A senior software engineer for San Francisco startups, remote and well-documented
LLM and retrieval features with evaluations, MVP sprints and fractional CTO help for San Francisco startups, run on written updates because the Pacific working day and mine barely meet.
01
Why San Francisco teams bring me this work
If you're adding AI to a San Francisco product that already has users, the demo is the easy part. The hard part is knowing whether the feature got better or worse after the last prompt change, and what each answer costs. I build LLM and retrieval features with an evaluation set from the first week, the closest case being the AI pipeline behind Digital Wardrobe, and I can take a first version from scope to launch at a fixed price, or hold the technical lead until you hire one.
What teams across the United States bring me
- You want AI features that hold up in production, with evaluations and cost control, not a demo that works once.
- You need a production-grade first version before your next raise, and hiring a senior engineer full time would take longer than building it.
02
The hours we share with San Francisco
San Francisco is on Pacific time: your 09:00 is 22:30 in Mumbai in winter and 21:30 in summer, so the window we share is the start of your day and the end of mine. We plan around it: one or two agreed call slots a week, and the rest in writing, with written updates, recorded walkthroughs of anything worth seeing, and decisions written down where your team can find them.
Each city's 09:00–18:00 working day on the clock in Mumbai (UTC+5:30), in January and in July, so daylight saving is accounted for.
| City | In January | In July |
|---|---|---|
| San FranciscoUTC−8 / UTC−7 | 22:30–07:30 (next day) | 21:30–06:30 (next day) |
Clocks Daylight saving time runs from 2:00 a.m. local time on the second Sunday in March to 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday in November (15 U.S.C. 260a). India keeps one clock all year, so only your side moves.
03
Rules a San Francisco team's software meets
Who the CCPA covers
The California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by Proposition 24 (the CPRA) from 1 January 2023, covers for-profit businesses that do business in California and, among other tests, buy, sell or share the personal information of 100,000 or more California residents or households, or earn half or more of their annual revenue from selling it.
Source: California Attorney General: California Consumer Privacy Act
The revenue threshold
The CCPA's annual gross revenue threshold, set at $25 million in the statute, is adjusted for inflation; according to the California Privacy Protection Agency it has been $26,625,000 since 1 January 2025.
Source: CalPrivacy: CCPA monetary thresholds (CPI adjustment)
The regulator
The California Privacy Protection Agency, now called CalPrivacy, enforces the CCPA alongside the Attorney General and writes its regulations. It also enforces the Delete Act for data brokers.
Source: CalPrivacy: Laws and regulations
New rules, 2026 to 2030
Regulations approved on 23 September 2025 took effect on 1 January 2026. They cover risk assessments, which businesses must begin on 1 January 2026; automated decision-making technology used for significant decisions, from 1 January 2027; and cybersecurity audits, with certifications due from 1 April 2028 to 1 April 2030 depending on revenue.
Source: CalPrivacy: California Finalizes Regulations to Strengthen Consumers' Privacy (23 Sept 2025)
Across the United States: State privacy laws · SOC 2 and security questionnaires
This is engineering guidance, not legal advice: confirm what applies to your business with your counsel.
Further reading
- Article: RAG evaluation sets: what goes in and how to score them · 10 October 2026
How to build the set of questions that tells you whether a retrieval-augmented AI feature is getting better or worse, and how to score retrieval and answers separately.
- Article: US state privacy laws and Global Privacy Control: a guide for engineers · 11 October 2026
Which regulators say a business must honour the GPC signal, what the Sec-GPC header means in code, and the consent and data-request plumbing around it.
04
Contracts and invoicing
Invoices in US dollars, monthly or per milestone, paid through Wise or Payoneer. I can work under your master services agreement and statements of work, with intellectual property assigned to you, and provide a W-8BEN.
More on working with teams in the United States is on the United States page.
Tax and legal treatment depends on your company and country: confirm it with your accountant or counsel.
05
Where San Francisco teams usually start
AI features in your product
LLM features that work on your real data, measured before they ship.
- Price
- Fixed-price scoping sprint, then a fixed-scope quote
- Timeline
- A scoping sprint first, then a timeline agreed per project
LLM evals, guardrails and cost control
Know whether your AI feature is getting better or worse, and what it costs.
- Price
- Fixed price
- Timeline
- Agreed per project after a scoping call
MVP Sprint
A production-grade first version of your product, at a fixed price and on dates fixed after the scoping week.
- Price
- Fixed price, agreed at the end of the scoping week
- Timeline
- Set at the end of the scoping week
Fractional CTO
Senior technical leadership a few days a month, without a full-time executive hire.
- Price
- Monthly retainer
- Timeline
- Ongoing; days per month agreed with you
06
Case studies
- Case study: Digital Wardrobe · AI pipeline
- average time per image, upload to result
- 3–8 s
- Case study: Exhibit Social · B2B SaaS platform
- influencers indexed
- 10,000+
- Case study: InfluencerX · Real-time voting platform
- users over the campaign
- 1.6M+
07
Questions from San Francisco teams
What hours do we share with San Francisco?
Your 09:00 is 22:30 in Mumbai from early November to mid-March and 21:30 the rest of the year, so we share the start of your day and the end of mine. One or two agreed call slots a week cover the decisions; the build, the evaluation results and the walkthroughs arrive in writing before your morning.
Does the CCPA apply to our startup?
It applies to for-profit businesses that do business in California and meet one of its tests: annual gross revenue above the threshold ($26,625,000 since 1 January 2025), buying, selling or sharing the personal information of 100,000 or more California residents or households, or earning half or more of revenue from selling it. If it applies, the 2026 regulations add risk assessments now, and duties for automated decision-making technology used for significant decisions from 1 January 2027. Confirm what applies with your counsel.
Do you have an office in San Francisco?
No. I work remotely from Mumbai, with no office or staff in San Francisco, and I don't offer in-person meetings there. With an overlap this short, the work is built around writing, so you always know what changed and why without needing a call.
08