Services
What I do, what it costs, and roughly how long it takes. Everything here is work I actually do, priced at £150/hr (2 hour minimum) or £950/day. Every engagement gets a fixed scope and price agreed up front before any work starts.
Development
PHP, TypeScript, and full-stack web development. Complex backend systems, API design, ecommerce platforms, legacy modernisation, and performance optimisation.
Technical Leadership
Fractional CTO services, architecture decisions, code review culture, hiring guidance, team standards, and technical roadmapping for growing teams.
Infrastructure & DevOps
Linux server management, Ansible automation, Proxmox virtualisation, CI/CD pipelines, database administration, and deployment strategy.
Strategy & Training
Technical audits, tech debt prioritisation, build-vs-buy decisions, team upskilling, and AI-enhanced development workflows with tools like Claude Code.
Specific Ways I Can Help
Move to Infrastructure as Code
Take hand-managed servers to fully repeatable Ansible/Bash provisioning, so any environment can be rebuilt from scratch on demand. Proxmox and bare metal a speciality.
Typically 5–15 days depending on estate size
Automated Error Triage Pipeline
Error logging wired into GitHub issues with AI-driven deduplication and first-pass triage. Incidents become actionable tickets in minutes, not days. I run this in production.
Typically 5–10 days to first triaged incident
AI Delivery Governance Rollout
Get your team shipping agent-written code safely: containment, policy guardrails, and automated QA gates, built on my open source tooling and dog-fooded daily.
Typically 3–10 days, then optional retained support
Training & Support
Hands-on upskilling for your team: AI-assisted development done properly, modern PHP, infrastructure and delivery practice. Follow-up support retained as needed.
From 1 day; retained blocks by arrangement
Strategic Guidance
Fractional CTO input: technical roadmap, architecture decisions, build-vs-buy, hiring and team standards. Senior ownership without the full-time hire.
From 1–2 days/month retained
Third-Party API & Service Review
Choosing payment providers, SaaS platforms or integration partners? Before you commit, I evaluate the candidates from an engineering point of view: API quality, reliability, lock-in, real integration cost.
Typically 1–3 days per shortlist
CI/CD & QA Pipeline Configuration
Set up or tune your quality gates: automated QA pipelines that run identically locally and in CI, with no vendor lock-in. I publish and maintain open source QA tooling for PHP and TypeScript.
Typically 2–5 days
Performance Rescue
Slow pages, creaking databases. Profiling and deep SQL optimisation with measurable before/after numbers. My first rescue took page loads from 10+ seconds to 1-2.
Typically 2–5 days to first measurable gains
Deployment Safety
Tag-based blue/green deployment with instantaneous rollback and a sensible human gate. This is how my production estates deploy.
Typically 3–7 days
Security Hardening
Cut production off from the public internet: VPN and tunnel-based access, client certificates, aggressive WAF rules. Dramatically shrink your attack surface.
Typically 3–10 days
Backup & Disaster Recovery
Tested, automated, off-site backups and a recovery plan you have actually rehearsed, so a bad day stays a bad day rather than an extinction event.
Typically 2–5 days
How I Work
- Rate£150/hr GBP, 2 hour minimum, or £950/day. Negotiable for longer engagements.
- LocationRemote only, UK timezone. Flexible on hours for international clients.
- EngagementFlexible. One-off audits to long-term embedded development.
- ResponseWithin 24 hours on business days.
- CapacityFor ongoing work: an agreed monthly minimum and maximum, billed hourly. Capacity is reserved, you only pay for what's used. Get in touch for specifics.
Why Hire Me
- 25 years hands-on experience across PHP, TypeScript, Linux, and databases.
- Published author of "The Art of Modern PHP 8". Zend Certified Engineer.
- Proven track record with large-scale, high-pressure systems and legacy codebases.
- Comfortable at the keyboard and the whiteboard. I can write the code or lead the team.
- I build the guardrail tooling for AI-assisted delivery: the containment and QA-gate tooling other teams install, dog-fooded daily in production.
Fixed-Scope Engagements
A fixed-price alternative to open-ended hourly work, for when you want a defined deliverable instead of an open-ended clock.
Technology & Infrastructure Review
A structured 5-day audit of your codebase, infrastructure, and delivery pipeline. Fixed scope, fixed price, a written report with prioritised findings. Not an open-ended hourly engagement.
Fixed price, get in touch for a quote
Agentic Delivery Readiness Assessment
Same format, one tier up: how ready is your team's AI-assisted delivery pipeline for production intensity, where the guardrails are missing and what breaks first.
Fixed price, get in touch for a quote