I'm Robert Felkins — a hands-on .NET and Azure solutions architect. I design cloud-native systems, modernize the ones you already have, and bring AI-assisted development into teams in a way that survives contact with production. Fractional. A few focused days a month. No headcount, no year-long ramp — just the senior calls made correctly, and the code to back them up.
Most small and mid-sized teams don't need a full-time architect. They need the right architecture — right-sized to the problem in front of them, not the platform someone read about. That's the work: end-to-end system design, cloud-native builds on the latest .NET, modernization of legacy platforms, and AI-assisted delivery practices that actually pay for themselves. I stay in the code. I mentor the team. And I'll tell you when the boring solution is the correct one — because most of the time, it is.
The most valuable thing I do on a lot of engagements is talk a team out of the expensive, impressive-sounding option. Microservices, event sourcing, a service mesh — every one of them solves a real problem, and every one of them is a liability if you don't have that problem yet. Reaching for them anyway is resume-driven development. Right-sizing is an architectural decision too — arguably the one I get hired for most.
My best marketing asset is the writing. The judgment a buyer is paying for is on display here.
Tell me what's in front of you — the migration that stalled, the platform that won't scale, the AI practice that isn't paying off yet. If it's the kind of thing I can help with, I'll tell you how I'd approach it. If it isn't, I'll tell you that too.