Services

Fractional Principal Engineer

James Phillips has over 25 years of experience building and operating software at companies including SpaceX, Netflix, Google, HashiCorp, and Sequoia Capital.

He can quickly form a mental model of a complex software system, identify the constraints that matter, and reason from first principles about what to build, change, simplify, or delete.

Areas of experience include:

• Software architecture and design
• Deleting things at all levels of the stack, and sometimes entire stacks and projects
• Critical code and design reviews
• Cloud infrastructure and DevOps
• Data engineering and data infrastructure
• High-performance real-time embedded systems
• Distributed systems
• Building and managing software teams, and teams of agents

Engagements are sold as a small number of fixed monthly slots. A slot gives your team reserved access to James throughout the month:

• 8 hours of scheduled time per month: in-person or via video, divided however you choose (architecture reviews, technical planning, pair programming, interviews)
• 8 hours of async time per month: typically via Slack, pull requests, or docs (code reviews, design feedback, general guidance, interview follow-ups), with responses usually within 24 hours
• In-person includes anywhere in Los Angeles, travel outside Los Angeles can be arranged with expenses billed separately
• Month-to-month, with no minimum commitment
• $8,000 per month per slot

Slots offer a way to add principal-level technical judgment when it has the most leverage, without recruiting a full-time principal engineer or making a long-term commitment.

If you’d like to find out more, please contact james@modulecollective.com.