A fractional CTO and tech lead for your SaaS team, a few days a month.
I join your team two to eight days a month as its senior technical lead. I own the architecture, set the engineering direction and review the work, and I’m on Slack or Teams between those days. You get the judgement of an experienced CTO without recruiting one full time.
Remote across Australia and New Zealand. On-site in South East Queensland.
Who this is for
Usually a founder-led SaaS company with a small development team, somewhere between its first paying customers and a serious scale-up. The developers are good. What’s missing is someone senior who owns the whole system.
- Nobody senior owns the architecture, so it gets decided ticket by ticket and drifts.
- A founder is still acting as CTO, and it’s taking time away from customers and investors.
- Your CTO or lead developer has left, and you need cover while you work out what the role should be.
- You’re about to take on something risky, such as a rebuild, a big integration or moving money, and want a senior hand on it.
- Investors or enterprise customers have started asking technical questions you can’t answer with confidence.
- An agency or offshore team builds the product, and you want someone on your side who can read their work.
What I take on
The parts of a CTO’s job that a small team feels most when they’re missing.
Architecture ownership
I keep a clear picture of how the system fits together and where it’s heading, write the big decisions down as short decision records, and make sure new work fits the plan instead of fighting it.
Engineering direction
Coding standards, code review, test strategy, environments and CI/CD. Enough process to ship safely and often, and no more than that.
Planning with the business
I sit in on roadmap and planning sessions, turn business goals into technical options with honest trade-offs, and raise risks while there’s still time to act on them.
Hands-on where it counts
I still write code. On my days I often take the risky piece myself, such as the ledger change, the payment flow or the infrastructure as code, and pair on it with your developers.
Hiring and mentoring
I help you define roles, interview engineers and bring new people up to speed, and I mentor the developers you already have through new patterns and technology.
Vendor and cloud decisions
AWS setup, third-party services and build-or-buy calls, from someone independent who earns nothing from the answer.
How a fractional engagement runs
A steady rhythm your team can plan around, with room to step up when a release or a crisis needs it.
Intro call
We talk through the product, the team and what you need covered. If a fractional lead isn’t the right answer, I’ll say so and suggest what is.
First month: learn the system
I read the code, the infrastructure and the backlog, meet everyone, and write up what I find with a short list of priorities we agree on together.
Regular days
We agree how many days a month and how they fall, for example a fixed day each week plus planning sessions. We review that as the work changes.
Between days
I’m on Slack or Teams for questions, reviews and decisions that can’t wait for my next day.
Month to month
After the three-month minimum it continues month to month with a month’s notice. When you’re ready for a full-time CTO or lead, I help you hire and hand over.
Where I’ve done this
Most of my leadership has been on the same platforms I architected, which is the point: I stay close enough to the code to know when advice is wrong.
Property & channel management platform
I joined Homhero in 2018 as a senior engineer and became its solutions architect, setting the technical direction of the platform over eight years.
- Designed the serverless platform (DynamoDB, Lambda, EventBridge, CDK) while the legacy PHP system stayed live.
- Set the rebuild path to a TypeScript NestJS engine; error reporting cut reported bugs by 50%.
- AWS Lambda
- DynamoDB
- EventBridge
- Cognito
- Angular
- Ionic
Trust accounting SaaS platform
As solution architect and project lead on Homtrust, I owned both the architecture and the delivery of a platform that holds regulated client money.
- Domain-driven GraphQL API on schema-per-enterprise PostgreSQL, with ledger posting, bank feeds and reporting running asynchronously on AWS.
- Owned the double-entry ledger, with ACID online mutations and dedicated ledger processors with dead-letter handling.
- TypeScript
- NestJS
- GraphQL
- PostgreSQL
- MikroORM
- AWS CDK
Leading teams before that
- 2016–18Co-Founder & Tech Lead, MoovskiCo-founded an early-stage venture and led engineering.
- 2013–14Senior Developer / Scrum Master, InsurtechWeb and mobile features; introduced test-driven development.
- 2010–13Senior Developer, Claromentis (UK)Intranet platform: led the project-control and learning management applications; introduced Scrum.
Questions I’m often asked
What’s the difference between a fractional CTO and a fractional tech lead?
Mostly where the time goes. As a fractional CTO I spend more of it with founders on roadmap, hiring and risk. As a tech lead I spend more of it with developers on design and code. Most engagements are a mix of both, on the same terms.
Is two days a month enough to make a difference?
For a small, stable team, often yes. Two days covers planning, the key design reviews and a look over the riskiest changes, with Slack in between. If you’re mid-rebuild or launching something that moves money, plan for more.
Will you replace our developers?
No. I work with your team, not instead of it. If you need a large piece built, a design and build engagement over a few months is the better fit, and it can roll into fractional leadership afterwards.
Where are you based?
On the Gold Coast. I work remotely with teams across Australia and New Zealand in AEST hours, and on-site in South East Queensland.
Other ways I help
Need a senior technical lead without a full-time hire?
Tell me about the product, the team and what you need covered. I’ll tell you honestly whether a fractional lead fits.