About
Senior software engineer and solution architect
I have been building software professionally since 2009. Sixteen years is long enough to have made most of the mistakes, watched a lot of decisions age, and developed reasonably strong opinions about which ones matter.
The short version: eight years in a client-services company working across a wide variety of projects, then five years inside product companies where I lived with the consequences of my own decisions instead of handing them over. Breadth first, then depth. I think that order matters — it is hard to know what good architecture looks like until you have seen a lot of systems, and hard to take architecture seriously until you have had to maintain one for years.
These days I work with businesses across Australia as an independent engineer and consultant, taking on the software problems that need someone senior rather than someone available.
Pratik Vanol
Senior Software Engineer & Solution Architect
Geelong, VIC · Working across Australia
How I approach the work
Six things I actually believe
Not values on a wall — each of these shows up in the case studies, and each one has cost me something to learn.
Measure before changing anything
Performance work starts with profiling, not opinions. On a legacy platform I inherited, the assumption was that the framework was the problem. It was not — it was query patterns and schema decisions that had been fine at a smaller data volume. Optimising what looks slow instead of what is slow wastes a great deal of money.
Incremental beats big-bang
A rewrite promises a clean system and delivers years of no new features and a risky cutover. Migrating module by module behind stable interfaces, with the product live throughout, is slower to describe and considerably faster to benefit from.
Understand the business, not just the ticket
Much of my work has been with non-technical clients who described what they needed in business terms. Translating that into a technical solution — and pushing back when the request would not achieve the goal — is most of the value a senior engineer adds.
Backward compatibility is a feature
Every system with users has behaviour someone depends on, including behaviour nobody documented. Preserving it deliberately is how you modernise something without breaking the business that runs on it.
Cost is an engineering concern
On a healthcare platform, video processing was a significant running cost. Rather than accept it, I built a transcoder that did only what the product needed. Infrastructure spend is usually an architecture decision that nobody revisited.
Leave it maintainable
Someone will work on this after me — possibly me in three years, having forgotten everything. Clear boundaries, sane naming and standards that are actually enforced are not perfectionism. They are what stops today's system becoming the legacy problem in the next brief.
Background
Sixteen years, briefly
The full detail is on LinkedIn. This is the shape of it.
2024 — present
Independent consultant · Australia
Consulting and delivery for businesses needing senior engineering, architecture and modernisation work.
2021 — 2024
Lead Engineer · Bacancy Technology
Led delivery on Squava and the PepsiCo data platform. Legacy migration, multi-tenant PostgreSQL, performance optimisation and full end-to-end ownership.
2021
Lead Engineer · Emxcel Travel Solutions
Backend engineering leadership on travel technology systems.
2018 — 2021
Lead Engineer · HN HealthCare
Core developer and product manager on a digital healthcare platform. Built an in-house video transcoder to reduce running costs, and real-time features on NodeJS.
2017 — 2018
Freelance engineer · Independent
Independent project delivery across a range of clients.
2010 — 2017
Senior Analyst Programmer · Gateway Technolabs
Seven years across a wide variety of client projects — the breadth that makes it possible to recognise a familiar problem in an unfamiliar system.
2009 — 2010
Senior Programmer · Dream Technologies
Where it started.
Work regularly with
- PHP
- Laravel
- Slim
- NodeJS
- React
- React Native
- PostgreSQL
- MySQL
- MongoDB
- AWS
- Docker
- CI/CD
- Linux
- LLM integration
Working together
What it is actually like to hire me
Most engagements begin with a conversation about what is actually going wrong, which is often not the thing the enquiry was about. That conversation is free and frequently the most useful part.
From there the shape depends on the problem. Sometimes it is an audit that gives you options and a cost. Sometimes it is a defined project delivered end to end. Sometimes it is ongoing senior capacity alongside a team you already have.
What does not change is that you talk to me. I do the architecture, I make the technical decisions, and I answer for the result. When a project needs more built in parallel than one person can build, it is delivered by my own offshore engineering team — people I have worked with and led for years. The relationship, the architecture and the accountability stay with me. That is the entire point of hiring a senior engineer instead of an agency.
Project delivery
You know what needs building and want one person accountable for delivering it.
A defined piece of work taken from requirements through to production. Scope, approach and milestones agreed up front, with architecture and delivery owned end to end. Where a project needs more parallel capacity than one engineer, it is built by my own offshore engineering team — while technical decisions and your point of contact stay with me.
Technical audit
You need to know what you actually have before deciding what to spend.
A focused assessment of an existing system — architecture, code quality, performance, security exposure and the real risks — delivered as findings you can make a decision from. Frequently the most valuable first engagement, because it turns a vague worry into a specific, costed set of options. Including, where it applies, the option of doing nothing.
Ongoing engineering
You need reliable senior capacity on a continuing basis.
A retained arrangement covering continued development, maintenance and improvement of your systems. Suited to businesses whose software needs steady attention but not a full-time hire, and to teams needing dependable senior depth alongside them.
Technical leadership
You have a team, or are building one, and need senior technical direction.
Acting as technical lead or solution architect alongside your existing people — setting architecture, reviewing decisions, mentoring developers, and providing the senior judgement that is expensive to hire full time. Includes working with an existing in-house or outsourced team rather than replacing it.
Outside client work
I build and run my own products
PotatoAIHub is a live multi-model AI platform — chat, image and video generation across several providers behind one interface. I built it, I deployed it, and I operate it, which means the AI and cloud advice I give clients comes from running something real rather than reading about it.
PotatoChat, an Android AI chat application, is being prepared for release. Poise, a communication app in React Native, is in active development. Neither has shipped yet, so I make no claims about their results — but building products continuously is the most honest way I know to stay current.
It also keeps me honest about cost, failure and the gap between a demo that works and a product that holds up.
Think I might be the right person for your project?
Tell me what you are trying to build, fix or decide. You will get a direct answer from me — not a sales process.
Prefer not to call? Send me a message
Working with businesses across Australia — Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra and regional Australia.