Fractional CTO · Applied NLP · Orlando, FL
Software 407 is an independent engineering company helping startups grow their technical foundations. I build and operate the backend behind AI products: retrieval, evaluation, and the checks that keep a model truthful and reliable in production.
AI and language systems are my specialty, but my role is broader: the senior engineering leadership your team needs before it can hire a full-time CTO. You work directly with the engineer doing the work.
What I do
Fractional CTO and lead engineer for a startup that needs senior technical ownership but is not ready for a full-time hire. I set the architecture, build the platform in TypeScript/Node and Python on GCP or AWS, run deployment and operations, and turn business goals into a realistic technical plan.
Take a working AI prototype and make it dependable: evaluation pipelines, retrieval quality, and checks that catch the model when it hallucinates.
Data acquisition and tooling for research labs. I have built systems for two acoustics labs and can take a problem from a literature review to software that runs unattended.
Selected work
More detail on any of these is in the full resume.
Labstr runs voice-led qualitative research, with AI-conducted interviews of physicians and patients. Analysis of that material has to be defensible in a regulated domain.
An automation platform for vacation-rental property managers. The system reads a guest's message, works out what it needs, answers it, and drives the smart locks, cleaning schedules and supply orders behind it.
A Transformer-based semantic search engine, built with one colleague and deployed as a Python microservice on Kubernetes. In pre-release evaluation it outperformed the existing classifier and text-search retrieval, and it needed none of the per-customer model training those systems required. It shipped to production.
How I work
You work with one person. I write the specs, the plan and the code, answer the email, and join your standups if you have them. I work remotely from Orlando, Florida, on US hours, either embedded in your team or running a workstream on my own.
Engagements usually start with a scoped first milestone, often an audit or a first shipped slice. If the work is good, we continue.
About
For the last decade I've worked on systems that use natural language as an interface: reading and responding to guest messages, retrieving the right support answer, conducting voice interviews, and verifying what a model claims. I was the sole technical owner of Hostvana's platform for six years, shipped a semantic search engine at LivePerson, and now lead the grounded-factuality work at Labstr.
I trained as an engineer at École des Mines in France and am based in Orlando. I founded Software 407 LLC in 2024 to give my independent work a home.
Email a short description of what you are building. I read everything myself and usually reply within a business day.
Get in touch