Remote CTO
Give your development team steady technical leadership.
Part-time leadership for daily engineering work, team growth, hiring, technical decisions, code quality, and selected hands-on implementation.
Review the leadership scope
For the leadership gap inside a working team
Developers need clear ownership, prepared work, timely decisions, consistent review, and someone accountable for how the team delivers together.
- You have a small development team but no dedicated technical leader coordinating daily work.
- Founders or product managers spend too much time assigning engineering tasks and resolving technical disagreements.
- Delivery is active, but code quality, ownership, priorities, and follow-through vary week to week.
- You need help hiring and organizing a capable team without adding a full-time CTO immediately.
Part-time by design
Scheduled involvement, clear availability
Reserved recurring time is combined with planned flexibility. Important meetings and decisions should be scheduled in advance so context and capacity can be protected.
- Engagement
- $4,500 / slot
- Minimum three-month term, with up to two client slots active at the same time.
- Capacity
- Up to 120 hours
- Monthly capacity shared across management, planning, meetings, hiring, reviews, documentation, and coding.
- Availability
- Scheduled
- Not an on-call role. Short-notice requests receive best-effort support when capacity allows.
Leadership close enough to the daily work
The role connects business priorities to daily engineering decisions, team capacity, code quality, and operational reality.
- Team management
- Set responsibilities, working agreements, communication rhythms, feedback practices, and expectations for an accountable team.
- Daily delivery planning
- Turn roadmap priorities into ready tasks, assign ownership, manage dependencies, follow progress, and remove blockers.
- Code review & quality
- Review important changes, improve maintainability, define coding and testing standards, and identify technical risk.
- Hiring & team formation
- Define roles, participate in interviews, assess practical ability, support selection, and establish onboarding.
- IT decisions & alignment
- Join scheduled meetings requiring technical judgment, explain trade-offs, record decisions, and align stakeholders.
- Selective hands-on coding
- Use agreed capacity for high-leverage implementation, prototypes, critical fixes, difficult integrations, or reference code.
Leadership that leaves useful systems behind
Plans, standards, roles, and decisions remain visible so the team works better even when the CTO is not in the room.
- Working delivery plan
- A maintained view of priorities, ownership, dependencies, milestones, blockers, and decisions.
- Engineering standards
- Practical expectations for code review, testing, documentation, branching, releases, security hygiene, and decisions.
- Team capability plan
- Clear roles, hiring priorities, skill gaps, interview criteria, onboarding needs, and development areas.
- Decision & risk record
- Important decisions, trade-offs, risks, owners, and follow-up actions visible to technical and business stakeholders.
The operating rhythm
The rhythm adapts to the team, while responsibilities and decision windows remain explicit.
1. Set weekly direction
Review priorities, risks, dependencies, capacity, and decisions required from product or business stakeholders.
2. Prepare & assign work
Make tasks implementation-ready, define acceptance conditions, assign ownership, and sequence dependencies.
3. Guide daily execution
Use agreed check-ins and async updates to follow progress, answer questions, and remove blockers.
4. Review quality
Review important code and design decisions, verify testing, and address recurring engineering problems.
5. Report & decide
Communicate progress, risks, trade-offs, and next decisions in a form stakeholders can act on.
A leader for your existing team
Most effective when developers already exist or are being hired. It provides management and judgment, but does not replace a properly staffed delivery team.
A clear role boundary
Not full-time employment, unlimited staff augmentation, permanent 24/7 availability, formal HR administration, or guaranteed emergency response.
Common questions
Is this a full-time or on-call CTO role?
No. It is a scheduled part-time role with agreed capacity and communication windows, not an always-available on-call or emergency response function.
How much notice is needed for IT meetings?
Invite me as early as practical with the decision, context, participants, and duration. Recurring meetings are reserved; additional short-notice requests are best effort.
How much coding is included?
Coding uses the same monthly capacity as planning, meetings, reviews, hiring, and leadership. More implementation time reduces capacity for management and governance.
What coding work is most suitable?
High-risk or enabling work: technical spikes, reference implementations, difficult integrations, critical fixes, tooling, or a first vertical slice the team can extend.
What does hiring participation include?
Role definition, criteria, candidate review, technical interviews, practical assessment, selection advice, and onboarding support. Sourcing, contracts, payroll, and HR administration remain with the client.
Will you directly manage developers?
Yes, within the agreed model: planning and assigning work, reviewing delivery, feedback, blockers, and engineering expectations. Formal HR authority remains with the client.
Need delivery capacity instead of team leadership?
Full-Stack Development is the scoped alternative when the primary need is to build, test, release, and operate an agreed system.