El Paso, Texas · El Paso

Your lead engineer, embedded in your El Paso 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 El Paso founders across El Paso 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 El Paso 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 El Paso 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 El Paso 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 El Paso 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 El Paso startup doesn't have to re-learn them.

El Paso, Texas · El Paso · Major Metro

Working with El Paso Founders

El Paso is a border-economy hub — cross-border commerce, Fort Bliss defense spending, customs logistics, and bilingual B2B markets that span two regulatory environments. The startup scene is small but the underlying market is large and unusually under-served by Austin and Dallas tech companies who often skip the region entirely.

What I see most often in El Paso: a founder in customs brokerage, freight forwarding, or cross-border trade with deep operational expertise and software that was last meaningfully updated in 2008. The work is rarely 'rebuild from scratch' — the existing customers can't afford that — but rather 'modernize incrementally without breaking the dual-jurisdiction nuance the founders bring.'

<built-in method copy of dict object at 0x7f64994b87c0>

The companies I take on in El Paso tend to cluster around border commerce, defense, logistics — 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
672 miles · statewide
Market tier
Major Metro · pop. 866,309
Region
El Paso, Texas

Also Serving El Paso

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

Socorro Horizon City Fort Bliss San Elizario Homestead Meadows South All Texas Cities →

The El Paso Industry Landscape

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

Cross-Border Logistics & Customs

Customs brokerage, freight forwarding, transport management — sectors where most existing software was built fifteen years ago and the customer base spans two regulatory environments.

Port of El Paso Customs and Border Protection El Paso

Defense & Mil-Tech

Fort Bliss is one of the largest army bases in the country. Dual-use tech startups, training simulation, and military-family-adjacent consumer products.

Fort Bliss Beaumont Army Medical Center

Bilingual B2B SaaS

Software designed natively for English/Spanish workflows — a gap most US-built SaaS tools handle as an afterthought.

UTEP Business Incubator Borderplex Alliance

Anchor Organizations

  • Fort Bliss
  • Port of El Paso
  • Hub of Human Innovation
  • Borderplex Alliance

Universities & Research

  • University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP)
  • El Paso Community College

Neighborhoods I Serve

Downtown El Paso West Side East Side near UTEP

From the field

What I see most often in El Paso

El Paso founders tend to be in customs, cross-border logistics, or trade-finance — niches where senior technical help is genuinely scarce and where most of the existing software was built fifteen years ago by an ERP shop. The right answer is usually 'modernize incrementally,' because the existing customers can't afford a re-implementation, and a clean-room rebuild loses the dual-jurisdiction expertise the founders are paying for.

Questions I Actually Get Asked

Can you do on-site in El Paso?

Limited. El Paso is roughly a 10-hour drive or a 2-hour flight from Houston, so on-site visits happen via flight, usually for kickoffs and one or two quarterly reviews. Day-to-day work is fully remote for El Paso clients, which is consistent with how most border-economy founders already operate.

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 El Paso-based teams in person?

I'm primarily remote-first, which means I can usually start faster. For El Paso 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 El Paso and all of Texas.

Let's Talk About Your Team

No commitment. 20 minutes. Straight answers.

Let's Talk · 3-Seat Roster