Fractional & interim CTO
Senior engineering leadership (almost two decades of it) for companies that need it now and are not ready to hire it permanently.
When you actually need one
There is a specific inflection point. Your engineers are shipping, but nobody senior owns the architecture, the hiring bar, or the technical roadmap. Decisions get made in tickets instead of on purpose. Or a CTO has just left, the seat is empty, and your board is asking questions about engineering that need a credible answer this quarter.
Hiring a full-time CTO at that moment is usually the wrong move. It is the most expensive hire on the org chart, it takes months to run properly, and a big permanent hire aimed at a small, still-unclear problem tends to mismatch — you end up recruiting for a company you do not have yet. The alternative most teams default to is worse: no senior technical voice at all. Technical debt compounds quietly for a year, and then surfaces as a fundraising problem or a scaling wall, at the exact moment you have no room to fix it.
A fractional CTO fills the gap deliberately. You get senior ownership a few days a month at a fraction of a full-time cost, and an interim CTO holds the whole seat when the situation calls for it. Fractional CTO cost scales with how much of the job you actually need, which is why the engagements below start where they do. This works best at seed, Series A, and Series B.
Is this the right call for you?
Worth talking to us
Engineers are shipping, but nobody owns direction. You have a team that writes code and closes tickets. What you do not have is one person accountable for the architecture, the hiring bar, and the roadmap. That gap is invisible until it is expensive.
Your CTO or VP Eng just left. The seat needs holding while you recruit properly, which takes months you cannot pause. Someone has to keep the roadmap moving, keep the team steady, and talk to the board in the meantime.
You are technical and want a second opinion. Founders who can read the code still benefit from someone who has run engineering at a larger scale. You are not looking for help writing software; you are looking for a check on judgment.
Your board is asking engineering questions you cannot answer with confidence. Velocity, reliability, headcount plans, security posture. If those conversations feel like guesswork, that is a leadership gap, not a reporting problem.
Probably not us
You need another engineer, not direction. Sometimes the honest diagnosis is that the plan is fine and the team is simply short-handed. We will tell you that on the intro call rather than sell you a seat you do not need.
You are pre-product and pre-team. Before there is something to run, there is nothing for this role to own. At that stage your money goes further on building than on leadership.
You need someone in the office five days a week. This is senior leadership on a defined cadence, not a full-time in-person hire. If the job genuinely requires presence every day, you are hiring, and you should.
What to look for in a fractional CTO
Four things worth checking, whoever you end up hiring.
They have run it, not advised on it
Ask whether they have actually held the seat at a scale larger than yours, with the org and the accountability that comes with it — not consulted from beside it.
They have owned a budget and answered for it
Writing an architecture document is not the same as defending spend to executives. Budget ownership is what makes tradeoff advice trustworthy.
They leave teams better, not dependent
Look for a raised hiring bar and operational rigor that outlast the engagement. An advisor who becomes load-bearing has failed at the job.
They say when you do not need them
The most useful answer on a first call is sometimes no. Someone who never reaches that conclusion is selling a retainer, not solving your problem.
Who you would actually be working with
Almost two decades of software experience, including ten years of engineering leadership, most notably at Amazon where Matt led application security reviews for Amazon's retail organization. That meant three security products used by hundreds of thousands of internal stakeholders and security professionals, and a cross-functional team spanning product, security engineering, design, and software engineering.
He administered a $51M+ infrastructure budget with VP-level annual reviews, and held the organization to four nines — 99.99% availability — across every product in scope.
More recently, Matt led engineering teams at Capital One, driving enterprise AI adoption: cross-functional pods embedded with AI workflows that cut delivery time by 50%.
Independently, he helped a Series A company rework its product and engineering roadmap for delivery efficiency while they worked to hit revenue targets ahead of their next raise. He works with companies at seed, Series A, and Series B.
Three ways to work together
Same person, different amount of the job. Most companies start in the middle.
Not ready for a retainer?
An Engineering Assessment is the lower-commitment way in: an independent read on what is working, what is not, and what it costs to fix, with findings ranked by risk and a 30/60/90 with named owners.
What you get
Architecture decisions, in language your board can read
Real tradeoffs made explicitly and written down — what we are choosing, what it costs, what it rules out. The work happens in your tools with your team, not in a separate deck that arrives at the end of the month.
A written standard for what good looks like
Interview loops that actually elevate organizations, levelling that holds up as you grow, and a documented bar your team can apply without us in the room. This is the piece that keeps paying after the engagement ends.
Someone senior to take the hard call
For your engineers, a person to escalate to who has seen the failure mode before. For your CEO, a technical counterpart who will give a straight answer about risk, timelines, and what is actually going wrong.
Designed to end
Every engagement closes with a 30/60/90 and named owners. The goal is a team that runs without us, which is the opposite of how most consulting is priced — and the reason we say so up front.
How we work
Intro call
Thirty minutes on what is going wrong. If we are not the right people, we say so.
Scoped proposal
One question, one shape of engagement, one price.
Implementation
We do the work with your team, in your tools, until it ships.
Handoff
A 30/60/90 with named owners, and a team that runs it without us.
Questions
How fast can you start?
Advisory and assessments, usually about two weeks. Interim work depends on what we are already holding.
What are the terms?
Retainers are billed in full at the start of each month, month to month after an initial term, with 30 days' notice. Scoped, fixed-fee work is half on signature, half on delivery.
Do you work with seed-stage companies?
Yes, provided there is a team and a product to run. At seed the work is usually advisory — architecture calls and the first engineering hires — rather than a full seat.
What is different about a Series B engagement?
At seed the question is what to build and who to hire. By Series B it is organizational: levelling, reliability, security posture, and whether the architecture survives the next order of magnitude. Same seat, heavier problems.
Will you work with our existing team?
Always. The work happens with your engineers, in your tools. Nothing gets handed to an outside team.
None of these fit our problem.
Every company is a little different. Let's talk — engagements can be scoped to fit.