Senior engineering.
Fractional cost.
Team-scale output.
You get a senior architect who scopes the work, builds it, and owns it through handoff — augmented by parallel AI work streams that compress timelines without cutting corners. Three engagement tiers. One engineer accountable for the outcome.
Who this is built for
Engagement Tiers
Three levels of involvement. All tiers include direct access to Nick — no account manager, no escalation queue, no junior consultant doing the work.
Fractional Architect Retainer
~20 hours/month
Async architecture support with a monthly strategy call. Right for teams that have engineers but need a senior voice for design reviews, scoping decisions, and incident guidance — without blocking the calendar.
- Architecture and design reviews
- Async Q&A and code/PR feedback
- Monthly 60-minute strategy call
- Incident support and post-mortem review
- FinOps and cost optimization guidance
AI Dev Sprint
~40 hours/month
Active implementation with weekly standups. AI-augmented delivery compresses sprint timelines — parallel work streams handle boilerplate, research, and scaffolding while Nick owns the architecture and production-critical code.
- Active development and implementation
- Weekly standup + async coordination
- IaC authoring and deployment
- AI pipeline integration and tuning
- Documentation and handoff artifacts
Embedded Senior Engineer
~80 hours/month
Full sprint participation — planning, implementation, review, and retrospectives. Effectively a senior engineer on your team for the duration, without the hiring timeline, benefits overhead, or long-term commitment.
- Full sprint participation and planning
- Deep integration with your engineering team
- Hiring support and technical interviews
- Architecture roadmap and vendor evaluation
- Board-level technical presentation support
Fixed-Price Engagements
Defined scope. Fixed price. No surprises. Right when you know what you need and want a clear deliverable with a hard end date.
Architecture Assessment
Structured review of your current AWS environment — topology, cost, security posture, and operational gaps. Delivered as a prioritized findings report with specific remediation steps and effort estimates.
Deliverable: Written report + 60-min findings call
AWS Well-Architected Review
Formal review across all five AWS Well-Architected pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization. Benchmarked against AWS best practices with a roadmap of high-impact improvements.
Deliverable: Full WAR report + prioritized remediation roadmap
Hourly / Advisory
Direct access for scoping calls, architecture reviews, technical due diligence, or anything that doesn't fit a retainer model. No minimum commitment. Billed against a prepaid block.
Minimum block: 5 hours
More output. Same accountability.
Fractional engagement works because of how the work gets done. Research, scaffolding, documentation, and iteration cycles that used to take days now move in parallel — freeing capacity for the architectural decisions and production-critical work that require senior judgment.
You're not paying for the hours spent generating boilerplate. You're paying for the experience to know what to build, how to build it safely, and what to hand off so your team can operate it without calling us back.
The result: sprint velocity that looks more like a team than a contractor, at a fraction of the headcount cost.
faster on documentation, scaffolding, and boilerplate — freeing senior hours for architecture
reduction in time-to-first-deliverable compared to traditional fractional engagements
human ownership of production architecture, security decisions, and client communication
Why Not Just Hire?
A principal-level engineer runs $200–350K fully loaded. A big consulting firm sends juniors and bills for seniors. Here's how the math actually works.
| Option | Annual cost | Who does the work | Commitment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-time senior hire | $200–350K+ | One person, full availability | Long-term, benefits, equity |
| Large AWS consulting firm | $150–400K/project | Junior consultants, senior brand | Project-based, account manager tax |
| Cold Smoke — Tier 2 retainer | $54K/yr | Nick — scopes it, builds it, owns it | Month-to-month, cancel anytime |
Not sure which tier fits?
Book a 20-minute call. We'll look at your stack, your team size, and what you're actually trying to ship — and tell you exactly which engagement makes sense, or if none of them do.