Haynes Lab

Haynes Lab is a Charlotte, NC software engineering consultancy that helps founders and growing teams turn ideas, prototypes, and rough MVPs into production-ready products. We combine startup speed with senior technical judgment, helping clients move quickly without fragile code or expensive rewrites.

Haynes Lab is led by Daniel Haynes, a technical founder and fractional CTO with more than a decade of experience building and scaling real systems. Daniel started his first software company, Gaminglight, in 2013 and spent over ten years scaling high-traffic platforms before selling it in 2024. He later served as founding CTO at SharpDuel, taking the platform from zero to over $200k MRR in under a year. He has also led engineering at a smart-hardware company, covering full-stack apps, STM32 and ESP32 firmware, TensorFlow ML, manufacturing, and provisioning automation.

Our work includes MVP development, scalable SaaS architecture, full-stack web apps, backend systems, payments and subscriptions, internal tools, workflow automation, AI features, embedded systems, IoT, and hardware-adjacent prototyping. We work across modern web, cloud, mobile, AI, and embedded stacks including Next.js, Node.js, Flutter, OpenAI, STM32, and ESP32.

Clients hire us when they need a senior engineering partner who can think like a founder, communicate clearly, and make practical technical calls. We ask before we code, starting with the user, business goal, and real workflow instead of blindly building from a spec. We keep communication direct with updates on what was built, what got tricky, and what decisions are needed next.

We stay lean when a project needs focus, but also have a trusted network of engineering, design, automation, and implementation resources that lets us scale for larger jobs. Whether the need is a prototype, production-ready MVP, fractional CTO leadership, AI automation, custom software, or hardware/software integration, we help teams build the right thing and ship it.