Fractional CTO for startups that need senior tech leadership — without the full-time cost
I'm a working CTO — currently leading engineering at Quickgen Technologies and QuickComm AE — available part-time to startups that need architecture decisions, an AI roadmap, and a team that ships. Not advice from the sidelines: I still write and review production code every week.
Non-technical founders who need someone to own the technical side — architecture, hiring, vendor calls — while they own the business
Seed-stage startups that need senior engineering judgment now, but can’t justify a $200k+ full-time CTO hire yet
Agencies and product teams that need technical oversight, code review, and delivery discipline on client projects
What you get
Architecture & system design
Stack selection, scalability planning, build-vs-buy calls, and migration strategy — grounded in systems I’ve actually run (a monolith-to-microservices migration I led delivered 3× throughput with near-zero deployment downtime).
AI roadmap & strategy
Where AI genuinely helps your product vs. where it’s a demo — model selection, cost modelling, and a phased plan from prototype to production.
Hiring & team leadership
Job specs, technical interviews, onboarding, and process. I currently direct a team of 5+ engineers across the full SDLC.
Technical due diligence
Codebase, architecture, and team assessment for investors or acquirers — a clear report on risks, debt, and what it will cost to fix.
Vendor & infrastructure decisions
Cloud provider selection, third-party API evaluation, and cost control — I’ve run production workloads on AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Engagement models
Advisory
Weekly strategy calls, architecture reviews, and async access for decisions as they come up.
Best for: Founders who have a dev team and need senior judgment on tap.
Embedded
Hands-on days each week inside your team — leading sprints, reviewing code, unblocking engineers, shipping alongside them.
Best for: Startups mid-build that need leadership and velocity at once.
Project-based
A scoped engagement with a defined deliverable: an audit, a migration, an MVP, an AI integration.
Best for: Teams with one hard problem and a deadline.
Hotel staff coordinated over walkie-talkies: slow responses, no record, no routing. The company needed a product-grade replacement — and an architecture that wouldn’t collapse as properties were added.
Built
As CTO I architected the real-time voice pipeline (PCM audio → Whisper/Deepgram transcription → Gemini intent classification → team routing) and led a full monolith-to-microservices migration on AWS.
Results
94%+ transcription accuracy on noisy radio audio
~45% faster staff response times
3× throughput after the migration, near-zero deployment downtime
Infrastructure cost held to roughly $3/month per property
It depends on the engagement model — advisory retainers cost a fraction of embedded work. Every engagement is scoped and quoted individually after a free 30-minute call, so you pay for exactly the involvement you need. As a reference point, any model costs a fraction of a $150–250k full-time CTO hire.
Fractional CTO vs technical co-founder — which do I need?
A co-founder trades equity for long-term commitment; a fractional CTO trades a fee for immediate senior experience with no equity dilution. If you need architecture, hiring, and delivery discipline now — and want to keep your cap table clean — fractional is usually the right first step. Many clients later hire a full-time lead I help them recruit.
How many hours per week do you commit?
Advisory engagements are a few hours a week; embedded engagements are substantially more. We agree the cadence up front and review it monthly — the point of fractional is that it flexes with your roadmap.
Do you work with US and EU timezones?
Yes. I’m based in Islamabad (UTC+5) and have shipped for clients in Australia, the UAE, the UK, and Pakistan. Mornings overlap with EU hours and evenings with US East Coast — standups, reviews, and incident response all work.
Do you work as a fractional CTO for companies in Dubai or the UAE?
Yes — I already do: I’m the CTO of QuickComm AE, a Dubai-based hospitality-tech product, working remotely from Islamabad with regular Gulf-hours overlap (UAE is just one hour behind Pakistan). For UAE startups, that means a fractional CTO in a near-identical timezone at a fraction of Dubai market rates.
Can I hire a fractional CTO in Pakistan for my startup?
Yes. I’m based in Islamabad and work with Pakistani startups on-site or remotely, alongside international clients in the US, UK, UAE, and Australia. Local founders get the same production track record — 14+ shipped systems — with in-person availability in Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
Have a project in mind?
A free 30-minute call — you describe the problem, I tell you honestly whether and how I'd solve it.