How we work
Technical leadership for products made of hardware and software. Pick the situation, not the title — and start as small as you like.
The three tracks
The same head, three different levels of accountability. Which one fits depends on whether you need a decision, a role, or a judgement.
01
Fractional or interim CTO
I take the role, not just the question: set direction, decide the architecture, lead the team, and represent the technology to management and investors.
WhenWhen technical decisions are due and nobody owns them.
02
A scoped engagement
One question, one deadline, one result. No open-ended retainer and no eighty slides — an answer solid enough that you can work from it without me.
WhenWhen the question is specific and the deadline is close.
03
Advisory board and due diligence
An independent technical judgement for people about to put money on technology — with no interest of my own in who builds it afterwards.
WhenWhen a round, an acquisition or a governance gap is coming up.
The difference
Both are legitimate. They are just not the same job, not the same role, and not the same person.
Solves throughput. The backlog gets shorter and the team moves faster.
Solves direction. The expensive mistakes rarely happen inside a function — they happen in an architecture, an interface, a supplier, or a hire.
If you need both, start with direction. You can buy the capacity more precisely afterwards — and usually cheaper.
How we start
Nobody hands a leadership mandate to someone they don't know yet. So every engagement starts with a piece of work that is worth something on its own — and that either side can walk away from.
Two to four weeks, clearly scoped. I work through the system, the team, the roadmap, the suppliers and the risks, and write up where you actually stand, with the findings in priority order.
ResultA document that stays useful even if we never speak again.
You decide on scope and rhythm — or against it. No automatic renewal, no minimum term, no follow-up calls.
ResultClarity on both sides, with nobody having to sell anything.
A fixed rhythm, clear ownership, decisions written down. One to two days a week covers most mandates.
ResultDecisions get made instead of postponed.
Most people start at step one. It costs you a few weeks and leaves you with an honest outside read on where you stand — whichever way you go afterwards.
Request a position fixSuccession
Plenty of companies would rather grow technical leadership in-house than buy it indefinitely. That is the right instinct. It rarely fails on willingness — it fails because the person meant to grow into the role has nobody to measure themselves against.
A good mandate ends with someone in-house holding the role. Anything else is a subscription.
The depth
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 and radio, between device and cloud, between what engineering promised and what manufacturing can actually deliver.
Knowing which layer you are in is most of the work. Nine layers. One person accountable. No translation loss between them.
Thirty minutes, no obligation. Afterwards you'll know whether I'm useful to you — and I'll tell you if I'm not.