Technical review

A code audit is an independent, written review of a codebase: its structure, quality, security posture, test coverage and how hard it is to change. A technical review widens the same work to the infrastructure, the delivery process and the people risk, so the answer can support a decision.

Lead is senior technical judgment: I review architecture and code for founders, investors and acquirers who need an independent written view of a system. It is for teams in the US, UK, EU and the Gulf, and for Saudi transformation programmes that need decisions documented for stakeholders.

The difference from a senior developer is the subject of the work. A developer delivers features; this work is about the decisions around them: architecture, priorities, standards, vendors, security and cost. I still read the code, because that's where the truth is.

It suits a non-technical founder working with an agency or freelancers, a technical founder who wants an independent view of the architecture, and an investor or acquirer who needs technical due diligence before a deal.

It does not suit anyone looking for a rubber stamp. The report says what I find, including when the answer is that the system is fine and the money should go elsewhere.

"I can't tell whether our agency is doing good work." "We're about to invest and the product is a black box." "Our team grew and nobody owns architecture or standards." "Every quarter we talk about a rebuild and never decide."

All of them come down to the same gap: technical decisions are being made, or avoided, without anyone writing down what was decided and why. A review gives you the written picture to start closing it.

From a review, you get diagrams of the system as it really is, findings on code quality, security, scalability, cost and delivery ranked by risk, estimates for fixing the important ones, a plain-language summary for decision-makers, and a call to walk through it. The detail is on the architecture review page.

With a fixed-scope architecture review. We agree the decision the review supports and what's in and out of scope; I read the code, the infrastructure, the pipelines and the incident history, talk briefly with the team, and write it up. The review gives both sides a shared, written picture of the system.

The experience behind it: I owned engineering across a media group's products, split a legacy monolith into 3 services, and led the teams behind a B2B influencer platform and an AI pipeline.

For US founders, the shared hours are your morning and my evening, which is enough for the decisions; the rest runs on written updates you can read on your schedule. For UK teams, most of your morning overlaps mine. For Saudi Arabia, the week runs Sunday to Thursday, so four of your working days overlap fully with mine, and anything time-critical for a Sunday is planned in writing the week before. Contract terms are agreed per engagement; any employment-status or tax question is one to confirm with your accountant.