11 platform-specific developer specialities — pick yours, talk to the senior
Each entry is a real engagement shape, not a marketing page. Senior on every call, real architectural answers, no junior account-management layer between you and the work. The platforms below are the ones I have shipped enough of to answer for every line of code.
BOOK YOUR 30-MIN CALLHeadless CMS
Directus
Directus turns any SQL database into an instant headless CMS plus REST and GraphQL layer. Hire someone who understands the data-first model — and the operational consequences.
Read the specialty page →Payload
Payload is the open-source TypeScript-native CMS that compiles your collections into runtime types. If your team is serious about type safety end to end, this is the CMS that does not break the contract.
Read the specialty page →Sanity
Sanity gives content teams the best editorial experience in headless CMS, and engineers a real-time API. Hire someone who can extend Sanity Studio — most agencies stop at the default schema.
Read the specialty page →Tina
Tina sits on top of your Git repository — content lives as Markdown / JSON / MDX in your repo, edited through a visual UI. For developer-led teams with marketing-team writers, this is the right shape.
Read the specialty page →Decap
Decap is the open-source Git-backed CMS formerly known as Netlify CMS. Free, no hosted service to pay for, sits as a static admin UI on top of your repository.
Read the specialty page →Hygraph
Hygraph (formerly GraphCMS) is the GraphQL-native headless CMS with content federation across multiple sources. The pattern that wins: one GraphQL endpoint over Hygraph + your existing PIM + your existing Salesforce.
Read the specialty page →emdash CMS
emdash is the open-source TypeScript CMS shipped by Cloudflare in early 2026 — Astro frontend, Cloudflare Workers backend, sandboxed plugin permissions. The first CMS that takes the WordPress-plugin-attack-surface problem seriously.
Read the specialty page →Storyblok
Storyblok is the headless CMS with the strongest visual-editor story. For content teams that want to see what they are publishing as they edit, Storyblok beats every database-backed competitor.
Read the specialty page →Contentful
Contentful is the enterprise headless CMS — the most mature, the most expensive, the most governance-heavy. Hire someone who has worked with content models at scale; the decisions you make in month 1 are what you live with for years.
Read the specialty page →Database / Backend
Visual Builder
What every engagement shares, regardless of platform
Senior on every call. Discovery first, fixed-price after. Real code at handover, no locked admin. 4-week minimum engagement (anything shorter is patching, not building). Cross-stack experience — most projects pair the platform with Next.js, Astro, or a modern frontend, and the integration patterns are already in muscle memory.