Consulting

Staff-level engineer for when the backend becomes the bottleneck.

Something in production is slow, fragile, or too risky to touch, and the team has stopped being able to say why. That's the point where the problem has outgrown the backlog and become an architecture decision.

Production APIs, data pipelines, cloud architecture, reliability.

Book a 30-min intro call Free 30 minutes. No proposal on the first call. See ways to work together

You're probably here because of one of these

  • A critical path got slow

    The p99 crept up over months. Everyone has a theory. Nobody has a profile.

  • The data flow is a black box

    It works until it doesn't, and then no one can say what it did or replay it.

  • Changes feel dangerous

    Ownership blurred across services. A small change now needs three teams and a rollback plan.

  • The platform slows the team down

    Deploys drag, environments drift, and the infra bill grows faster than usage.

Recent work

  • ~70% faster end to end

    Re-architected a biotech platform's core data path

    Redesigned ingestion and retrieval across the platform's core data pipeline, cutting end-to-end processing time by roughly 70%.

    Read the case study

  • Billions of production events

    Defined the primitives and contracts behind an integrations platform

    Designed the shared stream, queue, and workflow primitives, plus the source and target contract conventions, underpinning a platform handling billions of production events.

    Validated across 16+ source and target integrations, including GitHub and Shopify.

    Read the case study

  • Cross-service platform conventions

    Established service boundaries across a multi-service Python platform

    Defined service ownership and API contract conventions across backend APIs, ETL and ML pipelines, monitoring, and CLI surfaces, reducing integration friction and making cross-team changes safer to coordinate.

    See related experience

  • Beyond previous load ceilings

    Led a backend beyond its previous architectural ceiling

    Architected the migration from a monolithic Elixir backend to service-oriented components and replaced a synchronous request path with distributed processing, allowing the platform to move beyond its previous load ceilings.

    See related experience

Ways to work together

Architecture Audit

For teams about to spend a quarter on a migration or a rewrite who want to know first whether it's the right one.

  • A dependency map of what actually talks to what
  • A ranked list of what's costing you, with numbers
  • A sequenced plan to fix it, with the trade-offs named
When this fits
  • A backend or data workflow is slow but the bottleneck is unclear
  • Planning a migration, service split, or architectural change
  • Cloud or platform works but feels fragile, costly, or operationally difficult
  • Leadership needs an external senior review before committing capacity
What I review
  • Architecture, boundaries, and dependency structure
  • Data paths, database behavior, and performance
  • Cloud infrastructure, deployment, and operational reliability
  • Observability and incident readiness
  • Security, access control, and compliance where relevant

$6,000

Fixed scope, two weeks

Discuss an architecture audit

Fractional Staff Engineer

For teams that need Staff-level judgment on architecture and sequencing but don't need another full-time hire.

  • Architecture and RFC review on your cadence
  • Planning and sequencing for the work that actually matters
  • Hands-on where it helps, including critical-path review
What I'm involved in
  • Architecture reviews and RFC feedback
  • Technical planning and sequencing
  • Backend and platform design
  • Service boundary and API design
  • Critical-path code review
  • Hands-on implementation where useful
  • Mentoring and technical alignment
  • Reliability, observability, and deployment strategy
  • Cross-team technical coordination
  • Technical investigation of ambiguous production problems
  • Telling urgent symptoms apart from structural issues

Monthly, at an agreed weekly capacity

Discuss fractional support

Milestone Execution

For when the outcome is clear and you need someone senior to own it end to end.

  • Design, build, and rollout of one defined capability
  • Production-ready: tests, observability, and a deploy path
  • A handoff your team can maintain without me
What this covers
  • Performance optimization
  • Backend redesign or refactoring
  • Service extraction
  • API and data-model changes
  • Data pipeline or ingestion redesign
  • Platform migrations
  • Infrastructure modernization
  • Caching and query strategy
  • Production hardening
  • Reliability and observability improvements
  • Delivery of a defined backend or platform capability

Scoped to the outcome, fixed or milestone-based

Discuss a delivery engagement

What people say about working with me

“ A fantastic job done by Houssem, as always! ”

Daniel Spataro

Daniel Spataro

CEO at IntegrationOS

“ Houssem is a great developer and a great person to work with. He showed himself like a real professional. He helped us to understand those nuances [in our system] and find a way to handle them. ”

Tom Goedhart

Tom Goedhart

Co-Founder at Barbaard Management

“ He is a professional engineer with a great deal of experience and a will to jump into fixing any problem. ”

Lucas Gozalvez

Lucas Gozalvez

CTO at FelixSmart Inc.

“ His technical skills and attention to detail were impressive. What stood out even more was his exceptional communication throughout the project. ”

Nina Rezec

Nina Rezec

Founder at Global Consultancy UAE

Before you book

What happens on the first call?

You describe what's happening: the system, the symptom, what it's costing you, and what the team has already tried. I ask questions. Thirty minutes, and we both find out whether I'm useful here.

Do I need to know which engagement I want?

No, and most people don't. Describe the problem and I'll tell you which of the three fits, or that none of them do.

Do you only work with healthcare and biotech?

No. That's where a lot of the recent work has been, and it's why I'm comfortable with auditability, access control, and tenant isolation. The same problems show up in any data-heavy platform.

Can we talk about a full-time role instead?

Yes. Book the same call and say so upfront.

Tell me what's breaking.

You don't need a solution, a spec, or a decision about which engagement you want. Describe what's going wrong and we'll work out whether I can help.

Book a 30-min intro call Send a message

Thirty minutes, free. No deck, and no proposal on the first call. If there's a fit, that comes after.

Houssem Eddine Zerrad

Staff Software Engineer & Cloud Architect · © 2026 · Insights