VKNDevelopment

Built to keep running.

Legacy backends. Missing integrations. Manual processes. Infrastructure without an owner. I take them over and make them boring again: one senior engineer with the output of a team, on B2B contracts, remote, Romania and the EU.

contact@vkndevelopment.com See the work
10years writing software
1engineer, end to end
24hreply time, business days
0account managers
“Our developer disappeared.” “Invoices are still copied by hand.” “Nobody owns the cluster.” “We want AI, but our data can't leave.” “The framework went end-of-life years ago.” “The paperwork eats a full day, every week.”
What I do

Services

01

Take over what nobody wants to touch

Legacy code, half-dead projects, sites held hostage by a vanished developer. Takeover, recovery, then modernisation: incremental, while everything keeps running.

SymfonyLaravelMySQL
02

Own the infrastructure

The cluster, the pipeline, the deployments, the bill: run properly for teams that do not have a platform engineer, and do not want to hire one.

KubernetesAzureCI/CD
03

Build what is missing

The platform, storefront, mobile app or internal tool your team keeps wishing existed. Built end to end by one person who owns the whole thing.

Next.jsReact NativeE-commerce
04

AI that stays yours

Assistants and automation working on your own data, on your own infrastructure when it matters. The leverage of AI without handing anything away.

LLMClaudeSelf-hosted
Case studies

The work

Case study / 01Personal R&D, self-hosted
Cloud ➞ Home

A full AI assistant platform where every byte stays on premises. A self-hosted dashboard running a household: monitoring, calendar, finance tracking, journal, scheduled jobs and a Home Assistant integration driving over 150 smart home entities.

The assistant is provider-agnostic. Commands go through the platform's own API to a dedicated machine and run against whichever agent is configured: Claude or ChatGPT today, anything else a config away. Its memory of the user lives in a local database, never in a third-party cloud.

Prompt➞Own API➞Configured agent➞Answer
Read the full case study
Proves
The internal AI assistant businesses ask for, built once already, alone.
Stack
Python, own API, local DB, Home Assistant
Data leaves the server
0
Case study / 02Air-claims business
Passenger ➞ Airline

From a web visitor to a signed claim on the airline's desk, with nobody in between. A four-step intake with a validated worldwide airport database, flight search, automatic compensation calculation by distance, document upload and digital signatures.

After submit, the machine takes over: PDF contracts filled from the form, one claim filed per passenger under their own signature, routed to the right airline, the full case landing on the operations board with every attachment.

4-step intake➞Signed contract➞Routed to airline➞Ops board
Read the full case study
Built
The entire flow and backend. Design by others; I built the machine behind the form.
Stack
Custom flow logic, Trello API, PDF generation, airline routing
Manual steps after submit
0
Case study / 03E-commerce client
Shopify ➞ SmartBill

Invoicing that runs itself. The store sold on Shopify and invoiced in SmartBill, with no integration between them: every sale meant copying order details by hand. A lightweight Node.js service now listens to Shopify webhooks and creates the invoice in SmartBill the moment an order or subscription lands.

Delivered in days against a live store with no staging environment, verified invoice by invoice until every path ran clean.

Order placed➞Webhook➞SmartBill API➞Invoice issued
Read the full case study
Stack
Node.js, Shopify webhooks, SmartBill API
In production
Since 2024, unattended
Manual invoices since
0
Case study / 04Small business rescue
Offline ➞ Online

A website taken down by its own developer, back online the same day. The relationship went bad and the developer pulled the site offline, leaving the owner with a repository, two subscriptions and no handover. I took over the code and the infrastructure, restored the site within the day, and locked every access down.

Then the real work: the database schema rebuilt properly, and a carelessly written codebase improved release by release while the site keeps running. Incremental change, never a risky rewrite.

Site taken down➞Takeover➞Back online: day 1➞Ongoing work
Read the full case study
Scope
Emergency takeover, disaster recovery, ongoing development
Stack
DigitalOcean, Supabase, GitHub
Days offline since
0
Method

How I work

Incremental beats rewrite

I have moved a live production system off a dead framework onto a modern one, feature by feature, over a year, with no downtime and no freeze on delivery. I have the scar tissue to argue for incremental every time.

Deliberately boring

Clean architecture, small reusable units, unexciting technology that keeps working. Code that only its author understands is a liability, and I write code as if someone else maintains it tomorrow.

AI-assisted, senior-judged

I work with Claude Code daily, including multi-agent setups. It compresses delivery time dramatically; the judgment, the architecture and the responsibility stay human.

Who

One engineer

VKN Development is the consultancy of Razvan Anton, a senior engineer in Bucharest who has been writing software for a decade, most of it spent building and running production systems: deepest in the PHP world, at home across stacks.

Most of those years were spent on a high-traffic B2B SaaS platform where a small team means owning backend and infrastructure end to end. VKN brings the same ownership to client work: integrations, migrations, platforms and AI, delivered directly, with no layers between you and the person writing the code.

If you need a senior contractor who can take a backend, its database and its infrastructure off your hands with minimal supervision, that is the exact shape of what I do.

Razvan Anton, founder of VKN Development
Razvan AntonFounder & Software Consultant
Base
Bucharest, remote
Markets
Romania, EU, UK
Engagements
B2B contracts via VKN Development SRL
Since
2023
Engagement

How it starts

01

Write two sentences

What is broken, manual or missing. That is all a first email needs.

02

Get an honest answer

Within 24 hours on business days. If I am not the right person, I will say so instead of selling you something.

03

A first increment, in days

Small, paid, delivered end to end. You own the code and every access from day one.

04

Continue by increments

Per increment or on a retainer. Stop whenever you want; everything keeps running without me.

Straight answers

FAQ

Who actually does the work?
I do. No subcontractors, no juniors behind the curtain, no account managers. The person you email is the person in the code.
Do you take over messy or abandoned projects?
They are my favourite kind. Undocumented code, a vanished developer, no handover: recoverable, usually faster than you think. One of the case studies above went from taken-down to back online in a day.
What do you not do?
Very little, if the project is well defined. The one thing I stay away from is staff augmentation: I do not rent out as a seat in someone else's sprint. I take responsibility for outcomes, not attendance.
How do you use AI?
Openly and daily: Claude Code, including multi-agent setups. It compresses delivery from weeks to days. Every line still passes through my review, and the responsibility is mine, not the model's.
How fast do you answer?
Within 24 hours on business days, with a real answer, not an autoresponder. Timezone EET (Bucharest): full overlap with EU and UK working hours.
Contact

Let's keep it running.

One engineer, direct contact, no account managers. Write two sentences about what is broken, manual or missing, and you will get an honest answer about whether I am the right person to fix it.

Replies within 24h on business days. Your name and email are used only to reply to you, then they stay in my inbox. No CRM, no mailing lists, deleted on request.

Prefer plain email? contact@vkndevelopment.com · LinkedIn