For companies that need leadership leverage after an initial diagnostic, or where the founder, CEO, or CTO needs a senior operator alongside them for technical direction, delivery governance, hiring, and architecture decisions.
The retainer is not sold as “one day per week”. It is an ongoing leadership cadence around decisions, delivery control, team design, hiring, and technical narrative.
A recurring senior leadership cadence for decisions, risks, trade-offs, escalation, delivery concerns, and founder or executive support.
Support on platform direction, build versus buy, scalability, reliability, security, technical debt, AI workflow changes, and enterprise readiness.
Guidance on role definition, leadership gaps, engineering manager needs, interview bar, senior hiring, and the next version of the org structure.
Help explain technical direction, architecture risk, delivery progress, and engineering operating model improvements to investors, boards, or strategic customers.
Practical guidance on engineering decisions that affect delivery, technical risk, hiring, customer commitments, or company strategy.
Cadence, accountability, escalation, metrics, roadmap discipline, and operating rituals that help leadership regain control of delivery.
Support for founders, CEOs, CTOs, and engineering leads who need more senior judgement in the system without adding a full-time executive yet.
Use the retainer after a diagnostic, during a leadership gap, or while preparing for a permanent CTO, VP Engineering, or Head of Engineering hire.
Discuss a CTO retainer