A software consultant for the systems you can’t afford to break.
I’m Dave Minogue. For twenty-five years I’ve built and repaired production software — AWS infrastructure, the databases underneath it, and the long-lived applications businesses actually run on. I work with startups and established teams in Toronto and remotely across North America.
What I work on
AWS & serverless architecture
Lambda services that do real work — document processing, OCR, background jobs — deployed repeatably with the Serverless Framework and secured properly at the edge.
Database performance & migrations
The slow query, the replication lag, the migration everyone is afraid to run. Schema and performance work on MySQL, MariaDB, PlanetScale and Vitess at production scale.
Legacy & inherited code rescue
The codebase whose author left. Long-lived PHP and Laravel applications, ageing servers, and systems nobody wants to touch — audited, stabilised and made changeable again.
Third-party integrations
Accounting systems, single sign-on, inbound email, video platforms. The integrations that quietly break at 2am and nobody owns.
How I work
Understand it before changing it
Most problems I’m called about turn out not to be the problem. The first pass is reading the code, the logs and the data, then telling you plainly what I found — including when it’s smaller or larger than you expected.
Small, reversible changes
Live systems get changed carefully: staged, observable, easy to roll back. Five safe changes beat one large one nobody can undo.
Leave it maintainable
The work is finished when someone else can run it. That means documentation, repeatable deployment, and no dependency on me being reachable.
Honest scoping
I’d rather tell you a job is two days than bill you for two weeks, and rather decline work than take on something outside what I do well.
Experience
Currently a full-stack engineer at Trestle, working on a platform for general contractors — a TypeScript monorepo on Next.js and Prisma with PlanetScale, alongside AWS Lambda services deployed with the Serverless Framework. Also works on NewSpark, a PHP and MariaDB media platform with video and live-streaming ingest. Earlier work spans startups through to large enterprises, across web and mobile applications.
Some of my clients
Common questions
Do you take on small projects?
Yes. A scoped audit, a performance investigation or a single integration is often the most useful way to start, and it tells us both whether a longer engagement makes sense.
Do you work remotely or on-site?
I'm based in Toronto and work with clients across Canada and the United States. Most engagements are fully remote; on-site is possible in the Greater Toronto Area.
Can you work with our existing team?
Usually that's the point. I'm most often brought in alongside an in-house team to handle a specific problem they don't have the bandwidth or the specialism for, and to leave it maintainable by them.
What if you're not the right fit?
I'll say so. I'd rather turn down work than take on something outside what I do well, and I'm happy to point you elsewhere when that's the honest answer.
Tell me what you're dealing with.
Whether it's a system that's slowing down, an integration that keeps breaking, or a codebase you've inherited and can't safely change — describe it and I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right person for it.