Michael R.

Fractional CTO | Harden AI-Generated Apps for Production | HIPAA/SOC 2

Your AI-built app works in the demo. Mostly. Now you face real customers, real data, and security questions you can't answer. The AI patches symptoms; the root causes stay. The devs say "done", and you can't check. Every technical decision still lands on your desk. That is fixable, not by re-checking every concern with AI yourself. You need someone who takes responsibility and makes sure the product is well-architected, documented, ready for scale and due diligence. Someone with the judgment to challenge AI's answers. A partner you can trust, so you sleep at night - one who helps you decide with evidence in front of you, not promises. 🔸 𝐖𝐇𝐘 𝐌𝐄 ▸ 18 years in software engineering ▸ 3 startups from scratch to production ▸ Top 3% on Upwork ▸ US and European business hours, proven over a 5-year US CRM engagement ▸ I know what AI makes faster and what it makes worse 🔸 𝐈𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔 ▸ You built something with AI tools (Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit, Base44, Cursor, Claude Code), or an agency built it and left. It is stuck at 90%, not production-ready. You need a senior human to review, harden, and take it live. This is the work I do best ▸ You need to know before you spend more: is this codebase worth hardening, or is a rebuild cheaper? A verdict from someone with no stake in the answer ▸ A dev team is building for you, and you want someone on your side of the table: review the work, check milestones before you pay ▸ You run the business, not the tech. I make the technical decisions with you, in plain language. Ops lead or VP holding someone else's system? Same seat, same problem ▸ Your product handles regulated data (HIPAA/SOC2, InsurTech) or AI features (LLM APIs, RAG) that must be safe before real users touch them ▸ You are starting from zero. I took 3 startups from idea to production 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐭: companies with an existing CTO, staff augmentation, mobile-only products, quick fixes on a prototype you plan to throw away, or audit paperwork alone. 🔸 𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐖𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐏𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝟏 - Production Readiness Review | $1,500 fixed | 5-7 days Read-only access to the codebase: yours, your vendor's, or one AI wrote. I check what breaks first under real users: access control, secrets and API keys, data integrity, tenant isolation, rollback, AI call costs. You get a clear verdict: harden it or rebuild it, and exactly why. Plus: ▸ Findings ranked by business risk, each with evidence and a fix estimate ▸ A hardening roadmap with milestones you can check yourself ▸ Compliance gap notes (HIPAA, SOC2) where they apply Architecture document and AWS cost projection: scoped after the first look. If we proceed, the fee applies to Phase 2 - that credit is optional. Need the review fully independent? Say so. 𝐏𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝟐 - Harden & Take Live | fixed price per milestone, from $4,500 | 4-8 weeks ▸ Your stack stays. No redesign: I fix what the review found, in order of risk, until real customers can rely on it. Milestones come from the review roadmap; you approve each before the next ▸ I lead the work. My own build stack is .NET and AWS; for hands-on code in your stack I bring or vet the engineers. Nobody learns your stack on your budget ▸ Staging before production, rollback built in, failures that surface loudly. Everything runs in your accounts. No lock-in ▸ Starting from zero? $4,500/month, 2 days per week: I architect, hire the team, and lead the build to MVP in 90-120 days 𝐏𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝟑 - Ongoing Strategic CTO | $1,100-$2,250/month | 0.5-1 day per week ▸ Architecture decisions, team mentorship, investor due diligence support. Or alone: I oversee your dev team and check each milestone before you pay No code yet? 𝐏𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝟎 - Build Blueprint | $1,000 fixed | 2-3 days: architecture sketch, realistic MVP scope, timeline and rough budget. 🔸 𝐌𝐘 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐉𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐒 ▸ Quote-Bot, through Rendered Source (InsurTech) - the product that replaced previous legacy CRM. Omni-channel insurance sales CRM: phone, video, email, and chat built in. Per-agency isolated deployments on AWS. AI deal prediction and chatbot. Designed for SOC2/HIPAA from day one. Team of 5. MVP in 4 months, grown over 5 years. ▸ YEZ (Automotive) - Car repair booking platform serving instant quotes across 150M+ spare-part records through 10+ external API integrations. Six web apps, from customer portal and repair shop dashboard to CRM and CMS. 8 deployable .NET services, Docker, CI/CD. Team of 4. MVP in 6 months including a pivot. ▸ Ecoplaces (Hospitality) - Countryside hotel booking platform - guest-facing search and booking plus the full admin back-office: catalog, SEO-optimized CMS, order management. Team of 2. MVP in 3 months, full product in 1 year. 🔸 𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐈 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊 KISS and YAGNI. I push back on overengineering, and I will not tell you to rebuild when a fix is cheaper. 🔸 𝐋𝐄𝐓'𝐒 𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐊 Tell me what you've built or inherited - I'll tell you if I can help and which Phase fits.