The questions people actually ask.

That is the normal case, not the exception. It is exactly what a fractional CTO is for: someone carries the role while nobody in-house can, and spends that same time building up the person who will take it over — with reviews, structure and honest feedback. A mandate that ends with me being indispensable is one I got wrong.

An experienced technical leader who holds the CTO role for part of the week — with accountability, not just opinions. You get decisions, leadership and representation outwards without creating a full-time position that is either premature or currently unfillable on this market.

With a position fix: two to four weeks, clearly scoped, ending in a written read on where you stand with the findings in priority order. After that you decide on further scope — or against it. The document is yours either way, and it stays useful if we don't continue.

Billing is by scope and rhythm, not by the hour. A consulting engagement gets a fixed price against a defined result; an ongoing mandate gets a monthly frame for an agreed number of days. The number is in the proposal after the intro call — any earlier and it would be a guess.

Yes, and I read a great deal more of it. But if I work through your tickets you have the most expensive developer on the team and still no leadership. Where it helps I build prototypes, reference implementations or the first piece of an architecture — as a template for the team, not as capacity.

For most companies one to two days a week is enough, reliably and on a fixed rhythm. What matters is not the volume but that the time is predictable and that the decisions actually get made inside it. I deliberately run only a few mandates at once.

The depth of the stack. Most technical leaders come from software, cloud and product, which covers the top two or three layers. If your product is made of hardware and software, the problem is almost never where you are looking for it — it sits at the seam between firmware, radio, architecture and cloud. I have built both sides of that seam myself.

Best fit: companies whose product is made of atoms and bits — sensing, measurement, building and energy technology, medtech, machinery, industrial IoT. Plus deep-tech startups around their first round, and established mid-sized firms digitalising a physical product. Pure web and app projects are usually better served elsewhere.

If you sell a product with digital elements in the EU, reporting obligations for actively exploited vulnerabilities have applied since 11 September 2026, and full conformity is due on 11 December 2027: a machine-readable SBOM including firmware, secure-by-design, coordinated vulnerability disclosure, and updates across the product lifetime. It hits the firmware supply chain and the cloud backend alike — both sides have to line up, or the best single measure buys you nothing.

A systematic, independent assessment of architecture, code, team, suppliers and technical risk — ahead of an investment, an acquisition or a large decision. For hardware-adjacent companies it also covers manufacturing readiness, certification, component availability and second sources: exactly the parts a software-only review does not touch.

Both. I am based in Vienna and on site when it matters — workshops, reviews, hiring panels, and anything else that belongs in one room. The rest works remotely, across the DACH region and in English beyond it.

Usually within one to two weeks of a positive intro call. Since I run only a few mandates in parallel it depends on the current ones — ask directly about availability.

A handover to a named person, on a date: decisions documented, open points with the reasoning behind them, and support hiring the successor where that helps. Many companies stay in touch afterwards in a smaller advisory format — a few hours a month for the questions that come up anyway.