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Rafal Kochanowski

One engineer, real answers, no theatre

TL;DR

What I do

My work combines technical depth with a business and product view, where big-picture thinking and attention to detail complement each other. This comes from a business-oriented mindset built in startup and product environments and engineering depth built through enterprise systems work.

Not every solution needs this combination. But work involving ambiguity, trade-offs, wider business context, or the need to understand a problem across multiple levels requires exactly this kind of approach. For example:

Portfolio

Projects

Articles

Offer

Ongoing work

The work can range from hands-on engineering to architecture and advisory support.

This can be an independent service or ongoing support after technical assessment.

Technical assessments

Independent technical review before a high-stakes decision, after something has gone wrong, or when you simply want a clear, outside view of where your system stands.

An assessment is collaborative work. Depending on the system and the situation, it involves conversations with you, sessions with the team, and clarification meetings throughout. If you want daily status check-ins, that's part of the engagement too.

The work is system-level analysis, not line-by-line code review. I look at how the system fits together, where the risks are, and what's worth deeper attention. My analysis can combine different areas:

In scope

  • Code quality and maintainability
  • Technical debt assessment
  • Database design and data layer
  • Backend systems and APIs
  • Infrastructure and deployment
  • Performance and scalability
  • Application-level security
  • Analysis of past failures
  • Team capabilities and key person risk
  • AI in development workflows
  • Long-term technical strategy

Out of scope

  • Specialized security certification
  • Regulatory compliance audits
  • Embedded systems
  • Mobile-native development
  • Game development
  • Blockchain-specific audits

For EU-facing applications, technical GDPR review can be included as part of any engagement. This means checking whether the implementation matches your existing privacy documentation, and whether the documentation reflects what the system actually does. This is a technical review, not a formal compliance audit, and it does not replace assessment by a qualified legal professional.

Pricing

80-120 EUR/h. The lower end reflects hands-on software engineering work. The upper end reflects strategic and advisory work as well as technical assessments.

These are indicative ranges. Final pricing and billing format are agreed after we scope the work together.

About me

Profile photo

Career

I've been working with computers and programming since childhood, but I consider 2007 to be the official start of my career, when I founded an IT company in Poland. At that time, I collaborated with business partners on various projects, provided search engine advertising services, and worked on my own startup. It was a time of youth, intense experimentation, and learning from my mistakes.

After building my own product startup, I joined established software companies, including a B2B SaaS organization during its Series A phase and later enterprise environments.

It hasn't been a linear career path. I've held various roles and worked with many technologies. I've worked across quality assurance, optimizing development processes and Agile practices, risk analysis, building development support tools, infrastructure, CI/CD, performance testing, and security. I also served in a more traditional software engineering role, working on complex enterprise systems, dealing frequently with legacy code, a lack of documentation, unclear requirements, and complex integrations - all under time pressure where trade-offs were necessary. Beyond implementation, I've designed system architectures and worked on requirements and estimation.

Building applications for EU markets across these years has also meant working with GDPR, both before and since its 2018 implementation.

Experience

Verifications

How I work

I believe in open communication and in seeing things as they actually are. I focus on what matters, cutting the noise. I avoid over-promising and I'm careful with estimations.

It means that I'm not a good fit for implementation work without asking questions.

I work with business clients across the European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland. Everything is handled in English. All work is remote. For longer-term collaborations, meeting in person can still be valuable.

Free working session

Anyone can write or say whatever they want about themselves, so the natural next step is to check how I actually approach problems and how I think.

We'll talk about a real problem you're dealing with, a decision you need to make, or a system you're planning to build. I'll point out the areas I'd pay attention to, the questions I'd ask, and where I'd start.

The conversation is free and there's no obligation. There are two limits: it takes up to 1 hour, and it can only cover things that don't require an NDA.

You can book a session even if you're not interested in buying my services. It's my way of networking, not a sales pitch.

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