Senior Developer
Close to two decades writing production software. Joins your team, picks up tickets, ships features, and leaves your codebase better than found.
The short version
Your team has work to do and not enough senior engineers to do it. You don't need someone who will spend three weeks getting up to speed or who needs their pull requests babysitting. You need a developer who can read your codebase, understand your conventions, and start contributing meaningful code from the first week.
That's what Farington Consultancy provides.
What Gordon brings
Close to two decades of production software. PHP since version 4, Laravel since version 3. TypeScript, Vue.js, Livewire, HTMX on the front end. AWS, Cloudflare Workers, Docker, and Linux on the infrastructure side.
Gordon follows your conventions, uses your tools, and works within your processes. The goal is to strengthen your team's output, not create a dependency on a different way of doing things.
Having spent six years as a CTO, the wider implications of the code being written are always in view. How it affects the team, the architecture, the product roadmap. A database schema that will cause problems at scale gets flagged. A pattern that makes the next developer's life easier gets suggested. That perspective comes from having been the person who inherited those decisions.
The contractor problem
Gordon has written about this in some detail. The structural risk with short-term contractors is that they are measured on delivery speed. That incentivises decisions that optimise for the short term. Framework choices your permanent team don't understand. Database schemas designed without knowledge of future requirements. Patterns that work but can't be extended.
Farington Consultancy is conscious of this because Gordon has been the CTO who inherited contractor code. Code written for your team is written as though it will be maintained in six months by the person who wrote it. Tests are included. Patterns are consistent with the rest of the codebase. Anything non-obvious is documented.
In practice
Housekeeping: Identified developer time being wasted on context-switching between terminal and GitHub. Scoped a tight MVP, chose sensible dependencies, and built an open-source Laravel package with clear specifications and testing throughout.
Bidh: A Gaelic language tutor integrating multiple AI services, real-time voice processing, and edge computing. High technical complexity, same approach: clear specifications, incremental delivery, pragmatic decisions about where to invest effort.
MedAscend: Re-architected a healthcare platform from MVP to enterprise. Multi-tenancy, RBAC, OAuth2 SSO, API design. All built to a standard that enabled the company to pursue institutional contracts they couldn't previously reach.
Stack
- Backend: PHP, Laravel (since v3), REST APIs, queue-based architecture
- Frontend: TypeScript, Vue.js, Livewire, HTMX, Alpine.js
- Infrastructure: AWS, Cloudflare Workers, Docker, Linux, Ansible
- Practices: TDD, CI/CD, code review, infrastructure as code
- Architecture: Multi-tenancy, microservices, event-driven systems, RBAC/SSO
Get in touch
If you need a senior engineer who can contribute meaningfully from day one, start a conversation.
Related Insights
Laravel Packages: Creating My First - Part 1
I've been using PHP packages for years but never created one. Here's how I went from scratching an itch to scoping, stru
Building a Lead Funnel Without a CRM
Gathering potential lead information shouldn't be a huge project...here's my lean implementation.
Creating MVPs - Avoiding Gotchas
It's hard to create an MVP that demonstrates your core idea and yet remains easy to maintain. Here's a broad look at the