Work With Me
CTO-level judgment, a few days a week. Architecture, hiring, delivery, and the hard calls in between, without the full-time salary.
Who It’s For
You can ship a product, but investors keep asking who owns the technology.
The team is shipping, but slower every quarter, and nobody owns the why.
Scope
Build vs buy, monolith vs services, platform choices. Decisions made with someone who has carried their consequences before.
Job specs, interview loops, closing senior engineers. I have hired and mentored 50+ engineers into senior and lead roles.
From “everything is urgent” to a roadmap with dates you can say out loud. Lightweight process, no cargo cult.
I cut AWS spend by 30% while traffic grew. Your cloud bill probably has the same slack in it.
Where AI genuinely accelerates your team and product, and where it is a distraction. Grounded in daily hands-on use, not slideware.
Raising or acquiring? I prepare your technical story, or stress-test someone else’s, before the hard questions show up.
Engagement
For teams that need direction, not hands
Acting CTO, 1-2 days per week
Both run monthly rolling, no long contracts. Pricing depends on scope and stage; we talk numbers on the first call, no games.
Proof
Built at Zendesk, Dutchie, and Hivenet. Full track record here
Process
30 minutes. You bring the problem, I tell you honestly whether a fractional CTO is the right fix. Sometimes it is not, and I will say so.
A short written proposal: engagement model, focus areas for the first 90 days, and the outcomes we will measure.
We start within two weeks. Monthly rolling, no lock-in. If it is not working, we stop.
Questions
Everything a full-time CTO does, scoped to the days you actually need: technical strategy, architecture decisions, hiring, delivery process, and representing technology to investors and your board. You get the judgment without the full-time cost.
Advisory runs on a weekly call plus async access. Embedded is 1-2 days per week inside your team. Both adjust month to month as your needs change.
Yes. I am based in Italy (CET) and work remote-first with companies across Europe. Occasional on-site time can be part of an Embedded engagement.
That is success, and part of the job. I help you define the role, run the search, and hand over cleanly. A fractional CTO who blocks the full-time hire is doing it wrong.
Book a 30-minute intro call. If we are a fit, you get a scoped proposal within a week and we start within two.
Next Step
Bring your hardest technical problem. Worst case, you leave the call with a second opinion. Best case, you leave with a CTO.
Prefer writing first? Use the contact form.
Newsletter
Bear Essentials is my bi-weekly newsletter on engineering leadership, AI agents, and distributed systems. See how I think before you hire me.