What I do
The core of the engagement is the fractional CTO role: I own the technical direction and stay accountable for delivery. Around that I bring and lead whichever specialists the work needs - so you get a complete capability without managing a roster of vendors.
Fractional CTO - the spine of it
I own the technical direction the way a full-time CTO would: setting the strategy, shaping a roadmap you can actually act on, making the architecture and delivery calls, and deciding who we need on the team and when. You get one person accountable for the whole picture, not just the next feature.
And it doesn't end when a build ships. Technology needs steering as the business changes - new priorities, new constraints, the things that didn't work the first time. I stay with it, so the decisions stay joined up and you always have someone who can explain, in plain terms, where the technology is and where it's going.
The team I bring and lead
Engaged as the work needs them, directed by me, accountable to you through me.
Engineers who build to a standard and to the roadmap, not just to the ticket in front of them. I set the technical bar and review against it, so the codebase stays something you can keep building on - not something that has to be redone in a year.
Interfaces and flows designed around how people actually use the product, not around what's easiest to build. We work out what the user is trying to get done first, then design for that - usually the difference between software people return to and software they tolerate.
Someone keeping scope and priorities honest against what the business actually needs. Not everything that gets asked for is worth building, and the order matters - good product management is mostly saying 'not yet' to the right things so the important work ships.
Checking that what we ship works before your customers do it for us. Testing is built into how we work rather than bolted on at the end, so releases are something you look forward to instead of brace for.
The plumbing that keeps the product up, fast and affordable as it grows. Deployments that are routine rather than risky, monitoring so problems surface before customers report them, and infrastructure costs that don't quietly balloon.
Protection that's proportionate to your actual risk - taken seriously without turning into theatre. The basics done properly - access, data, dependencies - and built in as we go, so it isn't an expensive scramble the first time a customer or investor asks.
Who it's for
You have the business and the customers; you need someone to own turning the idea into software that ships and keeps improving.
Internal systems that need to be designed, built and operated properly - not a spreadsheet held together with hope.