From problem to production
Tell me the problem. I build the solution.
I’m Rico Fritzsche, software engineer and architect with 30+ years of experience. I take responsibility for understanding your problem, designing the solution, and delivering working software, at a fixed price from 15,000 EUR, delivered in 4 to 12 weeks.
Tell me what you need solvedSituations
Problems I take on
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Too much work still happens by hand.
Spreadsheets, emails, copy-and-paste, and workarounds keep an important process running.
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Something needs to be built, but the team can’t get to it.
The need is clear, but delivery keeps slipping behind other priorities.
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A part of the system has become a liability.
It is slow, fragile, or so awkward to change that every modification becomes risky.
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Systems that should work together don’t.
Data has to be moved, reconciled, or fixed manually because the handover isn’t reliable.
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You know the outcome you need, but not yet the software.
The business problem is clear. The right solution still needs to be shaped and built.
What I take on is one bounded piece of software: a feature, a service, an integration or an API, with a scope that can be agreed before I start.
How I work
The whole solution is my responsibility
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Understand the actual problem
I first make sure we understand what really needs to be solved and what a useful result looks like.
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Design the right solution
I shape a solution around the problem, the business, and the environment it needs to work in.
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Build and integrate it
I deliver working software and connect it to the systems and workflows it needs to support.
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Make sure it holds up
I take responsibility for robustness, security, and testing, with code that remains understandable and maintainable after delivery.
Price and delivery
Every engagement has a fixed price, starting at 15,000 EUR, and a fixed delivery date, 4 to 12 weeks after the start depending on scope. Both are set before I begin and do not change for the agreed scope.
If the scope changes on your side, we agree the change and its effect on price and date before I continue. You own the code and the repository in full from the day of delivery. Defects found within 30 days after delivery are fixed at no cost.
Engineering with AI agents
I work with AI coding agents. That is what makes a fixed price and a delivery date of 4 to 12 weeks possible. The engineering stays with me: I understand the domain, design the solution, decide the architecture, and review and test everything before delivery. The agents produce code under my direction. This is engineering work, not vibe coding, backed by 30+ years of experience in fields including logistics, location-based systems, telecommunications, energy, public sector, and automotive.
Examples
Work I have delivered
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Make one slow endpoint fast without touching the rest of the system
- Problem
- A critical endpoint in an existing system had become too slow for the process that depended on it.
- Solution
- I built a separate endpoint in Rust that is deployed on its own. It reads from a read-only data artefact built and optimised for this one query. The existing system did not have to change.
- Outcome
- The process runs against the new endpoint, and the existing system was left untouched.
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Resolve logistics addresses correctly in under 5 milliseconds
- Problem
- A logistics company needed a geocoding endpoint whose query logic covers the cases that make logistics addresses hard to resolve.
- Solution
- I designed the query logic for these logistics-specific cases and built the endpoint around it.
- Outcome
- Lookups answer in under 5 ms.
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Know when a vehicle leaves its zone while it happens
- Problem
- Vehicles send position events continuously, millions of them, and operations need to know when a vehicle enters or leaves a defined zone.
- Solution
- I built the geofencing API: ingestion that keeps up with the full event stream and zone evaluation on every incoming position.
- Outcome
- The API handles millions of ingest events, and zone entries and exits are detected from the live event stream.
Thinking
How I think about software
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Slow Down, Understand the Domain, and Then Build
See why learning the domain before choosing patterns prevents expensive architecture built around the wrong problem.
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Simplify & Succeed: Replacing Layered Architectures with an Imperative Shell and Functional Core
See how separating business rules from side effects makes important behavior easier to test, trace, and change.
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More articles on Medium
Further pieces on how to build great software, published in Level Up Coding.
Contact
Tell me what you need solved
Describe the problem, what you need to achieve, and anything else you think is relevant.
I reply within one working day to arrange a first conversation, free of charge. Within two working days after that conversation you receive a written offer with the scope, the fixed price and the delivery date.