Fractional software architect
I review what you have, fix it at a fixed price, build what is missing,
and stay on as your technical lead if you want.
Factories in 18 countries run on a system I helped build.
About 600 industrial companies use it to plan and track production. I designed and built core parts of it.
I designed a whole business platform and built almost all of it.
Customers, quotes, orders and a marketplace in one system, for the construction sector. From nothing to live in 19 months, and the client kept me on after launch.
A fleet of buses updated in hours, without touching one.
The cameras of an AI video platform for public transport, where I was technical lead for two years. I also built the remote control for a self-driving farm rover, in six months.
In 15 days I know what state your software is in.
I fix what matters, at a price agreed before I start.
I build what is missing.
And if you want, I stay.
Nine centuries old, and neither is perfectly straight. Bologna keeps measuring and mending them. I do that for software.
You already have software
A supplier built it and you can’t judge the result.
New versions keep arriving late and nobody can explain why.
The developer who knew everything has left.
It was built fast, with AI tools or by a freelancer, and now it has paying customers.
You need software built
You have a product to launch and nobody senior to build it.
You need a first version in months, and it has to hold up with real customers.
What you have cannot be fixed and needs a clean start.
The usual first step
A fixed-price review. You can stop there, or use it as the start of everything else.
€4,200
Fixed price
15 days
From the start to the written report, in Italian or English
On a small product I read everything. On a large one I map the whole and go deep where the risk is. At the start we agree which parts matter most to you, and the report says what I read in depth, what I sampled and what I did not open.
A small product
A large product
Read in depth
Sampled
Mapped, not opened
Fixed prices, agreed before I start. No hourly meter.
A confidentiality agreement before I see anything.
During the review I only look. I change nothing.
Not for you if you need a formal security test or a compliance audit, or if your team only needs extra hands.
I read the code, look at the servers it runs on and talk to the people who build it. Within 15 days you get a written report, in Italian or English: what I found, what is not working now, what will stop working as you grow, and what I would do. Every fix has a price and a number of days.
The report is yours. Pick the fixes you want and I do them at the price in the report. Or hand it to your own team.
A fixed monthly plan where I stay on as the technical lead for your software, working with your team. Some call this a fractional CTO.
What I found
What is not working now
What will stop working as you grow
What I would do, with a price and a number of days for every fix
What to leave alone
What I covered: what I read in depth, what I sampled, what I did not open
A one-page summary in plain language, and a call where I walk you through it
What a review measures: how far out of true, and what it costs to put right.
Review report · What I would do
Example
Every fix, with its price and its days
Invented findings and figures, to show how the report reads.
The nightly backup leaves out the uploaded files, and nobody has ever tried a recovery.
After a failure the orders would come back without their contracts, photos and invoices.
Add the files to the backup, rehearse one full recovery and write down the steps.
2 days
€1,000
One password opens all your data. It sits in the code, and two people who left still have it.
Nobody can tell who read or changed what.
Separate access for the app, the reports and each person. No password left in the code.
1 day
€500
The website and the invoices each work out the price of an order, and they round differently.
About one invoice in 300 differs by a few cents from what the customer saw, and is corrected by hand.
One calculation used by both, checked against last year’s invoices.
4 days
€2,000
The order import loads the whole file into memory before it saves anything.
Fine for today’s 2,000 orders a night. At about 6,000 it runs out of memory and the night’s orders are lost.
Rewrite it to work in batches that pick up where they stopped.
5 days
€2,500
The reports section is the oldest code you have and the hardest to read.
It works, and it changed twice in three years. A rewrite would cost €8,000 and show nothing new.
—
—
All four fixes
You choose which ones. The price is the one written here.
12 days
€6,000
When it does not exist yet
I design and build the whole product, not one part of it. We agree what gets built and a fixed price before I start.
Corno Grande, 2,912 m. Nobody starts up without a route.
Phone apps
For Android and iPhone, published on both stores
Native Android and iOS
Web app
What your customers see and use
React, TypeScript, Next.js
Behind the scenes
The rules and logic that make it work
C#/.NET, Python
Data
Where everything is stored
PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MongoDB
Going live
New versions released automatically
Docker, GitHub Actions
Cloud
The servers it all runs on
AWS
I have built each of these parts myself. My first Android app dates from 2017.
Tell me what you need builtExperience
Products built from nothing, and large systems that other people wrote. Ask me about any of them on the call.
Construction
I was the only software architect and almost the whole team: I worked out what it had to do, designed it, built nearly all of it and put it online. It went live in 19 months, and after launch the client kept me on to look after it and extend it. When I left, dozens of companies were using it, about 4,000 people in all.
One system for
Manufacturing
About 600 industrial companies plan and track their production with it. In two and a half years I designed and built its production calendar, its production planning and its quality control. I also built the web apps that work out production figures in real time, which went out to every customer.
Production planning
Public transport
I owned the main design decisions and directed up to two developers. The cameras sat on dozens of buses we could not get to, on connections that came and went, yet a new version went out across the fleet in hours. The only thing we waited for was the buses. I also designed how the video is captured and analysed by AI on the devices themselves.
A new version going out across the fleet
Agriculture
From a control centre, the operator sends commands and follows the machine’s data and live video. In the fields the signal comes and goes, so I designed the link to keep working when it weakens.
The signal in the fields comes and goes
E-commerce
Three months on the online shop of one of the world’s leading luxury retailers. I came in from outside, into years of code written by other people.
Finding my way in someone else’s software is what a review asks of me too.
About me
I came from Abruzzo for university and stayed. MSc in Computer Engineering, University of Bologna, with highest honours. Away from client work I go swing dancing and play keyboards.
The other keyboard
Tell me what the software does, or what it should do, and what worries you. If I am not the right person, I will say so.
