Your team is capable and your product is working, but something feels off. Maybe deployments have become nerve-wracking, or adding features takes twice as long as it should, or you are preparing to scale and wonder if the architecture will hold. These are the situations where experienced guidance makes a real difference.
By Daniele Barbaro, Tech Lead & Software Engineer. Last reviewed .
I don't believe in prescriptive solutions applied without understanding context. Every codebase has its history and every team has its constraints, so it always starts with listening. I review your codebase, learn about your business constraints and understand what you are trying to achieve. Only then do I make recommendations.
I work hands-on when that is what is needed. Architecture advice means nothing if it cannot be implemented, so I write code alongside your team, demonstrate patterns and help establish practices that stick.
Knowledge transfer is built into everything I do. The goal is not to create dependency on me, it is to leave your team stronger than I found it.
Teams reach out when they face challenges that go beyond day-to-day development work.
I offer two structures, to match different needs.
Short-term consulting on a daily rate works well for architecture reviews, specific technical challenges, or an expert perspective on a particular problem. Typical engagements range from a few days to a couple of weeks.
Ongoing collaboration through a monthly arrangement suits teams that need sustained technical guidance: longer refactoring projects, ongoing architecture evolution, or a senior technical voice available consistently. When the need is continuous technical leadership, see fractional tech lead.
My rates are published, with no form in between: see the rates page.
I work primarily with Laravel and Symfony, and I have been freelance since 2012. My experience covers:
Laravel: from small applications to large systems. Eloquent optimization, job queues with Horizon, custom service providers, package development and integration with the wider Laravel ecosystem.
Symfony: complex applications, DDD implementations, event-driven architectures and custom bundle development. Familiarity with Doctrine, Messenger and the Symfony component ecosystem.
This matters because framework knowledge is not just syntax. It is understanding how these frameworks are meant to be used, where they shine, and where you need to work around their limitations.
My consulting suits:
A Laravel or Symfony consultant works on the problems a team cannot resolve internally: architecture decisions with long-term consequences, codebases that have outgrown their original design, performance problems with no obvious root cause, and framework upgrades across major versions. The work is hands-on engineering alongside your developers, not a slide deck.
Yes. I have been freelance since 2012, working on PHP backend systems across both frameworks, including upgrades across major version boundaries, Eloquent and Doctrine data access, and patterns such as Symfony Messenger. Which framework you run matters far less than whether the architecture matches how the application is actually used.
Hire a developer when you need more capacity. Hire a consultant when you need judgement: choosing between a monolith and services, deciding whether a rewrite is justified, or finding why response times keep climbing when profiling shows bottlenecks everywhere. Those are experience problems, and more hands do not solve them.
With a conversation, at no cost. You describe the situation, I ask questions to understand it, and you and I decide whether the work is a good fit. If it is, scope and schedule are agreed upfront: focused days for shorter work, or a monthly commitment for sustained engagements.
Yes. I am based in Turin, Italy, and work remotely with teams in Italian and English, typically during European business hours. On-site time in Turin is possible when a project genuinely benefits from being in the same room.
I am based in Turin and work remotely with teams in Italian and English. I can meet you in person in Turin when the project genuinely benefits from it.
If you are facing technical challenges with your Laravel or Symfony application, the first step is a conversation. I will listen to what is happening, ask questions to understand your context, and give you an honest assessment of whether I can help.
Tell me what you are building. Prefer to read first? The daily rate page explains how a day of work runs.
In TurinToolbox Coworking (opens in a new tab)
via Agostino da Montefeltro 2
Torino, TO 10134
The door is always open for a chat over coffee.