Advisory
I lead Integrations and Platform at SpotDraft. Alongside that work I advise founders and engineering leaders who need architectural judgment without a dedicated architecture hire. The offer is the same instinct as the day job: turn a messy product and org problem into a system that can ship.
Architecture and platform consulting for product companies: integrations, automation primitives, reliability as an operating system, and the decisions that keep the next five customers from becoming five one-offs. I stay close enough to the system to argue about contracts and failure modes, then leave owners behind me.
Mentoring for startup engineering leaders and ICs who need a larger decision space, not harder tickets. Growth plans, architecture review, ownership, and the operating habits that survive the first ten people. I have led promotion of 7+ engineers while managing 15+.
The first version should prove demand and leave a foundation — not a demo you throw away. Questionnaires and workflows that compound, integrations that can be reused, hackathon ideas that can become products. Legal Intake and ClickWrap both started that way. Founders often call this MVP design. The work is architecture: the smallest system that is still the right shape for the second customer.
Founders and engineering leaders who need architectural judgment without a dedicated architecture hire — especially when integrations, platform primitives, reliability, or the first version of a product has to survive a second customer. The work spans technical consulting, startup mentoring, mvp architecture, platform and enterprise systems, and similar problems I already solve at SpotDraft.
I try to move engineers through a progression: task ownership → project ownership → technical judgment → organizational ownership. That means giving people increasingly larger decision spaces rather than simply giving them increasingly difficult tickets. My management approach combines continuous feedback, explicit growth plans, project ownership, architecture reviews, production responsibility, stakeholder exposure, and coaching on how to think rather than only what to do.
Typical starting point: email with the problem, the stage of the company, and what a good outcome in 30 days would look like. I stay close enough to the system to argue about contracts and failure modes, then leave owners behind me.
This is advisory work alongside my role as Engineering Manager for Integrations and Platform — not a full-time consultancy or a body-shop build. I will not invent a disposable prototype when the job is MVP architecture: the smallest system that is still the right shape for the second customer.
Yes, as advisory work alongside my role as Engineering Manager for Integrations and Platform. I do not pretend to be a full-time consultancy. If the problem needs architectural judgment, mentoring for an engineering leader, or MVP architecture for a first version that can become a real system, that is the work.
A larger decision space for the person who has to own the call. Specs, architecture reviews, stakeholder exposure, and evidence against the next level — the same progression I use with 15+ engineers: task ownership, project ownership, technical judgment, organizational ownership.
Design the smallest system that can learn, not a demo that has to be thrown away. Trigger-condition-action automation, a workflow foundation, or an in-product consent surface should still be the right shape when the second customer shows up. That is what I mean by MVP architecture — not a freelance build of a disposable prototype.
Email tech.krishnadey@gmail.com with the problem, the stage of the company, and what a good outcome in 30 days would look like.
Krishna Dey