Rules based rotation trading strategies seeking to maximize sharpe ratio

I have several projects I want to do in this space and starting with the simplest. The projects require good understanding of momentum/trend following strategies and backtesting. The 1st project is to backward engineer a 3rd party VIX contango strategy which can run on hosted domain (godaddy/bluehost) to be uploaded and configured by the programmer. The criteria for succes is that the program match exactly the 3rd party algorithm which does not change going forward. I would propose payment is linked to confirming it works going forward. Later, I want to investigate how the strategy can be improved based on lower drawdowns (increased sharpe ratio) running different simulations. I do not know all the variables that can be used and would want input. I do not have access to any proprietary data sources.