Staying busy instead of staying focused.
Your team is always at capacity and never making progress.
Most engineering problems are not engineering problems.
MBDW works with companies that can't figure out why things aren't working. Or companies that know exactly what they need built and want it done right.
If any of this sounds familiar, let's talk.
Cargo-culting practices.
You adopted Agile, OKRs, and microservices. It didn't work.
Efficiency over effectiveness.
You optimized the wrong things and made them faster.
Underpaying for engineering talent.
You saved money on salaries and spent it all on the consequences.
Technical decisions made by non-technical people.
Or technical decisions made without understanding the business.
Architecture that was right for the company you used to be.
You scaled past it and nobody said anything.
Shifting priorities and calling it agility.
Your roadmap changes every few weeks. Nothing gets finished. That's not agile. It's chaos with a candy coating.
Planning eighteen months out and calling it strategy.
You have a detailed plan for a future that won't exist. The certainty feels good. The rework won't.
Measuring inputs instead of outcomes.
You know how many story points your team delivered. You have no idea if any of it mattered.
Siloing functions and wondering why nothing integrates.
Design throws it to engineering. Engineering throws it to QA. Everyone blames each other when it ships broken.
Confusing process with accountability.
You added standups, retros, and estimation rituals. Nobody is asking whether the work is any good.
Manual process as a security blanket.
You're convinced a human has to check every build and approve every deploy. The humans are the bottleneck and the error source.
What I do
Engineering Leadership
Interim or fractional engineering leadership. I step in when a team needs direction, process, or a reset — without the 6-month hiring cycle. This includes team assessments, roadmap work, and building the conditions for engineers to do their best work.
AI-Native Engineering
Most teams adopt AI tools and get faster at writing code. Then code review becomes the bottleneck, quality drops, and nobody planned the work well enough for AI to do it right in the first place. I help teams build AI into their engineering process with the planning, guardrails, and workflows that make AI a force multiplier instead of a mess accelerator.
Technical Strategy & Architecture
Architecture reviews, technical due diligence, and long-range system design. I help you understand what you have, what it will cost you, and what to do about it.
Hands-On Contracting
When you need someone to build it, not just advise on it. Full-stack development, complex integrations, performance work, or anything that requires a senior engineer who can also think strategically.
How this works
- 1. You reach out. Tell me what's happening. No forms, no intake questionnaires — just a direct message.
- 2. We have one conversation. I'll tell you quickly whether I can help, and how. If I can't, I'll tell you that too.
- 3. We define the engagement. Fixed-scope projects or ongoing retainer. No ambiguity about what you're paying for.
- 4. I do the work. No handoffs to junior staff. No account managers. You get me.
Who you're talking to
I've spent 30 years building software and the teams that build software — from seed-stage startups to enterprises, from individual contributor to leading engineering organizations. I've shipped products at HP and Expedia, built teams at social media companies, was an engineering leader at a startup as it grew into a unicorn, and written code in more languages than I'd like to admit.
I've made most of the mistakes I now help people avoid.
I started MBDW because the decisions that get companies into trouble are almost always intuitive ones. They feel right at the time. That's what makes them expensive — and why the same patterns keep showing up everywhere I look.
I'm based in Austin, Texas.
Let's talk
Send me a message. No pitch deck required. Just tell me what's going on.