04 · run
Fractional architect, embedded.
One day a week, inside your team. PR review, integration design, roadmap ownership, and hands-on engineering when it matters. A senior operator for merchants and agencies that don't need a full-time CTO yet — but can't afford not to have a senior architect on the bridge.
// what you get
Inside the retainer.
Weekly architecture review
A standing 90-minute session with your engineering lead. Open PRs, open Celigo flows, the thing the agency just proposed — we work through it.
PR + design review
I read every non-trivial PR touching integrations, checkout, or data flow. Comments land before merge, not after a Black Friday.
Integration design
Any new Shopify, NetSuite, ERP, 3PL, or AI integration — I design it, write the spec, and stay in the loop until it ships.
Roadmap ownership
A living architecture roadmap for the next four quarters. Reviewed monthly with CTO / Head of eCom. Kept honest.
On-demand Slack
Shared Slack channel. Async answers within the business day. For outages, I'm on the bridge.
// ideal fit
Who retains me.
- Shopify Plus brand, $10M+ GMV, lean eCom team (2–6 engineers).
- NetSuite-powered merchant with no in-house architect.
- Agency wanting senior architect oversight white-labeled into client work.
- Fund portfolio brand post-acquisition, pre-full-CTO.
// faq
The retainer, explained.
- How much does a fractional architect retainer cost?
- Retainer starts at $6,000 per month for one day a week embedded, scaling up to $18,000 for two days a week with active integration builds inside the retainer. Three-month minimum, month-to-month after.
- What's the difference between this and a fractional CTO?
- A fractional CTO owns hiring, vendor relationships, company-wide technical strategy. A fractional architect owns the commerce stack: platform, integrations, data flows, release process. I scope much tighter and ship more code.
- Will you do hands-on engineering work on retainer?
- Yes. A portion of the retainer is allocated to hands-on work — integration code, Shopify Functions, Celigo flows, migrations. Heavy builds that exceed the retainer are scoped as separate projects.
- Do you work with agencies or only end-merchants?
- Both. Roughly a third of my retainer work is white-labeled inside agencies — I'm the senior architect behind the account without being on the agency's payroll. See the 'For Agencies' page.
- Can we start with an audit and upgrade to a retainer?
- That's the most common path. Audit first, then retainer if it makes sense. The audit fee credits against the first two months of the retainer.