You do not need a full-time CTO. You need someone to answer one question honestly.
This is not a CTO hire — you are not adding headcount, a salary or equity. It is not the review category either, which checks one specific document you already have, like a quote or a piece of code. And it is not an agency retainer, which comes bundled with a team you did not ask for and are paying for anyway.
It is one experienced engineer, reachable when you have a decision to make, with nothing to sell you afterward.
Most of what a technical advisor is asked has nothing to do with an active outage or a document in hand. It is the kind of question you would ask a technical co-founder if you had one.
Most people start with a single paid call around one specific decision. Some keep a standing arrangement — a few hours a month of on-demand access — once they realise how often a five-minute answer would have saved a costly guess.
Either way, the advisor writes no code and is not trying to become your developer. If the advice leads to needing a build, you are free to hire anyone for it, including someone found elsewhere on ProofDevs.
A single call is priced the same as any senior engineer's hourly rate — no separate 'consulting' markup. A standing arrangement is usually a small flat monthly amount for a capped number of hours, agreed up front so there is never a surprise invoice for a ten-minute question.
Review is scoped to one artifact you already have — a quote, a proposal, a codebase — and produces a single written assessment. This is open-ended, ongoing or ad-hoc access to someone for whatever technical question comes up next, with no document required to start.
No. This works before you have hired anyone — plenty of people use it to decide what to build or who to hire in the first place.
Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine
Full-Stack Developer — Websites, Apps, Servers, Databases, AI, SEO & QA
Full-stack developer working across the entire stack — websites, apps, servers, databases, AI integrations, SEO, and QA. Languages & Core: writes code in JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, PHP, Go, and Rust. Architects scalable systems for large-scale projects. Frontend & Interfaces: builds websites and web applications with React and Next.js. Crafts responsive interfaces with Tailwind CSS, Radix UI and Shadcn, adds smooth animations with Framer Motion, and interactive charts with Recharts. SEO Audit & On-Page Optimization: semantic keyword research, resolving technical indexing issues, and optimizing page load speeds. Structures page architecture, meta tags, and multi-language support (i18n). Copywriting & Content Strategy: writes technical articles, drafts precise content briefs for writers, and develops content plans. QA & Testing: full-cycle testing for websites, web services, and Android apps — manual QA for UI/UX and business logic, plus automated testing with Jest, Vitest, Playwright and E2E. Backend, Cloud & Databases: complex API integrations of any scale. Builds servers with Node.js (Express, Fastify). Works with PostgreSQL, MySQL and MongoDB, ORMs (Prisma, Drizzle), and cloud infrastructure (Supabase, Firebase, Cloudflare). Browser Extensions & Automation: develops Manifest V3 browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and other browsers. Builds web scrapers for complex data extraction using Puppeteer and Playwright. AI & Intelligent Agents: builds custom AI agents and integrates LLMs from OpenAI, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude via API, including Claude Code setups. Servers & DevOps: Linux (Ubuntu) and VPS administration — setup, updates, real-time monitoring, secure process isolation, Nginx, PM2, and CI/CD deployment via GitHub Actions. Telegram Bots: develops advanced Telegram bots (Telegraf, Grammy) integrated with AI, payment gateways, Google Sheets, and crypto exchanges. Desktop Applications: builds cross-platform software for Windows and macOS using Electron and Rust. Additional expertise: site development and customization with WordPress and Astro.
AI & Distributed Systems Architect | Enterprise AI, RAG, Cloud, Blockchain | Advisory & Fractional Leadership
AI and distributed systems architect providing advisory and fractional leadership on enterprise AI, RAG pipelines, cloud architecture and blockchain-backed data systems.
Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine
Senior Backend Engineer | AI Engineering | PHP, Python, LLM Applications
Senior backend engineer working across PHP and Python, with a growing focus on AI engineering: building LLM-powered application features on top of existing backend systems and APIs.