Fractional CTO.
Practical, not theoretical.
I help companies make the tech calls that hold up—architecture, hiring, AI, and the roadmap behind them. 25+ years leading engineering. 50+ products shipped. I've done the job, not just advised on it.
Experience across
50+
Products shipped
25+
Years leading engineering teams
20+
Companies taken to market
100K+
End users on platforms I've built
Where I plug in
Different stages, same job—make sure the technology decisions match the business.
Startups & Founders
You're shipping an MVP, hiring your first engineers, or scaling past product-market fit. You need someone who's been the CTO—not a coach who's read about it.
Start here →Growth & Mid-market
You have a real engineering team and real revenue, and the tech decisions are getting expensive. I come in 1–2 days a week to unblock hiring, architecture, and AI strategy without replacing your VP Eng.
Book a call →Enterprise & PE-backed
You need a technical voice in the room for diligence, a turnaround, or a platform bet the board is watching. I lead, write, and defend the plan—and work alongside your existing leadership, not around them.
Book a call →What I actually do
No decks for the sake of decks. I get involved where the decisions are made and stay long enough to see them work.
- Technology strategy tied to the business, not the trend cycle
- Architecture reviews and decisions that hold up past the next rewrite
- AI strategy that ships to production instead of to a slide deck
- Engineering org design, hiring, and leveling
- Technical due diligence for investors, acquirers, and boards
- Interim CTO or VP Eng coverage during a gap or transition
- Embedded leadership—in your meetings, on your hard calls
AI is changing everything. Most companies are getting it wrong.
The opportunity is real—but so is the waste. I help teams cut through the hype and make AI bets that actually ship to production.
Agentic Systems
Multi-step AI agents that take real actions—booking meetings, filing tickets, running analyses across your tools. I architect the orchestration, error handling, and human-in-the-loop guardrails.
RAG & Knowledge Systems
Internal search over your docs, Slack, codebase, and databases. Hybrid vector + keyword retrieval with reranking—so your team gets real answers, not hallucinated ones.
Voice & Conversational AI
Real-time voice agents for support, sales qualification, and scheduling. I handle the latency, telephony integration, and human handoff architecture.
AI-Native Products
Products where AI is the core value—not a feature bolted on. Personalization engines, generative content, dynamic pricing. Build a moat, not a thin API wrapper.
Computer Vision & Multimodal
Document extraction, quality inspection, video understanding. Vision models are replacing legacy OCR and manual review across industries.
AI-Augmented Development
Coding assistants, automated testing, PR review, and migration tooling integrated into your CI/CD pipeline. Ship faster with AI in the workflow.
Build vs. Buy vs. Compose
Most teams should call APIs, not train models. I help you decide which layers to own and which to rent.
Cost Management
A feature that costs $0.02 per request at 100 users costs $60K/month at scale. Caching, prompt optimization, and model routing are architectural requirements.
Security & Compliance
Prompt injection, data leakage, PII in context windows, SOC 2 and HIPAA implications. Solvable—but only with deliberate design.
How I work
Every engagement follows the same structure—so you see results fast, not months of “discovery.”
Week 1: Deep Dive
I audit the codebase, team, and roadmap. You get the three biggest risks and the quick wins you can ship immediately.
Weeks 2–4: Strategy & Structure
We align the roadmap with technical reality and fix the process, hiring, and architecture gaps.
Ongoing: Embedded Leadership
I join your leadership meetings, unblock the team, and own the critical calls. 1–2 days per week, scaled to what you need.
Every engagement starts with a free 30-minute intro call to see if there's a fit.
Not a consultant. Not an agency.
I've been the CTO, the architect, and the product lead across oil & gas, finance, logistics, and AI. I've sat in the seat. I don't hand you a report and walk away—I lead your technology function like it's my own.
| Consultant | Agency | Fractional CTO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivers | A report | Code to spec | Outcomes over time |
| Accountability | Advisory only | To the SOW | To your business goals |
| Team access | External | External | In your leadership team |
| Duration | Project-based | Project-based | Ongoing partnership |
Industries I've built for
Every industry has its own constraints. I've shipped products across all of these.
Oil & Gas
Field ops & asset management platforms
Heavy Industry
Workforce & equipment systems
Financial Services
Trading, compliance & risk platforms
Logistics
Supply chain & fleet automation
AI & Machine Learning
Agents, RAG, voice AI, and AI-native products
SaaS
Multi-tenant platforms from zero to scale
What clients say
“Craig helped us cut through the noise and align our roadmap with customer needs and tech feasibility. He acted as our CTO when we needed one the most—without slowing us down.
“We were scaling fast and making expensive technical mistakes. Craig brought structure to our engineering org and helped us ship twice as fast with half the rework.
Let's talk.
Need senior technical leadership without the full-time commitment? Grab 30 minutes and we'll figure out if there's a fit.
Book an Intro Call →