I build the backends
that don’t fall over.▋
Halden Ross — independent, staff-level backend & distributed-systems engineer for hire. Builds that ship, systems that stay up, and a clean handoff so your team can run it without me.
$ what are you building?▋
I stand up a pragmatic backend you can actually maintain: clean API, the right database, auth, payments, and CI/CD — scoped to ship, not to impress. No resume-driven architecture.
Illustrative results for this template. Outcomes vary by system, team, and constraints.
Five ways to put a staff engineer on the problem.
Pick the shape that fits — a build with a finish line, reliability work, an integration, an embedded pair of hands, or a few hours of senior judgment a week.
0→1 Product Builds
From empty repo to paying customers — on a stack you can actually maintain.
↳ Logistics marketplace: empty repo → first paying customer in 11 weeks, owned by 2 engineers.read more scale --reliabilityScale & Reliability
Find where it breaks, fix the hot paths, and keep it up without a hero on call.
↳ Payments service: p99 1900ms → 280ms, carried a 9× launch-day spike with zero incidents.read more integrateAPIs & Integrations
Versioned APIs and resilient integrations that don’t break your consumers.
↳ Replaced a nightly ERP batch with an event-driven sync — data freshness 24h → 28s.read more join teamTeam Augmentation (Staff IC)
A staff-level pair of hands that leaves your team faster, not dependent.
↳ Embedded two quarters: deploy frequency 4×, on-call pages down 52%.read more adviseTechnical Advisory / Fractional CTO
Senior judgment — architecture, hiring, and a roadmap you can defend.
↳ A pre-Series-A architecture review caught a data-model dead end — avoided a ~$400k rebuild.read moreEngineering stories, with the numbers.
Problem → architecture → measured outcome. The way I’d write it up for your team.
Cut checkout p99 latency 85% before a 9× launch
A payments checkout service buckled under marketing spikes. I traced the hot paths, fixed the data layer and queueing, and added SLO-driven autoscaling — so launch day was a non-event.
Empty repo to first paying customer in 11 weeks
A two-person team had a design and no backend. I built a lean, maintainable marketplace backend — listings, matching, payments, and notifications — that they could run themselves.
Discovery → architecture → delivery → handoff.
Visible progress every week, a price before any code, and a deliberate handoff so there’s no key-person risk.
Discovery
A call and a short written brief: what you’re building, what hurts, what “done” looks like, and the real constraints. No charge, no pitch.
Architecture & plan
A lightweight design — diagrams, ADRs, and a scoped plan with milestones and a fixed or capped price, in writing, before any code.
Iterative delivery
Small, reviewable increments shipped behind a weekly demo and a written update. You see progress every week, not at the end.
Handoff & support
Docs, runbooks, and a walkthrough so your team can run it without me — plus a support window after launch. You own everything.
Three ways to work together.
Fixed-scope when there’s a finish line, a retainer when there isn’t, advisory when you need judgment over hands.
Fixed-scope project
A defined build, a defined price
0→1 builds, scale work, and integrations with a clear finish line.
- A written scope & milestones
- A fixed or capped price
- Weekly demo + written update
- Code, IaC & docs you own
Engineering retainer
Reserved days, every week
Embedded staff-IC work and ongoing build capacity with continuity.
- Reserved capacity (days/week)
- Hands-on building & review
- Direct access on Slack
- Monthly written summary
Advisory retainer
Fractional technical leadership
Founders who need senior judgment, architecture, and hiring help.
- Weekly office hours
- Architecture & security reviews
- Hiring & interview support
- A maintained roadmap
What clients say after the handoff.
Halden found the actual bottleneck in days, not weeks, and left us with dashboards we still use. Launch day was the calmest one we’ve had.
VP Engineering, Series-B payments platform
He built us something we could actually own. Two years later we’re still on the same core — no rewrite, no regrets.
Co-founder & CTO, Logistics startup
He raised our whole bar and then made himself unnecessary — which is exactly what we asked for. The dashboards and habits stuck.
Head of Platform, Scale-up SaaS
Tools I’ve open-sourced.
Built from real engagements — the kind of small, dependable infrastructure I reach for.
A tiny, dependable job queue on Postgres — outbox pattern, idempotency, and at-least-once delivery without Kafka.
Define SLOs and error budgets as code; generates Grafana dashboards and burn-rate alerts.
OpenTelemetry sampling middleware that keeps the traces that matter and drops the rest.
Reproducible Postgres benchmarking harness for finding the query that’s actually slow.
Illustrative open-source for this template; a live GitHub feed is a backend feature.
Have something that has to ship — or stay up?
Book a 30-minute call. We’ll talk through what you’re building, what hurts, and whether I’m the right person for it. No charge, no pitch — and a scoped plan before any work begins.