Are you tired of your feature velocity being measured in months instead of days?
Are you worried that competitors are out-innovating you?
Are you spending too much on AWS?
Are you struggling to adopt serverless?
👋 Hi, I’m Yan Cui, an AWS Serverless Hero and the author of Production-Ready Serverless. I help clients go faster and deliver more with less.
I have run production workloads at scale in AWS since 2009. As a consultant, I have helped many clients of a variety of domains and sizes achieve a positive business outcome.
If you’re looking to improve your feature velocity, reduce your costs, and make your systems more scalable, secure, and resilient, I can help. I have done it before, multiple times. Contact me today to learn more.
I have been fortunate to work with some of the brightest engineers in the industry and I’m honoured that they value my advice. 🙏
Yan's expertise in AWS-powered Serverless infrastructure is world-class. Very highly recommended.
Yan's expertise in AWS-powered Serverless infrastructure is world-class. Very highly recommended.
My services
Serverless Training
Flat fee of £15000 (~€17500) + expenses.
Go from zero to knowing how to build production-ready serverless applications in 2 days with my hands-on workshop. Available both in-person (within Europe) and remotely.
This is the best way to upskill your team quickly.
Contact me for availabilitySee the curriculum
Custom Projects
Offered at a set fee for a defined scope.
Do you have a great product idea but don't know where to start? Let me help you build your product idea from the ground up.
I'm a seasoned builder and can take your idea from the drawing board to a fully-functional product and beyond.
Contact meSee case study
System and Process Design
From £4500 (~$5600).
Embarking on a new project without serverless experience? I'm here to guide you. From system design to bootstrapping an efficient development process, I'll help you avoid costly mistakes and boost your product velocity from the get-go!
Contact me
Well-Architected Review
From £5000 (~$6250).
If your current serverless application raises concerns about scalability and maintainability as it grows, allow me to help. I'll thoroughly review your codebase and architecture, and collaborate with your team to pinpoint risks and recommend enhancements.
Contact me
Advisory Retainer
From £2000 ($2500) per month.
If your team needs consistent, regular advice and guidance as they take their first steps into serverless. I offer a monthly retainer service that allows unlimited access to me for calls, emails, asynchronous reviews, or quick chats.
Contact meSee case study
Consulting Calls
For a 60 mins call: £400 (~$485).
Stuck on an AWS problem? Need quick help on some architecture design tradeoffs? Or maybe you're looking for an expert to lay out your options and give you some suggestions? Book a 60 mins consulting call with me and get unstuck today.
Contact me for availability
Private Speaking Events
Flat fee £1500 (~€1750) + expenses.
Want to inspire and excite your coworkers about serverless? Or help them understand how adopting serverless can benefit your organization? Book me for a private speaking session and deliver a presentation (with Q&A) that's tailored to your audience.
Contact mePublic speaking engagements
General Enquiry
Don't worry if you don't find a service that perfectly aligns with your needs. We can create a custom engagement structure together and find something that works for you.
Please reach out, and we'll explore the best way for me to support you and help you succeed.
Contact me
Case Studies
TotallyMoney’s mission is to improve the UK’s credit score and cement its position as one of the most customer-focused FinTech brands nationwide.
TotallyMoney sees serverless technologies as the future of software development and the perfect vehicle with which to modernise its technology stack. However, the team lacks the necessary experience to navigate its journey to this new paradigm safely. There are simply too many unknowns and risks along the way.
I worked with several teams over 3 months and helped them gain confidence with serverless technologies such as API Gateway, Lambda and DynamoDB. Along the way, they have discovered new architectural patterns and have made strides towards refactoring their existing services to serverless.
InDebted’s mission is to fix the broken debt collection industry, which has been riddled with malpractices and horror stories. They are looking to protect the most vulnerable of us in society, and they are doing it by leveraging modern technologies and building with a serverless-first approach.
InDebted has a small team of engineers who don’t have much experience with serverless. They recognize the potential of serverless but they needed someone who can pair with them and show them rather than just telling them what to do.
I worked with their team for over 6 months and skilled them up and get comfortable with new services such as DynamoDB, Kinesis and Step Functions. They have since rebuilt and modernised their entire platform and are making heavy use of open source tools such as the Serverless framework and Terraform.
ElderCounsel helps legal practitioners streamline their elder law practices. Their flagship product is a document drafting software that can generate a wide array of legal documents related to elder law.
ElderCounsel wants to modernize its flagship software and address many of the complaints and requests from its members. The new system is a fairly sophisticated piece of software. It has many integrations with 3rd party systems such as SalesForce and specialized CRMs that cater to law practices. It also needs to provide a simple process to onboard existing members and migrate their data.
I worked as part of a small team that delivered the new system and was responsible for designing and implementing the backend system on AWS. We were able to overall many challenges and deliver a working system on time and on budget.
Nova Sport is a new social network that lets students connect and play sports together and gain access to their university’s sports classes. As a bootstrapped startup, Nova Sport had a limited budget to build and launch their initial MVP.
The MVP needed to be developed quickly so it can launch in time for the next university semester. The backend system needs to be able to handle thousands of concurrent users at launch and eventually scale to millions of users when it becomes successful. And given the budget limitations, it also needs to be cost-efficient.
Having had a failed launch with a previous implementation that ran on two PHP servers, the pressure is on to deliver a working and scalable solution and do it quickly and within budget.
I worked with the founders, Amir and Karam Fattal, to identify the project requirements and I designed and implemented the backend for both the mobile app and a CMS in 4 weeks.
The MVP launched on time and without a hitch. It impressed the investors and the app was well-received by users and allowed the company to go further in development and continue building on what we have.
Need help?
Let’s schedule a call to talk about your project and how I might be able to add value to your business.
But, but, but...
“Serverless is easy, we don’t need any help”
Serverless technologies have simplified many aspects of application development, but it also represents a significant paradigm shift and is moving at an enormous pace. The AWS ecosystem and best practices around them are evolving on a daily basis, and most find it difficult to keep pace with the updates. As a result, many are following out-dated advice that doesn’t take into account new service features and tools that are now available to them.
As someone who’s solely focused on the serverless space and is working closely with both AWS and third-party vendors, I’m in a much stronger position to offer you the most timely advice based on the latest developments in the platform and the wider ecosystem.
“Your service is expensive, we can’t afford it right now”
On paper, I can totally understand that. But consider the cost of your engineering team going down the wrong path, and then having to backtrack in 3 months time. Many of my clients came to me late on in the project, only to discover significant issues in their architecture because they lacked the necessary knowledge early on. Not only did they waste months of development work, but they now have to spend even more development time to undo their previous work and re-architect. Project launches are delayed, reputations are damaged, and the financial costs are significant.
In every single case, the damage was completely avoidable if they had asked for help when they needed it. Better guidance and direction early on would have steered them onto the right path. The lost productivity from the development team alone would have paid for my services 10 times over.
Why me?
I have run production workloads at scale in AWS since 2009 and have a track record of improving businesses with technology. For instance, I lead a small team that transformed a social network with serverless technologies in a matter of months. We addressed the technical debt we inherited and added lots of new features along the way. Feature delivery time went from months to days, and sometimes even hours. The system became more scalable, reliable and was over 90% cheaper to run.
Before transitioning to consulting, I worked as a principal engineer or architect within a variety of industries ranging from banking, e-commerce, social networks to mobile gaming. I have worked in both start-up environments as well as large enterprises. My diverse experience helps me emphasise with clients and adapt my approach based on the client’s constraints and context.
I’m also a prolific writer, trainer, speaker, and regular contributor to open-source projects. I have taught thousands of developers through my workshops, courses and books. My articles on AWS and serverless have been read millions of times and have helped countless developers on their serverless journey.
For my contributions towards the AWS community, AWS has recognised me as an AWS Serverless Hero since 2018.
In working with me, you’re not only partnering with one of the most respected and independent voices in the serverless space, but also someone who gives a damn about your success because my success depends on it!
I consider my greatest strength to be my ability to quickly adapt to my client’s needs and constraints and offer pragmatic solutions to their problems. I will always advocate for positive business outcome over following rules. And above all else, I will shoot from the hip and tell you how it is, and that’s the value of me being independent.
If that sounds like someone you’d like to work with, then let’s talk.
Ready to Go?
Tell me about your project and let’s explore the possible ways for us to work together.
I book projects on a first come, first served basis and priorities are given to existing clients. Reserve your spot on my calendar to make sure you get the maximum value from my service and meet those project and launch deadlines!