whoami

Senior judgment, no headcount

Big consultancies sell hours. I sell outcomes - and the work is done by one engineer who's actually written code this week, not by a pyramid of juniors under a slide deck.

Midnight Labs is a one-person consultancy. That's the whole point: when you hire me, you get the person doing the work - in the code, in the architecture calls, and in the room when the hard decisions get made.

For fifteen-plus years I've built software for early-stage startups and growing companies - sometimes as the founding engineer, sometimes as a senior IC, sometimes as the person quietly making the call that the whole roadmap depends on.

I started Midnight Labs because the best work I've done has always been the same shape: a small number of people, a real problem, and the freedom to ship something useful before the slide deck dries. The name? The best ideas tend to show up well after midnight.

- Nick Shawnley, founder

NS

Nick Shawnley

Founder · Principal Engineer

1:1
Work directly with the builder
100%
Code & IP you keep
0
Junior hand-offs
15+ yrs
Shipping production software
cat team.json

A network, not a headcount

Midnight Labs is intentionally a team of one. When a build genuinely needs more hands, I bring in a small, vetted bench of senior specialists I've worked with for years - so you scale up without ever scaling down on quality.

Senior specialists, brought in only when the work needs them
No bench-warming, no padded hours, no mystery line items
You always know exactly who is doing the work
When I’m not the right fit, I say so - and point you elsewhere
cat stack.txt

The stack I reach for

Not exhaustive - but a good sense of where I've gone deep. I'll learn your stack if it makes sense; I won't pretend to love yours if it doesn't.

TypeScriptReact / React NativePHP / LaravelLivewireNodePythonPostgresLLMs & RAGVector DBs
./contact

Let's talk.

Tell me about the problem. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right fit - and if I'm not, I'll point you to someone who is.