Product Engineering
End-to-end delivery of web products. Frontend, backend, APIs — one accountable partner from brief to launch.
- Web apps (React, Next.js)
- APIs & backend (Node.js, PHP, Python)
- Landing & marketing sites
Independent Software Consulting
Thoughtful software,
shipped with intent.
I partner with founders and engineering teams to turn ambiguous ideas into production systems — from architecture and prototypes to full product delivery.
- 6+ yrs
- shipping web products
- 20%
- retention lift shipped
- 60K+
- users reached
- Austin
- remote-friendly
Services
Full-spectrum help for software that matters.
Engagements range from a single week of architectural guidance to multi-month builds where I act as embedded tech lead.
Architecture & Strategy
A second set of eyes on system design, scaling plans, and build-vs-buy tradeoffs before you commit.
- Architecture reviews
- Technology selection
- Scoping & roadmap workshops
AI & Automation
Practical LLM features, retrieval pipelines, and internal tools that ship. Measured by outcomes — retention, GMV, engineer-hours saved.
- LLM integrations & RAG
- Internal tools & admin panels
- Scripting & workflow automation
Cloud & DevOps
Reliable infrastructure without the bloat. Deploy confidently, sleep at night, trim the cloud bill.
- AWS, GCP, Vercel, Fly
- CI/CD & observability
- Cost & reliability audits
MVP Sprints
4–8 week focused builds to take a founder's idea from napkin to a product real users can touch.
- Scoping & tradeoff mapping
- Design + engineering combined
- Launch-ready by week 8
Team Support
Mentorship, code reviews, and dev-experience fixes for small teams that want to move faster.
- Code & PR review
- Dev experience audits
- Pair programming & coaching
How we'll work
A process built around clarity.
No month-long discovery theater. I aim for momentum in week one and keep a tight feedback loop with you the whole way.
-
01
Discover
A working session to map goals, constraints, and what "done" looks like. You leave with a written plan.
-
02
Shape
Architecture sketches, scope tradeoffs, and a concrete proposal — no surprise costs or timelines.
-
03
Build
Weekly increments in your staging environment. You see progress every Friday, in working software.
-
04
Hand off
Docs, runbooks, and a clean repo. Your team owns it — I'm on call for as long as you need.
About
Hi, I'm Vincent.
I'm a full-stack engineer based in Austin with 6+ years of shipping web products in production. By day I'm a senior engineer at an ecommerce platform, where I'm currently integrating LLM-powered features backed by retrieval-augmented generation. On the side I take on select consulting work and co-build ThinkUp Social, a marketplace connecting students with advisors who've walked the path they're on.
The work I'm proudest of mixes product thinking with measurable outcomes — a relevance-based search that lifted user retention by 20%, a recommendation engine styled on Netflix's collaborative filtering, a Python pipeline that saved one company $20K a year in manual SEO work. I also have earlier experience working with big-data analytics pipelines.
I care about TDD, refactoring, and boring-tech wherever it'll do the job. My best clients are the ones who want a real partner rather than a vendor — I'll tell you when an idea is too expensive, when a library is a bad bet, and when something obvious is about to bite you.
Currently building
The project on my desk right now.
Selected work
Shipped features with outcomes attached.
Ecommerce · 2026
LLM features with RAG
Currently integrating LLM-powered features into a production product, using retrieval-augmented generation to ground answers in real customer data.
Creative tools · 2025
Relevance-based full-text search
Shipped real-time search over multimedia documents. Lifted user retention by 20% on the product it landed in.
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.
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.
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.
Marketing · 2021
SEO automation pipeline
Python pipeline that auto-generated SEO content and wrote metadata to images — saved the agency roughly $20K a year in manual work.
FAQ
Answers you might be looking for.
What kind of consulting does Vincent Vais offer?
Product engineering, architecture and scoping workshops, AI and automation including LLM integrations and RAG, cloud and DevOps, MVP sprints, and team support such as code review and coaching.
Where is Vincent Vais based?
Austin, Texas, working remotely with clients worldwide.
How do I hire Vincent for a project?
Email vincentvais17@gmail.com or use the contact form on this page. Expect a reply within one business day.
What technologies does Vincent work with?
TypeScript, React, Next.js, Node.js, PHP, Laravel, Python, Go, Postgres, AWS, plus LLMs and retrieval-augmented generation.
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.