Irving, Texas · Dallas

Your lead engineer, embedded in your Irving 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 Irving 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 Irving 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 Irving 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 Irving 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 Irving 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 Irving startup doesn't have to re-learn them.

Irving, Texas · Dallas · Large City

Working with Irving Founders

Irving and Las Colinas form Texas's corporate-campus capital. ExxonMobil HQ, McKesson, Kimberly-Clark, Fluor, Pioneer Natural Resources, and a long list of other Fortune 500 operations cluster here. Enterprise-adjacent B2B startups have an unusual advantage in customer access — and an unusual disadvantage in how easy it is to over-engineer for a Fortune 500 buyer who hasn't actually committed.

What I see most often in Irving: founders who almost always have a Fortune 500 background and an architectural tendency to over-build for compliance and over-spec for procurement before they have any customers. The work is often about right-sizing — figuring out which compliance work is actually load-bearing for the founder's business model, and which is investor or procurement theater.

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The companies I take on in Irving tend to cluster around corporate campuses, Las Colinas, enterprise — 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
234 miles · regional
Market tier
Large City · pop. 256,492
Region
Dallas, Texas

Also Serving Dallas

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

Dallas Garland Grand Prairie Mesquite Carrollton All Texas Cities →

The Irving Industry Landscape

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

Enterprise B2B (Corporate-Adjacent)

Fortune 500 alumni building tools to sell back into the campus they came from. The customer access is real; the engineering tends to be over-spec'd for buyers who haven't actually committed.

ExxonMobil HQ McKesson Kimberly-Clark Fluor Pioneer Natural Resources

Energy Services

ExxonMobil and Pioneer-adjacent — energy services SaaS, ESG reporting, midstream operations tooling.

ExxonMobil Pioneer Natural Resources

Healthcare IT

McKesson is one of the largest healthcare-distribution companies in the world. Healthcare IT founders coming out of McKesson have a customer base waiting but architectural assumptions that need translating to commercial markets.

McKesson

Anchor Organizations

  • ExxonMobil HQ
  • McKesson
  • Kimberly-Clark
  • Fluor
  • Pioneer Natural Resources
  • Las Colinas Innovation

Universities & Research

  • UT Dallas (nearby)
  • Dallas College

Neighborhoods I Serve

Las Colinas Valley Ranch Downtown Irving Heritage Crossing

From the field

What I see most often in Irving

Irving founders almost always have a Fortune 500 background — and the architectural tendency is to over-build for compliance and over-spec for procurement before they have any customers. The work is often about right-sizing: figuring out which compliance work is actually load-bearing for the founder's business model and which is theater. SOC 2 Type II might genuinely be required for your largest prospect; bank-grade key management probably isn't, even if your last employer used it.

Questions I Actually Get Asked

Can you do on-site in Irving or Las Colinas?

Yes — Irving is part of the DFW corridor visits. Most Irving on-sites are bundled with Dallas or Plano trips, since the corporate campuses are within a short drive of each other.

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 Irving-based teams in person?

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

Let's Talk About Your Team

No commitment. 20 minutes. Straight answers.

Let's Talk · 3-Seat Roster