THE PACK NEEDS A LEAD STRATEGIC TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP WITHOUT THE 6-MONTH SEARCH
Your company has outgrown its technical leadership. Architecture decisions are stuck in committee. The board wants technical answers and nobody in the room speaks both languages. Your engineers are talented but directionless.
You need a lead who's run the hunt before, someone who can set direction, hire the right people, and bridge the gap between engineering and the boardroom.
Leadership Gaps That Slow Everything Down
I've seen these patterns in companies from Series A to scale-up. If more than two sound familiar, your team needs a technical lead, not more engineers.
Architecture Decisions Stuck
Nobody has the authority or the context to make the big calls. Should you migrate to Kubernetes? Rewrite the monolith? Adopt event sourcing? The debate has been running for months with no resolution.
Board Wants Technical Answers
Investors are asking about scalability, security, and technical roadmap. Your CEO is smart but can't translate engineering reality into board language. Technical risk isn't in the conversation.
Engineers Without a Map
Your developers are making local decisions without a global strategy. Every team picks their own stack, their own patterns, their own deployment approach. The result is a patchwork that nobody can maintain.
Can't Hire Without Tech Vision
You need to grow the team but don't have the technical leadership to define roles, assess candidates, or build a compelling engineering culture. Good engineers can smell a leadership vacuum.
Leading the Pack: Strategy, Hiring, Board, Roadmap
2-3 Days a Week, Full Strategic Impact
I embed as your technical leader, attending board meetings, leading architecture reviews, hiring engineers, and setting the technical direction. Not as a consultant with opinions, but as a fractional CTO with accountability.
I've led engineering teams through scaling challenges, M&A due diligence, and platform migrations. I speak board language and engineering language. I translate between them so nothing gets lost.
The goal is to make myself unnecessary — either by hiring your permanent CTO or by building a leadership team that doesn't need me.
- Setting the Pack's Direction: Architecture roadmap, technology choices, build-vs-buy decisions. Grounded in your actual constraints
- Building the Right Pack: Role definition, interview processes, engineering culture. Attract and retain the right people
- Board & Investor Communication: Technical risk reporting, scalability narratives, due diligence preparation. Bridge the language gap
- Laying the Trail for Teams: Development practices, deployment pipelines, incident response. Build the machine that builds the product
Picture This
Architecture decisions are made and executed, not debated endlessly. Your board gets technical updates they can understand and act on. Engineering hiring is working because candidates see a clear vision and strong culture.
Your engineering team has a roadmap they believe in. Your CTO pipeline is being built, either an internal promotion or an external hire that you can now properly evaluate. The leadership vacuum is filled.
Your First 90 Days
Fractional CTO isn't a vague advisory role. Here's exactly what happens, month by month, from day one to sustainable leadership.
Assessment & Quick Wins
- Run the Pointer Assessment across all five trails
- Identify quick wins: the fixes that build trust fast
- First board meeting with a tech risk report they can actually read
- Map the team's strengths, gaps, and morale
Architecture & Hiring
- Set technical direction: stack choices, architecture roadmap
- Define engineering roles and launch hiring pipeline
- Establish development practices: code review, CI/CD, testing
- First architecture decision records (ADRs) published
Board Communication & Culture
- Board-ready technical roadmap with business-aligned milestones
- Engineering culture improvements visible and measurable
- First hire onboarded with proper engineering onboarding
- Vendor strategy and build-vs-buy framework in place
Transition
- Internal engineering lead identified and mentored
- Permanent CTO hiring process designed and running
- Handoff documentation complete. No tribal knowledge left behind
- Option: continue fractional or clean exit
Companies That Grew Through The Breaking Point
Real companies, real pressure, real results. Here's what happened when they brought me in during their scaling challenges.
Full-Stack Technical Leadership Through Hypergrowth
Served as de facto technical lead for four years, setting architecture direction, making build-vs-buy decisions, mentoring engineers, and bridging the gap between engineering and business during 10x growth. Full stack ownership from strategy to production code.
Internal AI Assistant for 50,000+ Employees
Led architecture and strategy for enterprise AI tools integrating LLM models with bank workflows. Set technical direction for the program, built the team's engineering practices, and delivered a platform adopted across the entire organization.
"We hired Szymon twice. The first time he modernized our codebase and introduced real engineering practices. The second time we handed him the keys to rearchitect everything. The platform he built handles 10x what the old one could, and it's the core of our business now." — CEO, Hospitality Payments Platform
Why This Works When The Pack Needs Direction
Why Not Promote from Within?
- Your best IC is a brilliant engineer, but IC skills don't automatically translate to CTO skills. Strategy, hiring, board communication, vendor management. These are different muscles that need different experience.
- I bring 15 years of technical leadership experience. Your best IC keeps doing what they're great at while I handle the leadership layer they're not ready for. Yet.
Why Not CTO-as-a-Service Platforms?
- You get a different 'CTO' each week who reads your Jira board and gives generic advice. No continuity, no context, no accountability. They don't know your codebase, your team, or your constraints.
- I'm your fractional CTO. Same person, every week, building context and relationships. I know your engineers by name and your architecture by heart.
Let's Talk About What Your Pack Needs
The longer the leadership gap stays open, the more direction your team loses. 30 minutes. Let's figure out if I'm the right lead for your pack. No pitch deck, no pressure.
Prefer email? contact@grupavii.eu