Fixed-price engagements. Fast turnaround. Senior-level judgment without the enterprise overhead.
I'm Scott, an experienced backend, data, and cloud engineer with 25+ years building mission-critical systems and leading technical teams. I specialize in small, fixed-price engagements that remove technical blockers, stabilize infrastructure, develop leaders, and deliver fast, measurable outcomes.
Stuck on a backend, data, or AWS problem? Building your first engineering team? I can help you get unstuck.
Fortune 500 Leadership
Senior Team Lead, DevOps & Voice Recognition at Garmin
15 years at Garmin, 4 promotions, and hands-on ownership of production voice systems used by real customers in high-stakes environments. I bring enterprise-grade technical judgment to founder-speed execution -- practical direction without bureaucracy.
Every system audit, cost review, and deployment strategy I run evaluates your infrastructure against this comprehensive design methodology.
Tier 1
Global Access & Distribution
Optimizes edge performance, accelerates global page load times, and applies web firewalls to protect internal resources from malicious traffic and DDoS attacks.
Route 53 · CloudFront · AWS WAF · Application Load Balancers · API GatewayTier 2
Modern Compute & Orchestration
Matches business processing logic to the exact right runtime paradigm. Decouples heavy processes to maximize scaling throughput and stop runtime cost leaks.
AWS Lambda · ECS / Fargate · EC2 · SQS · EventBridgeTier 3
Scalable Data Solutions
Establishes robust, low-latency state engines. Organizes architecture based on individual dataset access requirements, separating transactional records from temporary cache tiers.
RDS / Aurora · DynamoDB · ElastiCache / Redis · Amazon S3Tier 4
Cloud Security & Governance
The secure isolation foundation. Enforces strict virtual networks, parameter encryption, and precise identity policy boundaries across all application assets.
VPC · Subnets · Security Groups · IAM Roles & Policies · Secrets ManagerStarting prices shown. Additional work billed at $150/hr, only with your explicit approval.
Not sure which service fits? Use the AWS Architecture Layer Selector →
Starting at $1,200
Move from vision to infrastructure without the guesswork. Using a structured technical intake framework, I translate your product roadmap into a highly optimized, resilient AWS component architecture tailored to your scaling needs.
Deliverables: High-level component topology map, AWS service selection matrix, and an initial data-flow blueprint.
Scope: Greenfield projects or isolated sub-systems requiring up to 6 core AWS services (e.g., S3, Lambda, DynamoDB, Cognito).
Starting at $1,200
Python-based data processing solutions when your data is stuck in Excel, CSVs, or manual workflows. Automate transformations, validations, and reporting.
Scope: Python Scripts, Scheduled Jobs, AWS Lambda Automation, S3 Workflows, and SQL-Based Transformations.
Delivery: Single Workflow or Report Automation.
Starting at $1,200
End-to-end database services: schema design, implementation, and performance optimization. I design normalized schemas, build production databases, and fix slow queries.
SQL Expertise: 25+ years across PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and MySQL.
Scope: Up to 10 Tables OR 5 Query Optimizations OR a Complete Small Database Design.
Starting at $800
One-on-one or team coaching for engineering leaders on hiring, team dynamics, process improvement, and technical leadership development.
Context: 15 Years at Garmin with 4 Promotions to Senior Team Lead.
Scope: Up to 3 Coaching Sessions or 1 Team Workshop. Best for first-time leads, struggling teams, or scaling organizations.
AWS Infrastructure
A marine routing and weather-forecasting SaaS built end-to-end on a cost-efficient, automated AWS stack -- used by sailors worldwide. Demonstrates all four tiers of the architecture framework in production.
Tier 1: CloudFront & S3 App Host
Tier 2: API Gateway & Lambda Workers
Tier 3: DynamoDB NoSQL Storage Engine
Tier 4: IAM Isolation & Encrypted Parameters
Leadership Coaching
A Director-assigned challenge: step into a disrupted team with hidden trust issues, run a direct Trust Audit, uncover the one repeated blocker, and restore team velocity within weeks -- no process overhaul, just the right diagnosis.
Read the full story →Database Optimization
Persistent slow pages and high database load with no obvious fix. Traced to one over-generalized OR-based query causing full table scans under load. Millisecond response times restored without any infrastructure changes.
Read the full story →25+ years building mission-critical systems. Deep hands-on expertise in backend engineering, data pipelines, and AWS serverless architectures -- from Garmin production to founder-scale startups.
Fixed-price engagements eliminate uncertainty. Scope is agreed upfront, additional work requires your explicit approval, and pricing is transparent from day one.
Most projects begin within 3-5 business days of payment. I respond to all inquiries within 24 hours. No calendar ping-pong, no administrative delays.
Stuck on a backend, data, or AWS problem?
Building your first engineering team?
I can help you get unstuck.
Share your challenge by email and receive next steps within 24 hours.
I confirm the work falls within typical scope, or we adjust pricing upfront. No surprises.
Simple, transparent checkout. Work begins within 3-5 business days of payment.
Fast turnaround, clear communication, and production-ready results.