Dallas, Texas · Dallas

Your lead engineer, embedded in your Dallas team

Architecture · Strategy · Daily code

You don't need a CTO who won't touch the keyboard. You don't need another freelancer who disappears mid-sprint. You need one senior engineer who owns your entire technical stack — someone who makes executive-level calls AND ships code every single day. I bring 27 years of startup engineering to Dallas founders across Dallas and all of Texas. Remote-first, on-site when it actually changes the outcome.

Let's Talk About Your Team

This is what it actually looks like

When your team doesn't have a technical partner.

You're on your third freelancer this year. The first one disappeared mid-sprint. The second one built something that technically works but nobody can maintain. Now you're onboarding someone new again, explaining the same business logic for the third time, watching them nod along while you wonder if they actually get it.

You're in a meeting and someone asks "can we add this feature by Q2?" and you have no idea. You can't evaluate timelines, you can't assess tradeoffs, and the person you're paying to know these things gives you a different answer every time.

Your app goes down on a Saturday night. You text your developer. No response for 6 hours. When they finally reply, they need another 4 hours to figure out what broke because they don't remember how the system fits together. You're sitting at dinner calculating revenue lost per minute.

The real problem isn't that you need a developer. And it's not that you need a CTO. It's that the role you actually need doesn't fit standard job descriptions — you need someone who thinks at the executive level but executes at the individual contributor level, every single day.

What an Embedded Lead Engineer Actually Does

Half the "fractional CTOs" out there are advisors in a fancy hat — Notion docs, Slack opinions, zero pull requests. That isn't the job.

Writes real code

Not a strategy doc, not a Notion page — production code, in your repo, tested and deployed. The lead engineer you hire should be able to unblock the team by shipping, not just advising on Slack.

Owns architecture decisions

Database choice, auth pattern, deployment pipeline, monitoring, cost structure. Founders without a technical partner end up with whatever their first contractor felt like using — and pay for it later.

Manages the humans

Reviews contractor output, interviews engineering hires, calls the BS when a vendor is overcharging, and makes sure everyone on your team is set up to succeed.

Carries investor credibility

When a VC asks "who's your technical lead?" on a fundraising call, you need a name, a LinkedIn, and a track record — not a contractor nobody knows. An embedded lead engineer closes that gap without the full-time equity grant.

The "embedded" part means I work across 3 clients at a time — so Dallas founders get senior engineering judgment at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire. The "still writes the code" part is what separates this from advisory roles.

Seth Black — embedded lead engineer for startups

About Seth

27 years. 20+ startups. Every mistake your next hire is about to make.

I started writing code at 15. Since then I've been engineer #1, CTO, lead architect, and the technical backbone of startup after startup — watching brilliant ideas die from bad engineering and great engineering die from bad business. I've seen every way it goes wrong.

I've hand-rolled neural networks in C when there were no good Python libraries, shoved terabytes of data through Postgres every hour without melting the cluster, designed custom BLE protocols for wearable hardware, built CAD-integrated configurators that drove real CNC machines, shipped computer vision systems that ran on off-the-shelf cameras, and stood up billing/auth/ops infrastructure more times than I can count.

Now I embed in small teams as the lead engineer. I own the architecture, the strategy, and the code itself. Not as a consultant who advises and leaves — as a partner who shows up every day and builds.

Health & Biotech
ML / AI Systems
Hardware / Embedded
Energy & Climate
Fintech / Payments
Manufacturing / CAD
Computer Vision
Consumer / SaaS

How The Full-Stack Partnership Works

No discovery calls that turn into sales pitches. No 30-slide decks. Here's what happens when a Dallas founder reaches out:

1

Embed

I join your team. Read every line of code. Understand the business, the product, the people.

2

Assess

Identify what's working, what needs attention, what's urgent. Give you a straight answer about where things stand.

3

Own

Take full ownership of the technical stack. Architecture, infrastructure, daily development. It's mine now.

4

Build

Ship features. Solve problems. Make executive calls AND write production code — every single day.

5

Evolve

Grow the technical foundation as your business grows. The code is yours from day one — no lock-in, ever.

The Full-Stack Partnership

One engineer. Your entire technical stack. Architecture, strategy, and daily code — available to Dallas founders and teams.

Embedded Lead Engineer

Architecture, strategy, and daily code — one person, fully embedded

I join your team as the lead engineer. I own the technical vision, make the architectural calls, and write production code every single day. No management layers, no handoffs, no disappearing acts.

  • Full-stack development — Python, databases, DevOps, mobile, web. The whole thing.
  • Executive-level technical strategy — architecture decisions, build-vs-buy, scaling plans.
  • Architecture reviews, hiring guidance, and the technical credibility investors demand.
  • 100% code ownership from day one.
Roster: I only take on 3 clients at a time. When the 3 seats are full, the door is closed until one opens.
$15,000/mo 3-month minimum · 6-month maximum · 3-client roster
Ask About a Seat

Lessons from 20+ Startups

Twenty startups. Every flavor of failure and quiet success. Here are a few lessons I bring to every Dallas engagement:

The "Genius Dev" leaves eventually

Worked at a crowdfunding startup where the one rock-star engineer used the attention to land a FAANG job — and left a gaping hole nobody could fill. The lesson: document relentlessly, and never let one person become a single point of failure.

Watch churn more than bookings

Had a sales rep "crush" their goals by selling features the company didn't actually have. Customers churned right after commission got paid. The lesson: retention and engagement metrics tell the truth; booking numbers often don't.

"Quick fixes" on Friday are rarely quick

Shipped a "small" change on a Friday afternoon that took down an e-commerce site for launch weekend, because I tested in Firefox and forgot about IE. The lesson: test like a user, not like a developer.

Interview for judgment, not trivia

Hired a developer who aced every technical quiz, then turned out not to know how to code — they'd been hoping to figure it out before anyone noticed. The lesson: conversational interviews about real past decisions beat whiteboard gotchas every time.

These aren't hypotheticals. Each one cost a real company real money — so your Dallas startup doesn't have to re-learn them.

Dallas, Texas · Dallas · Major Metro

Working with Dallas Founders

Dallas — and the broader DFW corridor — has quietly become one of the strongest B2B and enterprise SaaS markets in the country. It's a different ecosystem from Austin: lower hype, more capital, more founders coming out of large enterprises (AT&T, Toyota, Capital One, McKesson) than out of FAANG. The startup community is real, but the dominant culture is corporate-adjacent — which means the startups that thrive here are usually selling to enterprise from day one.

The Dallas founders I see most often have a real customer-access advantage solved before they have a product problem. They came out of the industry they're now selling to, they have a rolodex of potential buyers, and what they need is software that doesn't embarrass them in a procurement review. The constraint isn't 'will anyone buy this' — it's 'can the product survive a Fortune 500 security review.' Different shape of risk than Austin, and a different set of engineering priorities follows.

Houston-to-Dallas is a four-hour drive or a 40-minute flight. I do both regularly. On-site days happen at client offices — most of mine have been in Plano, Frisco, Las Colinas, or Uptown — for kickoffs, architecture reviews, and the occasional procurement-conversation rehearsal. The day-to-day is remote, like everywhere else, but Dallas clients tend to value face time more than Austin clients do, which I think is a corporate-culture artifact.

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The companies I take on in Dallas tend to cluster around enterprise SaaS, fintech, real estate, defense — though I've delivered engagements across nearly every flavor of Texas startup. What they have in common: a founder who needs someone they can trust to make technical calls without having to double-check every decision.

Distance from Houston
225 miles · regional
Market tier
Major Metro · pop. 5,968,322
Region
Dallas, Texas

Also Serving Dallas

Remote-first engagements work across all of Texas. Some of the other Dallas cities I work with:

Irving Garland Grand Prairie Mesquite Carrollton All Texas Cities →

The Dallas Industry Landscape

Where the actual work in Dallas happens — and where founders most often need a senior technical partner who already speaks the domain.

Enterprise B2B SaaS

Dominant flavor. Founders who came out of AT&T, Toyota, JPMorgan, Capital One, Liberty Mutual, McKesson — all of which have HQs or major operations here. The product instincts are usually right. The technical foundation is usually shaky, because v1 was built by an outside vendor and never stress-tested by a real engineering review.

AT&T Capital One Plano JPMorgan Chase Plano Liberty Mutual McKesson Irving Toyota NA Plano

Fintech & Insurtech

DFW is dense with financial services. Fintech and insurtech startups here typically have a clear regulatory path (or know how to ask the right questions about one) because the founders came out of compliance-heavy industries. The architectural question is usually 'are we over-engineering for compliance we don't actually need yet.'

Capital One Charles Schwab Westlake USAA Plano Allstate

Real Estate & PropTech

DFW is one of the largest real estate markets in the country. Property management, lease analytics, brokerage automation — all under-served verticals where Dallas founders have an unfair advantage in customer access. The hard part is usually data integration with thirty different MLS and accounting systems.

Hillwood Trammell Crow RealPage Richardson

Defense & Aerospace

Lockheed Fort Worth, Bell Textron, Raytheon McKinney. A meaningful number of dual-use tech startups feed off these — companies whose first customers are mil/aerospace primes and whose second customers are commercial. The architectural challenge is usually 'we built it for one regulated buyer and now we need it to work for a commercial market with different assumptions.'

Lockheed Martin Fort Worth Bell Textron Raytheon McKinney

Anchor Organizations

  • Capital Factory Dallas
  • The DEC (Dallas Entrepreneur Center)
  • Dallas Regional Chamber
  • Plano Innovation
  • Frisco Innovation Hub

Universities & Research

  • UT Dallas
  • Southern Methodist University (SMU)
  • UT Arlington
  • Texas Christian University (TCU)
  • University of North Texas (Denton)

Incubators & Funds

  • Capital Factory Dallas
  • The DEC
  • Health Wildcatters
  • Tech Wildcatters
  • North Texas Angel Network
  • Cypress Capital
  • TXVC

Neighborhoods I Serve

Downtown Dallas / Deep Ellum Uptown Las Colinas / Irving Plano Frisco Addison Bishop Arts / Trinity Groves

From the field

What I see most often in Dallas

The Dallas engagement that comes up most: a founder spent fifteen years at AT&T or Toyota or Capital One, has identified a real problem in their old industry, has a rolodex full of buyers waiting to pilot something, and has commissioned a 'v1 build' from a vendor — usually offshore, sometimes a local shop — that delivered software that almost works. Almost. The login flow is busted in three browsers. The data model has columns named 'temp_field_2' that turn out to be load-bearing. Authentication is bolted on instead of designed in. Then the founder gets to a real procurement conversation with their old employer, hears the words 'SOC 2' for the first time, and realizes the gap between 'works in a demo' and 'survives Fortune 500 IT' is an actual chasm. That's where I usually come in. The work is mostly: rebuild the foundations someone else cut corners on. Boring again, but in a different shape than Austin's boring.

Questions I Actually Get Asked

Do you work with B2B and enterprise startups?

Yes — that's most of what Dallas engagements look like. The challenge in B2B is rarely the technology itself. It's the gap between 'this works in our office' and 'this passes a Fortune 500 security review.' SOC 2, SSO, audit trails, role-based access — the boring stuff that gates real revenue. I've been through it enough times to know which shortcuts to take and which ones will hurt you in eighteen months.

Are you familiar with fintech or insurtech compliance?

Yes, with a caveat: 'compliance' means a hundred different things. PCI-DSS for payments is one thing. SOC 2 Type II for selling into a Fortune 500 is another. Bank-level KYC/AML is something else entirely. I can tell you which of those you actually need for your specific business model, and which ones your investor or your sales prospect's procurement team is throwing around as buzzwords. Then we build accordingly.

Can you do on-site at Plano, Frisco, or Las Colinas?

Yes. Houston-to-Dallas is a four-hour drive I make regularly, or a 40-minute flight when calendars are tight. On-site days for Dallas clients tend to cluster around procurement conversations, kickoffs, and quarterly architecture reviews — three to four full days per quarter is typical.

What if you leave?

With freelancers you're already dependent on someone with zero commitment to your business. I embed specifically to stay. The 3-month minimum exists so we both take the partnership seriously. And everything I build is yours from day one — code, documentation, all of it.

Can one person really handle our entire technical stack?

I've done exactly this for 20+ startups over 27 years. I know what one senior engineer can handle — and I know when to say "we need help here." One person who owns everything actually moves faster than a team of specialists coordinating through Jira tickets.

Do you work with Dallas-based teams in person?

I'm primarily remote-first, which means I can usually start faster. For Dallas and other Texas clients, on-site visits are possible when they genuinely move the needle — not for meetings that could've been a Slack message.

What happens if we're not a good fit?

The 3-month minimum exists so we both take the engagement seriously and have real time to ship. After that, we can wrap at the end of any month up to the 6-month maximum. You keep all the code and documentation.

How much does this cost?

$15,000/month. 3-month minimum, 6-month maximum. No hourly billing, no tiered packages, no upsells. I only take on 3 clients at a time — if you want a seat, let's talk and we'll see if the fit is right.

Do you believe in ghosts?

Absolutely, yes. Your legacy code is haunted by the disembodied spirits of junior developers who copy-pasted from Stack Overflow without understanding what they were doing. Let's clear them out.

Let's Talk About Your Team

One meeting. No pitch deck, no proposals. Just a conversation about what you need and whether I'm the right fit.

Roster limited to 3 clients

Book a 20-Minute Call

Pick a time that works. No sales pitch — just a straight conversation about your team and your stack.

Book a Call

No commitment. 20 minutes. Straight answers.

or send a message if you prefer async
The Full-Stack Partnership — $15,000/month
3-month minimum, 6-month maximum. Roster limited to 3 clients.

No long-term contracts. You own all the code.

tl;dr

I embed in your team as the lead engineer. I own the architecture, the strategy, and the code. One person who thinks like a CTO and ships like a senior engineer — serving Dallas and all of Texas.

Let's Talk About Your Team

No commitment. 20 minutes. Straight answers.

Let's Talk · 3-Seat Roster