How to work with me
Three ways engagements usually run. Most start with the first one, because it is the easiest thing to say yes to and it tells us both whether the rest makes sense.
Mobile Health Check
Fixed price · from $8,000Two weeks. I go through what you have and give you a written assessment you can act on, whether or not you use me to act on it.
- Architecture and code health, in plain language for non-engineers
- Release process, build pipeline and how long shipping actually takes
- Crash rate, performance, and where the user-facing risk sits
- App Store review and privacy exposure: what would block your next release
- A prioritised plan, and an honest view of whether you need a person or a team
Most ongoing engagements start here. It is bounded, it needs no headcount decision, and by the end you know exactly what you are dealing with.
Fractional Head of Mobile
Monthly retainerTwo or three days a week, ongoing. I run mobile for you: direction, quality, releases and people. For companies with a real product and nobody senior owning the mobile side of it.
- Architecture and technical direction
- Release process and the App Store relationship
- Hiring, mentoring and code review for your existing engineers
- A roadmap that reflects what can actually be built
This is how I worked at Wingman and Catnip: fractional, not full-time, and still fully accountable for the outcome.
Delivery & rescue
From $175/hourHands-on work with a defined end: ship the thing, fix the thing, or get the product out of wherever it is stuck.
- Releases blocked in App Store review
- Codebases the current team did not write and cannot safely change
- Extracting a product from an outside agency or vendor
- Straight senior iOS delivery alongside your existing team
Practical details
Where I work. Remote, from Bath in the UK. I work UK hours and schedule meetings in the afternoon overlap, which covers a US East Coast morning comfortably; West Coast takes a bit more planning.
Onsite. I do a kickoff in person, and up to two weeks onsite per quarter after that. Holding both US and UK citizenship means none of that carries a visa, sponsorship or paperwork question.
How I invoice. Business to business, from my own UK limited company (Charlie Robert Williams Ltd), in dollars. A US client can engage me directly, with no employer of record. If a 1099 is simpler at your end, that works too.
Where I can help. Most of what comes to me is a product that’s stuck: App Store review, privacy requirements, release engineering, performance, inherited code. I also build from a design straight through to shipping when that’s what’s needed — Catnip was exactly that — so don’t rule me out just because nothing is on fire yet.
Where I bring others in. I have worked extensively with Android and understand the ecosystem, but I am not a native Android developer. I have a strong design sense and enjoy making interfaces that are beautiful, intuitive and functional, but I am not a designer by trade. If what you need is a whole team rather than one person, I will say so early.