A full engineering team's output. One senior partner. None of the full-time overhead.
Data McFly brings senior technical leadership, hands-on delivery, and AI-native engineering to startups and scaling businesses — exactly when you need it, and only for as long as you do.
Strategy and execution, from one partner who actually ships.
Book a 30-minute call// Who this is for
You're building something real. You just need the right technical partner.
Early-Stage Startups
You have a vision, momentum, and no CTO. Data McFly sets the technical foundation right the first time — architecture, stack choices, the first hires, and the early code that everything else gets built on. The decisions you make now are the ones you'll live with for years. Make them with someone who's made them before.
Seed → Series ASMBs Modernizing Their Stack
Your systems are slowing the business down and the backlog only grows. You need an engineer who reasons in business outcomes, not just tech specs — someone who can write the roadmap and then actually execute it, instead of handing you a slide deck and an invoice.
Growth StageAI & Automation Adopters
You know AI should be reshaping your operations. You're just not sure where to start or who to trust. Data McFly has shipped AI-powered pipelines and agentic systems in production — not in a demo, not in a blog post. You get someone who's already done the thing you're trying to do.
Any Stage// What you get
Not just strategy. Execution too.
Technical Strategy & Roadmap
Clear architectural direction, honest technology choices, and a build sequence that prioritizes business outcomes over engineering vanity. No fluff — a plan you can actually ship against.
AI & Automation Integration
Most people think AI work is about prompting. It isn't — it's about context: the right data, at the right moment, shaped correctly before it ever reaches the model. Data McFly builds the pipelines, retrieval systems, and data architecture that make AI outputs reliable enough to put in front of real customers. From n8n workflows to LLM-powered features to fully agentic systems that reason across your data and take action through tools — built, in production, not theorized.
Full-Stack Development
We don't just advise — we build. Modern JavaScript and TypeScript (Astro, React, Node), PostgreSQL, API integrations, infrastructure deployments. Hands-on the moment you need hands.
Vendor & Platform Evaluation
Cutting through the noise on tooling — databases, CRMs, hosting, SaaS integrations. Opinionated recommendations grounded in what actually holds up at scale, not what's trending this quarter.
Engineering Team Leadership
Hiring support, code-review culture, technical interviews, process that fits your stage. Whether you have two engineers or twenty, Data McFly helps build teams that ship reliably — and brings them up to speed on agentic workflows along the way.
Infrastructure & Performance
Performance optimization, database migrations, deployment pipelines, cost reduction. Consistently 70–90% improvements across platforms. Speed is a feature, and so is a bill that stops scaring you.
Agentic Engineering
Beyond automation. Data McFly designs and deploys agentic systems that don't just run scheduled tasks — they reason, plan, and act. Multi-step agents that use tools, make decisions, and operate autonomously inside your workflows. If you're ready to bring agentic engineering into your business as a production system and not an experiment, this is where it starts.
// The 70/30 difference
One engineer who ships like a team. Here's why that's possible now.
Most fractional CTOs give you judgment or hands — rarely both, never at the same time. Data McFly delivers both because of a methodology we call 70/30 Engineering: AI agents (Claude Code, Codex) handle roughly 70% of the mechanical work — scaffolding, boilerplate, test coverage, the first draft of nearly everything — while senior human judgment owns the 30% that actually determines whether software is any good: architecture, edge cases, security, and knowing what not to build.
It's not vibe-coding and it's not hype. It's a disciplined way of working that turns a single senior engineer into the output of a full team. The proof is in what it ships: at TalentGenius, this approach drove roughly a 10x increase in features shipped, and BoardRadar went from nothing to launched in about three weeks with two engineers.
That's the difference between a consultant who's read about AI and a partner who builds with it every day.
// How it works
Flexible by design. Structured for results.
You have engineers. You need someone senior enough to catch the decisions they don't know they're making. Data McFly is in your corner every week — reviewing architecture, pressure-testing the roadmap, and giving you honest answers without an agenda. A CTO on speed dial who actually picks up.
- Weekly strategy and architecture calls
- Async Q&A between sessions (same-day response)
- Roadmap reviews and technology evaluations
- Code and architecture audits on request
Best for: founders and CTOs who have a dev team but want senior technical judgment in the room.
Book a callEverything in Advisory — plus we're actually building with you. Data McFly sits inside your team, owns real deliverables, and brings both the strategic clarity and the hands-on execution most companies can't get from a single hire. One engagement, no handoff lag, no translation loss between strategy and shipping.
- Everything in Advisory, plus
- Active development alongside your team
- Direct ownership of architecture decisions and PR reviews
- Engineering hiring support and technical interviews
- Onboarding and mentorship — including ramping your team on agentic workflows
Best for: scaling companies that need a senior builder and a strategic voice — not one or the other.
Book a callYou have a specific, defined problem — a platform migration, an AI automation system, a performance overhaul, an integration that's been on the roadmap too long. We scope it clearly, agree on the outcome, and Data McFly delivers it. No retainer, no ambiguity.
- Clear deliverable agreed upfront
- AI pipeline and automation builds
- Platform and database migrations
- Performance and infrastructure overhauls
- API design and third-party integrations
Best for: businesses with a well-defined technical challenge that needs to get done properly, once.
Book a call// About
An AI-native engineering studio.
Data McFly is an AI-native engineering studio led by Roger Stringer — a product engineer and full-stack developer with 27+ years of building software that ships and scales.
We work with startups and businesses that need senior technical leadership without the cost of a full-time executive hire. The background spans the entire stack: frontend to infrastructure, database design to agentic AI pipelines. Past roles include senior engineering at Directus and Crowdcast; current work includes leading product engineering on BoardRadar at TalentGenius.
What separates Data McFly from most fractional CTOs: we build. With AI-augmented workflows and agentic systems as part of the toolkit, a single engagement reliably delivers the output of a full engineering team. As comfortable writing production code as sitting in a strategy meeting — which means less translation loss, faster delivery, and a partner who understands the technical reality of every decision you're weighing.
And on AI specifically: most people think it's about prompting. The real work is context — getting the right data to the model at the right moment. That's the line between a demo and a production system, and it's where Data McFly lives.
We take on a small number of clients at a time, intentionally, so every engagement gets the attention it deserves.
// Ready to stop guessing and start building right?
Let's talk.
Let's have a 30-minute conversation about where you're headed and whether Data McFly is the right fit to help you get there. No pitch, no pressure.
Typically responds within one business day · Currently accepting 2 new clients