The demo works
Shipping it safely, every week, is a different job. There are no tests, no staging, and every deploy is a held breath.
How I can help · Fractional CTO
A CTO for teams building with AI
I help you start right, or get unstuck: solid delivery, security, infrastructure and coding practices, booked by the half day.
Built your app with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Lovable or Bolt and can’t get it live? Stuck vibe coding →
Sound familiar?
Nobody knows the risks
Prompts may leak data, model costs creep up, and nobody can say what the agent is allowed to do.
The team is stuck
Velocity died somewhere between scope, architecture and AI-generated code that nobody fully understands.
How it works
Intro call
Thirty minutes, free. You tell me where it hurts, and I tell you honestly whether I can help.
Diagnose
A half day or a day in your code, your infrastructure and your team’s routine. I find the bottleneck.
Plan, or keep going
You get a written plan your team can run on its own, or we continue with a few days a month.
What I help with
Prototype to production
I review the architecture, put tests and evals around it, and set up CI/CD with staging and production.
You ship daily, with confidence.
Security review of an AI app
Prompt injection, what tools and agents may do, secrets, personal data sent to model vendors, logging and least privilege.
A ranked list of risks, and the top ones fixed.
Unstick a stalled build
A one- or two-day deep dive into why velocity died: scope, architecture, or code nobody understands anymore.
A one-week and a 30-day plan the team believes in.
How I work
- Tests first
- Test-driven development, so a change can be made on a Friday.
- Small iterations
- Small, frequent changes that customers see, measured, then kept or dropped.
- Continuous delivery
- CI/CD and continuous deployment: every merge can go to production.
- Infrastructure as code
- Declarative infrastructure that can be reviewed, rebuilt and handed over.
- Secure by default
- Least privilege, named accounts, and no secrets in prompts or repositories.
- Your team keeps it
- Pairing and written notes, so the practices last after I leave.
About me
I’m Peter. I have been shipping software for decades, from high-volume transactional systems to SaaS and marketplaces. I’ve hired and mentored dozens of engineers, and I still write code. I live in Paris.
- Founder & CTO, Formsort: venture-backed, over $1M in annual recurring revenue.
- Founder & CTO, Easy Pairings: product-market fit, 20 paying clients in the first year.
- Lead engineer, Better Mortgage: moved production from Mongo to Postgres without stopping it; interviewed dozens of engineers as the team grew from 7 to 25.
- Founding technical consultant, Mulberry: backend, AWS, CI/CD and security practices; the seed round closed during the engagement.
From colleagues and past teams
Peter Lada is a superlative engineer. Very team oriented, very agile, very talented. He knows how to run a team and how to get good engineers to perform at their best.
Simply put, he is smart and gets things done. On top of that, Peter has superb leadership and communication skills. He is an active problem solver, takes initiative when there is ambiguity, voices his concerns, and shares knowledge and ideas at every turn.
Rates
1,600 USD per day, billed in half days. A day is about seven focused hours, including preparation, async follow-up and written notes.
Unstick session
Half a day · 800 USD
One problem, looked at closely, with next steps.
Deep dive and plan
2 days · 3,200 USD
Written findings and a four-week plan.
Production sprint
5 days · 8,000 USD
Spread over two or three weeks, working with your team.
Ongoing
2 to 4 days a month
Same rate, month to month.
Costs and travel. My fee covers my time. Tokens, cloud and tooling run on your own accounts, with spending caps for anything that runs agents or evals. I work remotely by default; on-site work is by arrangement, with travel at cost.
Questions
Do you write code?
Yes, well, no: with modern tooling there’s no need to anymore. But I do create code, to get you unstuck and to show a practice in your own codebase. I’m not a long-term contractor, though: the goal is a team that doesn’t need me.
Which stacks?
For web apps: Python, TypeScript and JavaScript, Java. For mobile: Swift on iOS and Kotlin on Android. I don’t mind which cloud, but I have my parsimonious preferences.
Will you sign an NDA?
Yes. I also keep your code and data out of AI tools you haven’t approved.
Do you offer discounts?
Generally no, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Do you take equity?
Case by case, for part of the fee.
What about time zones?
I’m in Paris, which overlaps with US mornings. I can also do US evenings by appointment.
What if we need to cancel?
Reschedule for free with 48 hours’ notice. Later than that, the booked time is billed.
Get in touch
Tell me about your product and where it’s stuck. The first call is free.
Or send me a message: