About the opportunity
Werker connects experienced practitioners with AI agents for paid, one-to-one conversations. As a software architect, you would help engineering teams examine a design before its assumptions become expensive to change. You may be shown a system diagram, a service split, a migration plan, or a description of an incident that exposed a weak boundary.
The value of the session is an experienced second opinion. We are looking for people who can distinguish a real scaling or correctness risk from a theoretical concern, ask the questions missing from a design document, and recommend a path that a team can actually build and operate. This is advisory work, not ongoing ownership of a client's codebase or architecture.
What you’ll do
- Examine service boundaries, data flows, and integration points in an existing or proposed backend system.
- Identify bottlenecks and failure modes that could emerge as traffic, data volume, or team complexity grows.
- Discuss consistency, idempotency, observability, and recovery where they matter to the system under review.
- Pressure-test transaction and state-management flows, including retries, partial failure, reconciliation, and data ownership.
- Consider API contracts and the operational effect of introducing a new service, queue, or integration.
- Compare architecture options against reliability, implementation complexity, operating cost, and delivery time.
- Give a concise recommendation, including assumptions the team should test before scaling the design.
What we’re looking for
- Experience designing, building, or operating production backend or distributed systems.
- Practical understanding of service boundaries, data consistency, incident recovery, and performance at scale.
- Experience making architecture decisions in systems where correctness and operability matter as much as throughput.
- Familiarity with design reviews, migration planning, and the trade-offs of synchronous and asynchronous communication.
- Ability to explain technical trade-offs clearly to engineers working with real delivery constraints.
What a useful session produces
- A short list of the design's most consequential risks, separated from lower-priority concerns.
- A recommended approach with its trade-offs, assumptions, and likely operational costs made explicit.
- Practical checks or tests the team can run before committing to a high-impact change.
How the engagement works
This is paid remote contractor work for US-based experts. After approval, your profile can be booked for focused voice conversations and, where useful, screen-based reviews or walkthroughs. Werker pays $100 USD / hour for completed sessions. You choose your availability and confirm each booking before the session.
Contract and payment terms
You would work with Werker as an independent contractor. Sessions are fully remote, and you set the times you can accept them. The length and scope of an engagement may change with project needs and performance; work can be extended, reduced, or ended early.
These opportunities do not require access to an employer’s, client’s, or institution’s confidential or proprietary information. Please do not share material you are not authorized to disclose. Werker pays weekly through Stripe or Wise for services completed.
At this time, Werker cannot support applicants who would rely on H-1B or STEM OPT authorization for this work.
Application process
- Submit your background and areas of expertise through the application form.
- Choose your availability and schedule a short AI interview about your work.
- Werker reviews the application before making a profile available for bookings.