Pleased to meet you.

My approach

From early-stage startups to established companies, I have learned that the most valuable contributions come from a handful of unglamorous habits:

• Understanding the full context of technical decisions and their business impact
• Working with existing systems rather than insisting on rewrites
• Reducing complexity instead of adding new technologies
• Building sustainable processes that scale with the team

Why Stanquette

I combine technical depth with strategic thinking. Unlike consultants who only hand over recommendations, I can architect the solution and implement it. Unlike pure developers, I understand the business context and team dynamics that drive technical decisions.

I love existing codebases. Many companies struggle with systems that grew organically. I am quick at understanding complex systems and identifying the few things that are actually holding back growth.

Mentorship is built into the work. The best solutions leave your team stronger. Every engagement includes knowledge transfer and skill development.

House rules

Less tech is better. Rails is a prime engine for having less technology over more. Do you really need three data stores and twenty services — and how many people do you have to maintain them?

Merging services back together is fine. Microservices are great when investor money is ample. When the market tightens, rebundling into a monolith is just as valid as the original extraction.

I do not need to redo a system to fix it. Coming from a long career in film, I know that deadlines and budget constraints got you where you are. Your app did its job — it deserves respect, not scolding.

Rails is great for LLMs. Terse code means less to ingest. I structure libraries and documentation so a model is productive from the very first prompt.

Recent work

• WeTransfer

  Built high-throughput storage services and managed the team responsible, cutting cloud infrastructure costs by a significant margin.

• Cheddar

  Shipped key features and managed the web/backend team of four — 1:1s, mentorship, performance. Deploys went from nearly an hour to single-digit minutes.

• Cora Optimised fleet utilisation by a factor of two and implemented robust, atomic processing workflows. Case study →

• Healthcare scaleup

  Helping the team navigate AI-assisted development, plus long-needed maintenance and simplification.

A good fit if…

• You are open to having decision-makers work directly with me
• You want everything out of the Ruby/Rails stack you already run on
• …or you are starting a new initiative with a lean Ruby-based setup
• You are open to forms of collaboration other than full-time employment

Technical expertise