# Software engineering consulting for products that already have constraints

I provide independent software engineering consulting for companies building, scaling, or modernizing production software. The engagement is not a body-rental contract and not a slide-only architecture review. I work as a senior engineer and architect: diagnose the real constraint, decide what should exist, and either implement the path or leave the team with a path they can execute. Typical clients are founders, CTOs, heads of engineering, and product companies that need boutique-level engineering without hiring a full-time principal engineer or standing up a large vendor team. Work spans product engineering, system design, AI integration, and delivery reliability — always against a live system, a budget, and a date.

## Who this is for
- Founders and CTOs who need a senior engineer they can put in front of a messy product decision.
- Heads of engineering who need extra architecture and delivery capacity without a long hiring cycle.
- Product companies whose internal team is strong at shipping, but thin on system design, AI, or modernization.
- Digital agencies that need a senior engineering partner on a complex client system.
- Teams that already tried a large vendor and now need someone who will own the technical call.

## Consultant, agency, or another hire
The useful question is not brand. It is which failure mode you are buying insurance against.
### Hire internally when the work is ongoing product ownership
If you need someone in stand-ups for years, hire. Consulting compresses judgement and delivery into a defined constraint; it is a poor substitute for a team you intend to keep.

### Use an agency when you need a bench
Parallel frontend, backend, QA, and design capacity is a staffing problem. I do not pretend to be a 12-person studio. I am the senior partner you put on the hard path.

### Use an independent consultant when the call is expensive
Architecture, AI adoption, rescue, and modernization fail when the wrong thing is built confidently. You want one person whose incentives are the outcome, not utilization.

### Do not hire a consultant to rubber-stamp a decision already made
If the rewrite is politically locked, an external report will not save you. I will say so in the first conversation.


Canonical: https://ihar-ivaniuk.com/en/services/software-engineering-consulting