Signal Rate is James Pain. I work with founders and teams who need someone they can trust with the technical side of a web product or platform.
I step in as the accountable technical leader for a fixed term. I set direction, unblock delivery, and represent engineering to the board or founders, while you find, or decide whether you need, a permanent hire.
An independent, unsentimental review of your codebase, infrastructure, and team. You get a prioritised list of what's actually wrong, and the documentation your business needs if a key person leaves tomorrow.
You know what you want to build but not how. I turn that into a concrete plan (data model, system design, and a phased estimate), then take it as far as you need: build it myself, lead your existing team through it, or find and bring in the right people to deliver it.
Not on this list? Most stacks share the same underlying decisions. Tell me what you're running and I'll tell you honestly if it's a fit.
Most of the founders I work with are handling data they can't afford to get wrong: customer records, financial details, or personal information under GDPR. I design for that from the architecture stage, not as a retrofit once a client or regulator asks.
It's free, informal, and takes about thirty minutes. You describe the situation, I ask questions, and we work out together whether it's actually worth taking further. Some conversations end here, and that's a fine outcome.
If there's a fit, I write up what I found, what I'd actually do about it, and what it costs. No obligation. It's yours to take elsewhere if you'd rather use it as a brief for someone else.
It's scoped from the start, so you know what "done" looks like. You work with me directly throughout, not an account manager or a delegate, with short regular updates instead of disappearing for weeks and reappearing with a reveal.
I'm happy to sign an NDA before the intro call if that's useful. Just say so when you get in touch. I keep my diary clear enough that a first call has, more than once, happened within an hour of someone reaching out.
A new Checkatrade product I took from the first line of code to a national launch, then built and handed over to the team running it today. It's now the subject of a national advertising campaign.
Checkatrade's first paid tooling product for tradespeople: a CRM unifying messages, bookings, payments, and job management. I designed the data and automation architecture, including the foundations for AI features like lead qualification and smart replies.
A system for drone companies to upload roof imagery and get automated condition assessments back. I trained the vision models to detect damage, wired up CVAT for annotation, and built the pipeline into homeowner-friendly PDF and web reports on Next.js and GCP.
I joined as founding CTO at an early stage and invented and built the patented system (US Patent #10943127) that turns multi-hour graduation footage into a personalised clip for each student. I scaled it to 1,000+ institutions including ASU and Harvard, led the company through Covid, and stayed through its acquisition by Herff Jones, the large US graduation services company.
Tell me what's going on: a team without direction, a system nobody trusts, or a build that needs a plan. I typically reply within a day.
James