CTO freed 90h/mo for strategic growth with senior dev hired in 7 days

In 2025, just months after its launch, Omniga, an AI-first bookkeeping and G&A platform, was already serving a growing roster of clients across SaaS, eCommerce, and digital services—and had a product roadmap to deliver on.

As the business scaled, the demands on the team scaled with it.

Architectural and development work that Drew Hyatt had previously absorbed as CTO now required dedicated engineering capacity, while the company also needed Drew to be focused on product architecture, technical direction, founder-led go-to-market, and core application decisions that would define Omniga’s future.

Two tech areas in particular had become business-critical:

— Stripe billing integration—automated billing for Omniga’s subscriptions, covering payment flows, upgrades, and downgrades, and the full subscription lifecycle;

— Self-serve onboarding flow.

Both were central to Omniga’s commercial operations but separable enough from the core application architecture that a senior external engineer could own them end to end.

The role required someone capable of senior-level communication, independent execution, and enough architectural judgment to operate as a technical peer to Drew without constant context-setting.

Hiring in-house in the US wasn’t a realistic option—months of recruiting and salary commitments are hard to justify at the product stage.

Omniga had already explored other contractor and freelance hiring channels, where finding and hiring the right developer required several weeks of self-directed screening, vetting, and interviewing. The process created too much uncertainty and trial-and-error for the speed Omniga needed.

Kevin Thomas had worked with Lemon.io before, and when Omniga needed to move fast on a critical engineering hire, that prior trust mattered.

Omniga expected a curated tech talent marketplace with a matching manager keen on specific tech stacks, business niches, and startup DNA—to work better and faster for their hiring needs.

Lemon.io’s matching team reviewed Omniga’s requirements—NestJS (Node.js), TypeScript, PostgreSQL, React, Stripe API —and within 24 hours delivered pre-screened senior profiles, each with written commentary explaining the technical and cultural fit.

In turn, Omniga reviewed the profiles, completed interviews, and the chosen developer started the following Monday.

Kareem Ibrahim joined Omniga’s team as a full-stack developerin September 2025 through February 2026. His primary focus was on two of the business-critical areas of the platform: Stripe billing and the self-serve onboarding flow.

— On the billing side, Kareem built and owned Omniga’s Stripe billing integration end-to-end—subscription management, payment flows, and upgrade and downgrade logic—the infrastructure behind every paying client Omniga serves. With billing off his plate, Drew no longer had to split his attention between product architecture and commercial infrastructure.

— On the self-serve side, Kareem built the flows that allow new clients to onboard, configure their accounts, and connect to their financial stack without white-glove intervention—a capability essential to Omniga’s potential to scale.

The quality of that delivery earned Kareem a bigger mandate.

Several months into the engagement, Omniga put him in charge of kicking off a second Stripe workstream: the integration powering the in-ledger revenue-recognition feature on Omniga’s product roadmap. He laid the architectural foundation for connecting billing events directly into Omniga’s workflows—groundwork the team will build on as the feature moves toward launch.

Beyond the features themselves, Kareem brought engineering practices that raised the quality bar across the codebase. He introduced AI-assisted test coverage via Gherkin-style test generation and applied AI tooling to DevOps workflows. He was also a collaborator on SOC 2 readiness, working within the audit trail and evidence requirements that Omniga is developing as it builds toward SOC 2 Type II readiness.

More importantly, the process of working with a senior external engineer sharpened Omniga’s internal workflows: structured ticketing, clearer sprint definitions, and tighter async communication—practices that now form the foundation the team can scale on.

To learn more about the company’s challenges and growth, check out Omniga on LinkedIn.