I’m a senior technologist currently available for Freelance/Consulting engagements and potential full-time employment. I have twelve years of experience working to create web application software. Read on to find out how I might be able to help your organisation. Alternatively, to read about my skills and experience, please have a look at my CV.
I have extensive experience both in hands-on software engineering and in leading engineering teams, and can use this experience to help make your organisation better at delivering software. Here are some examples of situations where I might be able to help, please click through to see how we might work together in each case:
- You are looking for a Freelance Web Developer to build software for you
- You are an early-stage startup founder looking for a CTO and/or technical guidance
- You run a development team and want to improve your hiring process
- You run a development team and want to improve your development process and/or engineering culture
- You run a development team and want to make your software more secure
- You want to hire a full-time engineering manager
You have a requirement to create or modify some software or are looking for ongoing Rails/Ruby/JS expertise on a freelance basis. Here are some things that I can do for you in that capacity:
- Plan a prioritised backlog with you that will both a) provide value to your organisation and b) have a good chance of being implemented well
- Define a clear "definition of ready" and "definition of done" so our expectations for each work item are clear
- Work with your existing team to plan a high-quality implementation that is appropriate for the business and technical context
- Implement and deploy code that meets requirements, at a high standard of security, performance, and reliability
- Participate in a code review process so that the software that I and the rest of the team create is of a consistently higher standard
- Report to you and your team exactly what I worked on, where it is deployed to, and how to test it on a daily and weekly basis
- Regularly meet with you to discuss the work, my performance, and anything else you need to help your organisation ship valuable software
For freelance development work, I can be available for 1-4 8-hour days per week.
If this sounds like it might be useful to you, the next step would be to arrange a call to discuss further. Before the call I'll ask you to send over any documentation/specifications you might have for the work you intend for me to do. During the call I'll ask you a series of questions to determine our mutual expectations and find out if we're a good fit in terms of work/communication style and skill-set.
From there, we could plan a two-week trial engagement to start. In order for you to get the best value for money from those two weeks, we could work together to plan a backlog, get my development environment set up, meet your team, get me access to all relevant SaaS applications that you use, and get any required legal paperwork out of the way. The start date for our trial should be after we have all of that ground-work in place.
After a trial engagement, we'll both be well position to determine whether or not we should continue working together, and can discuss a longer-term engagement as appropriate.
To begin this process, please get in touch with me at ali.najaf@gmail.com so we can arrange a call to talk further.
You're an early-stage startup founder looking for a senior technical partner. Perhaps you're still pre-prototype, or you've put something together yourself. Maybe you've hired freelancers or junior developers to start development work. Here are some things I might be able to help you with:
- Review your code and application to give you a second opinion on it's quality (in terms of security, reliability, and performance)
- Help you to find and assess developer candidates to add to your team
- Participate in your development process, including feature development work/bugfixing and peer-review of any code
- Help you to plan your development roadmap
...
Talk about growing a development team at LRUG: https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/12118-lrug-june
Ideas about better code and improving your organisation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ4ONrAU8fE
Talk about security practices for Rails teams:
This means that for medium/long-term engagements I'm looking to spend the majority of the time working remotely. For shorter engagements I'm happy to travel to wherever you are, so long as you can cover transport and accommodation.
For teams based in Tokyo, I'm happy to do e.g. one or two days per week at your office, or perhaps one week per month at your office, again so long as you can cover travel + accommodation.
I'm happy to attend regular meetings by video call in EU/US/JP working hours.
Full-time employment is a serious commitment, and before I take such a step I'd need very strong assurance that we're a good mutual fit for each other. If I already know you and we have a similar world-view and attitude towards software engineering, then it will be a much easier decision for me to make.
For everyone else, the best thing to do would be to work together on freelance or consulting basis for 3-6 months, and then have a conversation later about whether or not a permanent position makes sense. That way you can get a clear idea of what working with me will do for your organisation, and I can ensure that I meet your expectations.