Hands-on development

Who this is for

You need senior capacity you can trust. Your team is stretched, a contractor has left something half-finished, or there is a piece of work nobody on staff has done before. You want someone who can pick up an unfamiliar codebase, make sensible decisions without hand-holding, and leave the code better than they found it.

I have written code professionally since 2013, starting with WordPress themes on Elance and moving through 250+ Upwork contracts into platforms. I still write code most weeks.

How it works

• Read first. I start with the codebase, the hosting and the backlog, and agree the first piece of work with you.
• Agree the shape. Either a block of days per week, or a sprint with a defined goal.
• Ship in small pieces. Reviewed pull requests, tested changes and deployments you can see.
• Write it down. Every engagement ends with documentation the next developer can follow.

Engagements run from a few weeks to several months.

What you get

• Production code, reviewed and tested, in your repository and to your conventions.
• Architecture and infrastructure: APIs, databases and hosting on AWS or DigitalOcean, designed for the load you actually have.
• CI and deployment, so releases are routine rather than an event.
• Docs the next developer can read, because the work should not depend on me.

What I work with

Front-end in Nuxt.js, Vue, React and TypeScript. Back-end in Laravel, Adonis.js and Node.js, with REST APIs and MySQL. WordPress and WooCommerce, including custom themes. AWS, DigitalOcean, Cloudflare, Docker and GitHub Actions. On Worldview Pro I built the Laravel API, infrastructure and Nuxt.js front-end; on Din Solicitors, a custom WordPress theme.

What it is not

It is not a cheap pair of hands for a backlog nobody has prioritised. If the real problem is direction rather than capacity, I will say so, and fractional leadership may be the better fit. I also do not take on stacks I cannot do well; if yours is one, I will tell you on the first call.

Questions people ask

How is it priced? On my day rate, £650 a day excluding VAT, booked in blocks of days per week.

Can you work with our existing developers? Yes. I work in your repository, follow your review process and pair with your team where it helps.

Who writes the code? I do. If a project needs more capacity, I can bring in people from Devute under my supervision, and I say so up front.

If you have code that needs a senior pair of hands, book a 30-minute call.