Available for AI/LLM projects · 2026

Hi, I'm Vincent.

Independent senior engineer in Austin. I help SaaS founders integrate LLMs, RAG, and AI features into production — direct work, no agency overhead. Currently building Pipelane, an AI marketing platform for home-services businesses.

Vincent Vais
6+ yrs
shipping production code
2-4 wk
typical MVP sprint
Direct
no agency in the middle
Austin
remote worldwide

Selected work

Shipped, with outcomes attached.

Ecommerce · 2026

LLM features with RAG

Integrated LLM-powered features into a production ecommerce product, using retrieval-augmented generation to ground answers in real merchant data with citations.

Marketplace · 2026

ThinkUp Social

Co-built end-to-end — a live marketplace connecting students with advisors who've walked the same education or career path. thinkupsocial.com

Creative tools · 2025

Relevance-based full-text search

Shipped real-time search over multimedia documents. Lifted user retention 20% on the product it landed in. Foundational pattern for retrieval pipelines.

Streaming · 2022

Content recommendation engine

Built a Netflix-style recommendation engine — collaborative filtering that tailors content to each user based on their activity in the app.

Streaming · 2024

Full-stack growth features

Shipped features across frontend, backend, and infra that helped grow the product to 60,000+ customers in its first year.

Creative tools · 2024

Image resizing service

Led a team of three engineers to build and integrate a resizing service that significantly cut latency across the product's digital assets.

Start a project

Let's talk about what you're building.

The best fit is usually a 30-minute call where you describe the problem and I ask annoying questions. There's no pressure — if I'm not the right person, I'll say so and point you somewhere better.

FAQ

Questions I get a lot.

What kinds of projects are you a good fit for?

AI features that actually have to run in production, not just demo well. LLM integration, RAG, evals, agents — usually a single well-scoped feature in a 2-4 week sprint. If you want me to "rewrite your whole product with AI," I'm probably not the right fit.

What if I'm not technical?

Totally fine. The first conversation is usually me asking annoying questions until we both understand what you actually want and what it'll cost. You don't need to know what an embedding is.

How do you work?

Direct. You talk to me, not a project manager — I'm the one writing the code. I prefer fixed-scope sprints over open-ended retainers; keeps both of us honest about what's actually getting built.

How do I reach you?

Email vincentvais17@gmail.com or use the form above. I usually reply within a business day.