Ongoing retainer
A fractional design technologist on your team
A senior design engineer embedded with your team a set number of days per week. Design system stewardship, frontend quality, and AI tooling adoption without a full-time hire.
Nine years doing this work inside product teams, most recently as a Senior Design Technologist at Gartner and Indeed.
Who this is for
- Teams that need design engineering weekly but cannot justify a full-time hire yet
- Startups whose product works but looks and feels a step behind the competition
- Engineering teams adopting AI coding tools who want the output to stay on-brand and accessible
- Design teams who need an engineer that speaks design fluently and closes the handoff gap
What you get
- Set embedded days per week in your Slack, your standups, and your codebase
- Design system stewardship: the tokens, components, and docs stay coherent as the product grows
- Interface quality work: motion, polish, accessibility, and the details that usually get deprioritized
- AI tooling adoption: conventions and reviews that keep agent-generated UI on-system
- Design-to-engineering translation in critiques, planning, and reviews
- A monthly written summary of what shipped and where quality is trending
What I take off your plate
Design system stewardship
The component library stops rotting. New patterns get componentized, drift gets caught in review, docs stay current.
Frontend quality ownership
Someone is finally accountable for how the product feels: interaction details, empty states, loading states, accessibility.
AI tooling guardrails
Your team ships faster with coding agents while the UI stays consistent, because the conventions and reviews are in place.
How the retainer works
- 01
Scope call (free)
We figure out the days per week, the first priorities, and whether embedded is the right shape for what you need.
- 02
Kickoff week
I get into the codebase, the design files, and the backlog, then propose a first-month plan you approve.
- 03
Weekly rhythm
Set days per week of shipping, reviews, and pairing. Async the rest of the time for questions that cannot wait.
- 04
Monthly review
A written summary of what shipped and a reset of priorities. The retainer is month to month; it continues because it is working.
Proof
Sprocket
A personal AI assistant powered by a supervisor and 12 specialized sub-agents covering relationships, journal, notes, tasks, calendar, habits, finance, and weekly reviews, all in one chat.
Read the case study
Cray Networks Rebrand
A design-engineering rebrand of a 20-year-old Central Texas IT shop, built around a live OKLCH theming engine and a Base UI design system.
Read the case studyCommon questions
How many days per week?
Typically one to three, fixed so your team can plan around them. We set the number on the scope call and can adjust it monthly.
How is this different from hiring a contractor?
A contractor takes tickets. This is embedded ownership of a lane (design systems, frontend quality, AI adoption) including the judgment calls, the reviews, and the parts nobody wrote a ticket for.
What do you need access to?
The repo, the design files, and your Slack. I work in your accounts and your tools, so everything stays yours if we stop.
What are the terms?
Month to month with a monthly review. No long lock-in: the arrangement continues because it is obviously worth it, not because a contract says so.
Start the conversation
The fastest path is a free 30-minute scope call. Prefer to write it out? Use the form and I'll reply within one business day.