Engineering leadership in growing companies is defined by the decisions that connect architecture to execution. I write about the systems that enable teams to deliver consistently, the tradeoffs that come with scaling, and how technical choices translate into outcomes based on what I’ve seen work in real environments.
The Boring Architecture Decisions That Quietly Compound
Every few years software engineers converge on a new paradigm, and suddenly it feels like you’re falling behind if you haven’t adopted it. Microservices. Event-driven architecture. Server-side rendering coming back around. Each of these emerged because real teams hit real scaling problems and needed better solutions. Before adopting any of them, ask whether your team…
Keep readingEvery Small Company Is in One of Three Places with AI
A few months ago I was catching up with a consultant friend who works with small and mid-sized companies. He told me about a client, a founder running a small services company, who had asked him, almost sheepishly, “Should we be doing something with AI?” The founder had seen the headlines, watched competitors mention it…
Keep readingBuilding a SaaS Platform from Zero, Part 2: The Product Architecture That Powered the Business
The multi-tenant database solved our scaling problem. Data updates that had previously taken weeks now flowed to subscribing clients automatically. Onboarding went from a technical project to a configuration exercise. The foundation was solid. But a database isn’t a product. Our clients weren’t paying for a well-designed schema; they were paying for access to healthcare…
Keep readingBuilding a SaaS Platform from Zero, Part 1: From a Dozen Databases to One
When I walked into The Ignition Group for the first time, the company had about a dozen paying clients and a proof of concept that had been duplicated for each of them. In one of our first conversations, the founder was straightforward with me: “We know this setup isn’t going to work long-term. That’s why…
Keep readingYour First Engineering Hire Shouldn’t Be a CTO
When I joined a healthcare data SaaS company as their first senior technical hire, nobody called me the CTO. The CEO needed someone who could build the product, and that’s what I did. I reported directly to him, I wrote code, I designed the database, I directed a small, contracted engineering team, and I started…
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