Ciprian Cimpan

Ciprian Cimpan delivers

AI Software
That Moves Metrics

I transform ideas into reliable production-ready software

Measurable ROI from MVP to scale: faster delivery, lower costs, happier users

Full-Stack AI Expert
Global Availability
18+ Years Experience
Engineering Excellence

Trust indicators

Pragmatic
Solutions focused on concrete results: revenue, margins, retention, KPIs.
Efficient
Days and weeks, not months and quarters. Short iterations with visible impact.
Professional
Efficient architectures: tests, docs, observability, cost controls baked in.
Accountable
I take decisions, unblock teams, and finish what I start: you get outcomes, not tickets.

Complete Solutions
From Plan to Production

AI-ready applications and senior engineering leadership for teams that need measurable progress in weeks, not quarters

AI Discovery

Two-week discovery sprint to identify high-ROI AI opportunities, validate feasibility, and define an execution-ready plan.

  • Prioritized use cases mapped to business KPIs and owners

  • Feasibility assessment: data readiness, model fit, risk constraints

  • Architecture sketch covering data flow, guardrails, and cost envelope

  • Execution plan with milestones, dependencies, and delivery sequence

  • Clear go/no-go recommendations for each candidate use case

2 weeks
~10-15k / plan

Modernization Boost

Focused modernization engagement to improve reliability, performance, security, and developer velocity.

  • Risk map across stability, scalability, and security

  • Refactor roadmap with effort-versus-impact scoring

  • Quick-win backlog for the next 1-2 delivery sprints

  • Performance and cost baseline with improvement targets

2 weeks
~8-12k / boost

Build & Integrate

Delivery phase for production features: APIs, internal tools, workflow automation, LLM copilots, and RAG applications.

  • Weekly milestones and demos, with working software shipped from week one

  • Production-grade observability, cost monitoring, and reliability safeguards

  • Documentation and runbooks that support clean team handoff

  • Evals and guardrails for AI features where applicable

4-8 weeks
~30-50k / phase

Fractional CTO

Part-time senior technical leadership for roadmap decisions, architecture governance, and execution oversight.

  • Quarterly technical objectives aligned with business goals

  • Architecture and vendor decisions with documented trade-offs

  • Execution governance through weekly review cadences

  • Monthly reporting with progress, risks, and next-step priorities

1-2 days / week
~7-14k / month

Technology Partners

Built with proven platforms, modern frameworks, reliable infrastructure and cutting-edge AI tools that reduce risk and accelerate delivery
  • Hugging Face logo
    Hugging Face
  • Anthropic logo
    Anthropic
  • OpenAI logo
    OpenAI
  • Mistral logo
    Mistral
  • Vercel logo
    Vercel
  • Google logo
    Google
  • Amazon Web Services logo
    Amazon Web Services
  • NVIDIA logo
    NVIDIA
  • Microsoft logo
    Microsoft
  • Cloudflare logo
    Cloudflare
  • Fastly logo
    Fastly
  • Perplexity logo
    Perplexity
  • GitHub logo
    GitHub
  • Cohere logo
    Cohere
  • Scale AI logo
    Scale AI
  • Groq logo
    Groq
  • Pinecone logo
    Pinecone
  • ClickHouse logo
    ClickHouse
  • Supabase logo
    Supabase
  • Snowflake logo
    Snowflake
  • Stripe logo
    Stripe
  • Databricks logo
    Databricks
  • Meta logo
    Meta

Choose Your Starting Point

From AI discovery sprints to full-stack builds: flexible engagements designed to prove value quickly and scale with your needs

Start Small

AI Discovery Sprint → Prove Value Fast

Focused Fix

Modernization Assessment → Unblock A Roadmap

Feature Delivery

Build & Integrate → Ship Production Value

Ongoing Support

Fractional CTO → Keep Quality And Velocity High

Ship Fast, Stay Aligned

Short discovery, tight execution plan, weekly demos: you stay informed and I deliver tangible progress every step of the way

Step 1: Discovery

Define business goals, timeline and deliverables.

Step 2: Strategy

Technical roadmap with clear milestones, risks & costs.

Step 3: Execution

Short iterations with regular demos to keep you informed.

Step 4: Delivery

Handoff with documentation and deployment support.

Move A Metric That Matters

Book a free call: let's identify your highest-ROI opportunity and map a plan to make it happen!

Ciprian Cimpan

Senior full-stack software engineer for AI-ready products

I help founders and product teams ship production software that improves revenue, delivery speed, or operating margin.

My work spans backend APIs, modern frontends, cloud infrastructure, and pragmatic AI integrations (LLMs, RAG, and workflow automation). Every engagement is execution-focused: short discovery, decision-ready plan, then weekly milestones with visible progress.

You get senior engineering ownership from architecture to deployment, with clear trade-offs and measurable outcomes.

Global Availability
From $150/hour
Portrait of Ciprian Cimpan, full-stack AI engineer

What Drives My Work

Ownership, speed to value, and engineering excellence: the principles behind every project I deliver.

Outcomes over output

I optimize for the numbers you care about.

Revenue, conversion, cost savings, speed: your metrics improve, or we adapt the plan until they do.

Ownership mindset

Decisions made, not deferred.

I take the lead, make calls, solve challenges and always keep things moving.

You get production-ready software, deployed and working.

Pragmatic choices

The right tool for the problem, every time.

Simple architectures over clever ones: AI where it moves metrics, proven reliability everywhere else.

Clean handoffs: you own the result fully.

Speed with discipline

Delivered in weeks, not quarters.

Short discovery → tight plan → tangible results fast.

You see progress constantly, course-correct early, and stay in control of budget and scope.

Battle-Tested Toolkit

Ready for modern, scalable, and intelligent applications, refined through years of experience.

AI & Intelligence

Systems that learn, adapt, and deliver value
Autonomous agents, RAG pipelines, custom LLMs, and more. Every AI solution is built for reliability, cost control, and measurable business impact.

Backend & APIs

Scalable systems that power your business logic
High-throughput APIs, event-driven architectures, and complex integrations: built clean, tested thoroughly, and adding value from day one.

Data & Storage

From simple queries to billion-row analytics
Transactional databases, real-time analytics, and graph relationships: designed for the queries you run today and the scale you'll need tomorrow.

Frontend & UX

Interfaces that drive engagement
Responsive, performant frontends: from landing pages and dashboards to AI-powered experiences that keep users engaged and coming back.

DevOps & Infrastructure

Ship fast, stay observable, control costs
CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, automated testing and monitoring to give your business velocity without sacrificing reliability.

Built With. Shipped For. Trusted By.

Partners who trusted me to deliver, and came back for more

  • Bixby Land Company logo
    Bixby Land Company
  • CASA For Children logo
    CASA For Children
  • Coldwell Banker Commercial logo
    Coldwell Banker Commercial
  • ConnectLoud logo
    ConnectLoud
  • Coronado Brewing logo
    Coronado Brewing
  • Duffy Electric Boats logo
    Duffy Electric Boats
  • Faris Lee Investments logo
    Faris Lee Investments
  • Hanley Investment Group logo
    Hanley Investment Group
  • Hooters Restaurants logo
    Hooters Restaurants
  • Idea Grove logo
    Idea Grove
  • Idea Hall logo
    Idea Hall
  • ING Bank logo
    ING Bank
  • Kit-Cat Clocks logo
    Kit-Cat Clocks
  • Liebert Cassidy Whitmore logo
    Liebert Cassidy Whitmore
  • Luminate Group logo
    Luminate Group
  • Marsy's Law For All logo
    Marsy's Law For All
  • McDonald Property Group logo
    McDonald Property Group
  • Oaky logo
    Oaky
  • Octane California logo
    Octane California
  • Pladis United Biscuits logo
    Pladis United Biscuits
  • RD Olson logo
    RD Olson
  • Sabal Financial Group logo
    Sabal Financial Group
  • SBDC California logo
    SBDC California
  • Zaang UK logo
    Zaang UK

Results Worth Repeating

A track record built one shipped project at a time

60+

Projects Delivered

from MVP to enterprise

<2wks

First Milestone

kickoff to working version

100%

Production Ready

built for ROI, not prototypes

80%

Return Clients

hired once, chosen again

We had a working prototype in nine days. I've waited longer for proposals from agencies. Ciprian just gets in there and builds.

Marco Silva

Founder, Solvara Health

I expected a pitch about machine learning. Instead, Ciprian showed us which three processes were costing us the most and automated the one with the fastest payback. Very practical, zero hype.

Anna Lindström

CEO, Cadwell Logistics

When the engagement ended, our team picked up the codebase on day one. Tests, docs, clear architecture, we didn't need a month-long knowledge transfer. That almost never happens with contractors.

Daniel Okafor

CTO, Stackmeld

Before We Begin

The practical details decision-makers ask before kicking off a project

01How does pricing work?

Fixed scope, clear price, no open-ended bills.

I price by engagement type, and every option has a defined scope and timeline.

  • Discovery sprints and assessments: $8k-$15k over two weeks
  • Build projects: 4-8 week phases, typically $30k-$50k per phase
  • Fractional CTO support: starting at 1-2 days per week

Bring your budget range to a call and I'll tell you what's realistic.

02What does a typical engagement look like?

Short discovery, then weekly delivery.

Every engagement starts with a focused discovery phase to define goals, success metrics, and deliverables. From there, I work in weekly iterations - each week ends with a progress update and, for build projects, a working demo. You stay informed at every step, and we adjust course based on your feedback.

03How fast can we get started - and when do we see results?

Most projects kick off within a week.

  • Discovery sprints and assessments: complete deliverable in two weeks
  • Build projects: first deployed milestone within the first two weeks

After that, it's weekly demos and tangible progress every sprint.

04What if we want to start small before committing to a bigger project?

Starting small is the best way in.

The AI Discovery Sprint and Modernization Assessment are designed as standalone two-week engagements - fixed scope, fixed price, full deliverable at the end. Many long-term projects start this way. You get a concrete result you can act on, and we both validate fit before scaling up.

05Who owns the code and IP?

You own everything. No exceptions.

All source code, documentation, and deliverables transfer to you upon payment. I sign NDAs for every engagement and work under your confidentiality agreements. Your data stays yours, handled according to your security requirements.

06How do you keep clients in the loop?

Written updates every week, working demos every sprint.

Each update covers progress, blockers, and next steps. For build projects, that includes a live demo of working software. I default to Slack or Teams for day-to-day communication and adapt to your tooling. You always know where things stand.

07We're exploring AI but aren't sure where it fits. Can you help?

Yes - this is one of the most common starting points.

The AI Discovery Sprint is a two-week engagement built for exactly this. I assess your operations, data, and goals, then deliver a prioritized list of AI use cases mapped to your KPIs. You get a concrete plan for opportunities worth pursuing - and a clear pass on the ones that aren't. Every recommendation is grounded in feasibility, cost, and measurable business impact.

08I'm not very technical - will I understand what's happening?

Absolutely. No engineering jargon required.

I work primarily with founders, product leaders, and executives. Every update is in plain language, focused on decisions: what's done, what's next, and where your input matters.

09How do you work with our existing team?

I plug into your workflow, not around it.

Standups, Slack channels, code review - I adapt to how your team already works. I contribute directly to the codebase, follow your conventions, and keep handoff smooth with tests, documentation, and practical knowledge transfer. The goal is to add senior capacity, not create a parallel workstream.

10What happens after the engagement ends?

You get a complete handoff, ready for day one.

That includes documented code, deployment guides, and runbooks your team can pick up immediately. For build projects, I run a walkthrough session with your team. If you need support later - a quick fix, a follow-up phase, or a second opinion - I'm one message away.

11You're based in the Netherlands - does timezone matter?

Rarely a factor.

I work with clients across Europe, the UK, and North America. My core hours overlap with both EU and US-East business hours, and I adjust availability to match your team's rhythm. Async updates and weekly syncs keep delivery moving regardless of location.

12How do we handle scope changes mid-project?

Scope changes are expected - and managed.

Real projects evolve. I build in review checkpoints where we reassess priorities together. If something shifts mid-sprint, we evaluate the trade-offs - timeline, budget, feature depth - and realign before moving forward. You stay in control throughout.