Senior capacity, inside the team

Not a separate delivery bench. One named engineer who owns work from design input to release, on your board, in your repo, in your ceremonies. Mentoring through reviews and pairing is part of the job; design authority sits in the same seat when the team needs it.

Same job, two wrappers

Permanent hire and fractional B2B share the same day-to-day.

Permanent / employed senior IC

Join your payroll as a senior individual contributor. Mentoring through reviews and pairing is welcome; the role centres on hands-on senior IC delivery.

Fractional / B2B embedded

Same seat in the squad. Invoiced through Automica Labs when a supplier arrangement suits both sides. Part-time or full-time intensity as agreed.

Why this works

Named senior capacity that strengthens the squad from inside the team.

  • Track record and breadth: delivering software since 1998 across product types, stacks, and delivery models; one person who has seen most problems before.
  • Embedded delivery: mentoring and design authority sit in the same IC seat, not a separate consultancy layer.

Where this works well

Signals of a good match, and how the same seat runs on payroll or as B2B.

Good fit if you need

  • Senior engineer in the squad: embedded with your team.
  • Full-stack coverage: design, dev, QA, and DevOps in one person.
  • Design authority: senior coverage in a team that needs one.
  • Hands-on senior craft: architectural judgement through code, standards, and pairing.
  • Legacy modernisation: modernise a legacy codebase or rescue a project stalled by technical debt.
  • End-to-end ownership: own a feature from wireframe to production release.

On payroll vs B2B

  • Permanent: join the squad and stay. Ceremonies, ownership, pairing, knowledge in the team.
  • Fractional: the same day-to-day; Automica Labs invoices. Scoped goals; continue or stop at an agreed boundary.
  • Bristol community: Bristol-based, hybrid-ready. Regular attendee and contributor at local meetups, including PHP South West (speaker).

Recent work, and software since 1998

Senior delivery across design, development, QA, and DevOps.

The last three and a half years were full-time in a commercial product engineering team: shipping and operating services in production. Day to day that meant PHP and Laravel APIs, Vue.js client surfaces, and TypeScript services, with Python or React when the problem needed them. Named employers and outcomes are on the CV, available on request. Public repositories are on GitHub.

Before that I ran a limited company as a contractor and freelancer, working direct to clients and through agencies. I started in software in 1998. That span includes working with designers on user flows, writing and maintaining test suites, building deployment pipelines, and shipping the code in between. Not siloed into one discipline.

  • Judgement under real constraints: budgets, deadlines, incomplete requirements.
  • Autonomy in product teams: comfortable in hybrid, engineering-led environments.
  • Product buy-in: committed to the product vision and outcomes.
  • Prototype to production: experience closing the gap where most teams stall.

Full stack, end to end

PHP, Vue, and TypeScript as primary tools. Python and React when the work needs them. I pick up the stack the team already runs.

Day to day that means Laravel or Symfony APIs, Vue and TypeScript clients, OpenAPI, and TDD with Pest, PHPUnit, Pytest, or Vitest. CI/CD and AWS when the team already runs them.

IP, confidentiality, and AI in the open

Structured for product teams who need speed with clear ownership of IP and process.

Your IP stays yours

  • Your terms: work under your contracts, NDAs, and confidentiality terms as standard.
  • Your deliverables: all code, designs, and deliverables belong to you.
  • Your infrastructure: development inside your repositories, pipelines, and access controls.

AI in the open, review-led

  • Guardrailed assistance: agent-assisted development within your repo, standards, and guardrails.
  • Human-led review: faster iteration on boilerplate, tests, and refactors; architecture and PR review stay human-led.
  • Transparent tooling: clear about what runs locally and what touches your code; work stays inside your environment.
  • Maintainable speed: speed gains that keep readability and operability intact.

Working model

Join the squad and deliver to a clear definition of done. Permanent means you stay. Fractional means you can continue or stop at an agreed boundary.

The day-to-day is the same either way: your ceremonies, your backlog, your definition of done.

Permanent / employed

  • Your ceremonies: planning, stand-ups, refinement, and retros in Agile, Scrum, or Kanban setups.
  • Backlog literacy: work from epics and stories with clear acceptance criteria and definition of done.
  • Feature ownership: own slices from design input through to production release, completed to agreed DoD.
  • Code review and mentoring: review PRs, unblock developers, and pair with junior and mid-level engineers.
  • Stay: knowledge, decisions, and runbooks remain in the squad because you are in the squad.

Fractional / B2B

  • Same seat: the same ceremonies, backlog, and DoD as an employed IC.
  • Invoiced through Automica Labs: named supplier, intensity as agreed.
  • Milestone boundaries: scoped goals and a clear definition of done; continue or stop at the boundary.
  • Handback: document decisions, patterns, and runbooks so the team owns what ships if the work does not continue.

Contact Mike Karthauser

Happy to meet for coffee at a Bristol hub to talk shop before anything formal. Named employers and outcomes are on the CV: ask and I will send it.

Commission a small project

A bounded, named outcome when you do not need someone in the squad.

Architecture audit

An existing stack: bottlenecks, TDD readiness, and a plan to stabilise and scale.

12-day MVP

A contained build: architecture, tests, and CI/CD, then a demoable MVP with handover.

Start-up rescue

Unblock a stalled or messy build: green pipelines and release readiness.