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James Gifford

Software Engineer

available for new projects

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My Background

I'm a software engineer with 20 years of experience building web applications, mostly for startups and SaaS companies. I've worked on calendar platforms used by hundreds of thousands of businesses, music databases serving over 100 million users, lead generation tools, e-commerce systems, and job boards for medical staffing.

My primary stack is PHP and Laravel, but I've worked across the full stack throughout my career: JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Vue, MySQL, Redis, Stripe integrations, background job queues, database schema design at scale. I care more about choosing the right tool for the problem than being loyal to any one technology.

Most recently I founded Progravity, a software company where I'm building my own SaaS products. The first is Mentioned, a brand monitoring tool that tracks where businesses appear online, including in AI-generated search results, which is a space that's changing fast and that most existing tools haven't caught up with yet.

I've also been leaning heavily into AI-assisted development, not as a replacement for engineering judgment, but as a way to move faster on the mechanical parts and spend more time on the decisions that actually matter. I've written about that experience on this site.

I'm currently open to remote senior engineering or technical leadership roles, particularly at early-stage startups where I can have a broad impact. If that sounds like your team, I'd love to hear from you.

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What I Do

01

Product Development

End-to-end development of software from concept and architecture through billing, launch, and iteration.

02

System Architecture & Design

Planning and building systems that are maintainable today and scalable tomorrow. Experienced in platform modernization and large-scale refactoring.

03

Full-Stack Web Development

Building complete web applications from database to UI, with a focus on clean architecture and reliable delivery.

04

API Design & Integration

Designing developer-friendly APIs and integrating with third-party services, payment processors, and data providers.

05

Database Design & Optimization

Schema design, query performance tuning, and data modeling for applications managing millions to billions of records.

06

Billing & Subscription Systems

Implementing subscription billing, plan management, payment processing, and the self-service experiences that reduce support overhead.

07

Background Processing & Data Pipelines

Designing asynchronous systems for data ingestion, scheduled enrichment, rate-limited API orchestration, and long-running workflows.

08

AI-Assisted Development

Integrating AI tools into professional development workflows to accelerate delivery without sacrificing architectural quality.

09

Legacy Modernization

Bringing aging codebases into the present by improving reliability, performance, and developer experience without starting from scratch.

10

Technical Leadership & Mentorship

Leading small engineering teams, establishing code review and documentation practices, and helping junior developers grow.

11

Software Consultancy

Advising businesses on technical strategy, architecture decisions, and build-vs-buy tradeoffs for web-based products.

12

Remote Team Engineering

Building effective engineering workflows for distributed teams with documentation-first practices, async communication, and self-directed delivery.

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Let's Connect

Have a project, a role, or just want to connect? I'd love to hear from you.