Engineering engagements, not slide decks.
I take on a small number of direct engagements each quarter. A redesign, a store that needs to convert, a web app, an AI feature, or a site that needs to be secured and made fast: if it runs on the web, let’s talk.
- Free 30-min call
- No obligation
- Reply within 1 business day
What I help teams with
What I help teams with
Websites and redesigns
Fast, accessible WordPress sites built to last, and redesigns that keep your SEO and your content intact.
WordPress, block themes, Core Web Vitals, migrations
“Our site is five years old, slow, and the agency quoted six months for a redesign.”
E-commerce
WooCommerce stores that convert: catalog structure, checkout, performance, search and the integrations behind them.
WooCommerce, Shopify, payment and ERP integrations
“Our WooCommerce store has 40k products and search returns nothing for “warm jacket for hiking”.”
Web apps and integrations
Custom plugins, APIs, dashboards and the glue between your site and the tools your business runs on.
PHP, Node, TypeScript, REST and GraphQL
“We need our site to talk to our CRM, our ERP and a booking system, and nobody wants to own it.”
AI features
Semantic search, recommendations and assistants that answer from your own content, built to run in production, with evals and cost control.
Embeddings, pgvector, Pinecone, OpenAI and Anthropic APIs
“We have an AI demo that works on 10 documents and falls over at 10,000.”
Security and performance
Hardening, audits and incident response for WordPress and WooCommerce. Sites that stay fast under real traffic.
WAF rules, rate limiting, caching, monitoring
“Someone is hammering our search endpoint and the site keeps going down.”
Start here
Three fixed-price ways to begin
AI Visibility Audit
One week. How ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI see your site, what they miss, what to fix first, and a dashboard so you can prove it moved.
Agent-ready WooCommerce
Two to four weeks. Structured catalog, Stripe ACP, Google Merchant Center, WooCommerce MCP and semantic search, with checkout staying on your store.
Agent guardrails (AOP)
Three to four weeks. An Agent Operating Procedure per agent, least-privilege permissions, runtime guardrails, audit logs, evals and a kill switch.
Engagement types
Pick the shape that fits
Fixed-price project
Best for well-defined work: a redesign, a store launch, a feature. Scope, timeline and price in writing, with milestones.
Ongoing engineering
Best for teams that need senior web capacity. Weekly hours, monthly invoice, your repo and your tracker.
Site audit
Performance, security or search that isn’t doing its job. One week, a written report with findings and a prioritized fix list. Fixed price, agreed up front.
How we’ll work
From first call to shipped work
Intro call, 30 minutes
You explain the product and the problem. I tell you honestly whether AI is the right tool and what it would take.
Proposal within two business days
Scope, timeline, price. Fixed price for well-defined work, hourly for ongoing engineering.
Build in your repo
Weekly check-ins, async updates, documentation your team can read. You own everything.
What you can expect
How I work with your team
Direct communication
You talk to the engineer. No account manager.
Honest estimates
If something slips, you hear it the day I know.
Documentation
Written so your team can read and maintain it without me.
No lock-in
You own the code and run it on your infrastructure.
Security by default
Secrets in your vault, least-privilege keys, no data leaves your infrastructure without a written decision.
Working with a US company
Built to work with teams in the US
Time zone
Portugal is on UTC. I overlap with US East until 1 pm ET and with West Coast mornings. Async the rest of the day.
Invoicing
USD invoices, W-8BEN on file, payment by ACH, Wise or Stripe. Net-15.
Contracts
Standard independent contractor agreement and NDA ready to sign, or yours.
Procurement
If a marketplace is easier for your finance team, I’m on Toptal and Codeable.
Start a conversation
Book an intro call
Thirty minutes, free, no obligation. Tell me what you’re building and I’ll tell you what it would take.
- Free 30-min call
- No obligation
- Reply within 1 business day
Prefer email?
Write to hello@samuelsilva.pt or use the form. Every message is answered within one business day.