Product Engineer · Fractional Technical Partner
I build products that scale, not toys.
Founders come to me when they want to build a serious product and build the part no one wants to own: the database, deploys, migrations and alerts. I keep everything documented, so you know what is happening and why.
I built Scrapecat, live and open source. Before that, founding engineer at a B2B2C startup whose launches reached ~11,000 people organically. Projects from $4,000, contract or retainer.
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What people say
“Francisco has a rare ability to own a complex technical vision from end to end, designing robust backend systems, building scalable APIs, and seamlessly translating product requirements into reality. His deep sense of ownership and proactive problem-solving make him an invaluable asset.”
Senior Analytics Consultant at Health Care Service Corporation · Worked with Francisco at Happy Quokka Inc.
LinkedIn recommendation · October 13, 2025
“Francisco understands both the technical side of a product and the business vision behind it. He built Quokka Buddy and FitMate from the ground up and carried both through the pivots that followed. He explains technical tradeoffs clearly to non-technical people. I would gladly work with him again, and I recommend him without hesitation.”
Project Coordinator · Worked with Francisco at Happy Quokka Inc.
LinkedIn recommendation · October 2, 2026
“Fran is a driven engineer and an invaluable partner on our project. He consistently took the time to understand design intent, asked thoughtful questions, and helped translate ideas into practical, high quality solutions. His collaborative mindset made a real impact on the outcome of the project and he would be a huge asset to any team.”
Product Designer · Worked with Francisco at Happy Quokka Inc.
LinkedIn recommendation · January 5, 2026
Experience
Founder and Independent Engineer
Luna LabsI take on contract engineering work for founders. AI systems, internal tools and SaaS. Scrapecat turns git history into plain-English engineering reports. Live demo, no signup: Scrapecat Link
July 2026 - Present
Founding Engineer (Contract)
Happy Quokka Inc.Founding engineer and later one of two engineers on a five-person team, building the multi-tenant B2B2C platform for an 11,500-member gym network, from architecture to launch across two product pivots. Cut a core query path from 817ms to 119ms, about 7x, on Quokka Buddy by moving Postgres to a private network.
May 2024 - June 2026
Happy Quokka Inc. — the founding engineer years.
Two products shipped, 141 integration tests on tenant isolation before the first deploy, and a query path taken from 817ms to 119ms. Read the full story.
Full Stack Developer
Genesis Consulting USOptimized PostgreSQL queries for high-traffic spikes and built compliance-grade document workflows with encryption.
September 2023 - February 2024
Technologies
Backend
- Node.js
- TypeScript
- PostgreSQL
- Redis
- Python
- FastAPI
- REST
- WebSockets
- RAG pipelines
- Stripe
Frontend
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
Data and AI
- pgvector
- Drizzle ORM
- OpenAI
- embeddings
- Supabase
Cloud and DevOps
- AWS
- DigitalOcean
- Docker
- GitHub Actions
- Cloudflare Workers
- Nginx
- Sentry
- Playwright
- BetterStack
- Vercel
AI-assisted delivery
- Claude Code
Blog
Two Years as a Founding Engineer: What We Shipped, What Didn't Work, and My Own Practice
Two years building a multi-tenant platform for an 11,500-member gym network from first commit to launch. What we shipped, what broke, and the engineering practice I kept.
I Built a Ferrari for a Skateboard: 5 Engineering Mistakes That Cost Me Months
Monoliths, manual DevOps, and over-engineering for an MVP , the mistakes that turned my projects into scalable pieces.