From Architecture Chaos to Operational Excellence.

Stop technical debt from derailing your growth with battle-tested, hands-on leadership.

I’m Matthew FitzPatrick. After two decades in the trenches, I know exactly where systems break and where leadership fails. I step into the vacuum to rescue failing systems and set a new standard for your engineering team. I partner with you to fix critical paths and ensure your tech stack becomes a growth asset, not a liability.

AWS Microservices Event-Driven Architecture DDD AI-Augmented Engineering
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How I Help

Strategic Leadership. Practitioner Execution.

I bridge the gap between where your architecture is today and where your business needs it to be tomorrow. I don’t just deliver a report on what’s broken; I embed with your team to fix it. Every engagement is hands-on—I write the critical-path code, pair with your engineers, and establish the technical standards that allow your company to scale with confidence.

Cloud Infrastructure & Cost Stabilization

I specialize in AWS-native design that survives real-world scale. Using CDK and Infrastructure as Code, I replace "click-ops" and fragile environments with automated, repeatable systems. I help you navigate the high-stakes trade-offs between performance, security, and the "cloud tax," ensuring your infrastructure is a predictable asset, not a mounting liability.

System Modernization & Microservices

Is your legacy code holding back your roadmap? I help teams decompose monoliths and rescue failing event-driven systems. By applying Domain-Driven Design (DDD) and async messaging patterns (CQRS/Event Sourcing), I define the clean boundaries your team needs to build, deploy, and scale independent services without the typical "distributed monolith" headaches.

Legacy application modernization

AI-Augmented Engineering

AI only accelerates your team if your engineering rigor can keep up. I implement agentic coding workflows and automated pipelines that actually work. We’ll move beyond simple "copilots" to establish proper review processes and quality gates, ensuring AI tools provide measurable productivity gains without compromising your system’s security or maintainability.

AI-assisted development guardrails

Platform Engineering & Velocity

I build the "paved roads" that allow your developers to focus on features, not plumbing. By implementing enterprise-grade CI/CD, observability, and deployment automation, I provide the operational stability needed for small public companies and high-growth startups to ship faster, reduce downtime, and eliminate the "hero culture" of manual releases.

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Process

How I Work

A straightforward process designed to get to value quickly.

Discovery Call

A free 30-minute conversation to understand your challenges, current architecture, and goals. No pitch — just an honest assessment of whether I can help.

Architecture Assessment

I dig into your codebase, infrastructure, and team workflows. You get a clear, actionable report with prioritized recommendations — whether or not we continue working together.

Hands-On Engagement

I embed with your team — writing code, reviewing PRs, pairing on design decisions, and mentoring engineers. I stay until the work is done and your team can carry it forward.

Track Record

Selected Experience

22+ years of building and scaling software systems across startups and enterprises.

E-Commerce — Payments & Scale

  • • Designed transaction processing system with queuing and async service calls, splitting the pipeline into horizontally scalable tiers
  • • Built admin control panel for automated authorization, capture, and refund across Authorize.net, Braintree, and PayPal
  • • Implemented page-level caching strategy with cache invalidation handling race conditions at scale

Marketplace — Data & Growth

  • • Designed lifecycle marketing system with algorithmically selected geo-targeted content
  • • Built complex analytical queries powering usage graphs, heat maps, and cohort analysis
  • • Coordinated cross-timezone integrations with teams across the US, UK, and China under tight delivery schedules

CMS & Developer Tooling

  • • Built a CMS layer from scratch using open-source tools, extending them for custom requirements
  • • Mentored team members and established engineering standards
  • • Managed production deployments and off-hours maintenance for high-availability systems

Startup to Exit — Full Lifecycle

  • • Took one startup from seed round through multiple funding rounds
  • • Contributed to another through a successful exit
  • • Experience across retail, manufacturing, sharing economy, and fintech verticals
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Testimonials

What People Say

Let's talk about your architecture challenges.

Book a free 30-minute discovery call. No pitch, no pressure — just an honest conversation about whether I can help.

Book a Discovery Call