerned, we can run the engagement through a contracting platform (Deel, Remote, etc.) that handles classification for you.

I don't take primary on-call rotation for any client. Secondary or escalation rotations during a build phase or active migration are fine, with clear paging rules and a documented escalation path. Most clients realize partway through the audit that what they actually want is to fix the underlying problem causing the pages, not to add another paging-eligible engineer to the rotation. That's usually a better engagement scope.

Everything I write lives in your repo from day one. There's no parallel codebase I keep on my side. At the end of any engagement you get: (a) the code in your repo, (b) a written handoff doc covering architecture decisions and operational gotchas, (c) any internal docs / runbooks created during the engagement, (d) a 1-hour walkthrough with whoever inherits the work. The handoff doc is the part most contractors skip — it's the difference between a successful exit and an engagement-shaped hole in your codebase.

Default: TypeScript on Next.js, Postgres or Supabase for data, Stripe for billing, real-code where it matters. Python only where it's the right tool — browser fleets, ML serving, data pipelines. LLM APIs whichever fits the use case (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Mode — at BFEAI we orchestrate all six). If your stack is meaningfully different (Ruby, Go, Elixir, etc.) we should have a separate conversation about whether I'm a fit.

Architecture audit: $5,000 to $8,000 flat for 1 to 2 weeks. Build engagements: $100 to $150 per hour with a hard per-phase cap, so a typical 6 to 8 week phase runs $25,000 to $50,000. Fractional CTO retainer: $8,000 to $15,000 per month for 10 to 15 hours per week of architecture, hiring help, and code review. Most funded clients land in the middle of those ranges and the budget conversation is rarely the blocker — the bigger question is usually whether the scope is right.

Honest answer: usually no. Pre-funded teams need to spend dollars on product and customer development, not on a senior contractor. If you're pre-PMF, the right move is usually a co-founder, not a contractor. I'll happily do a 30-minute call to confirm that's true for your specific situation and point you toward better-fit resources if so.

A 15-minute call. No deck, no slides. We talk about what you're shipping, where engineering is the bottleneck, and whether the shape of this work makes sense for either of us. Either way, you walk away with a senior engineer's read on your situation.