Engineering Team Building

A team that outlasts the engagement.

Fractional help is a bridge. At some point you need engineers of your own who stay, ship, and don't need me in the room. I build that team: define the roles, run the hiring, set the process, and hand it off. Or, if you'd rather not run an engineering org at all, I assemble and lead one for you long term.

Two paths: build in-house, or managed team

Long-term, not a contractor rotation

Scoped per engagement after a free call

Talk About Your Team ↗ The Two Paths ↓

Two Paths

Build your own, or let me run one for you

Both end with a stable team doing real work. The difference is who the engineers report to and how long I stay.

Path A · Build in-house

Hire your team, then hand it off

I act as your hiring CTO. We define the roles you actually need, I write the job descriptions, source and interview candidates, make the offers, and onboard each hire into a working process. When the team can run without me, I step back to an advisory cadence or out entirely.

Org design and role definitions tied to your roadmap
Sourcing, technical interviews, and take-home review
Compensation benchmarks and offer strategy
Onboarding, coding standards, and delivery process
Leadership handoff to your first engineering lead

Path B · Managed team

A dedicated team, led by me, for as long as you need

You get a long-term engineering function without running one. I assemble a small team of senior engineers, lead them day to day, and own delivery. Billed monthly, scaled up or down with your roadmap. Your code, your repos, your IP.

Senior engineers I've worked with and vouch for
One accountable lead: me
Weekly delivery, monthly planning with leadership
Scale the team with the roadmap, not a contract
Convert any engineer to your payroll when you're ready

Why This Works

I hire the way an operator hires

I've built and run products with my own name on them, and I sit on the investor side of the table through our family office. That means I know what a team needs to look like at each stage, what a senior engineer is actually worth, and which interview answers predict shipping versus talking.

Recruiters optimize for placements. Agencies optimize for billable hours. I optimize for a team you'd keep if I disappeared tomorrow.

Roles

The right first hires

Most early teams over-hire for specialties and under-hire for judgment. We fix the order.

Signal

Interviews that predict shipping

Real code, real tradeoffs, real pull requests. No whiteboard puzzles.

Retention

Process people stay for

Clear ownership, readable code, short cycles. Engineers leave chaos, not companies.

Process

How a team build runs

Assess

Roadmap, current team, codebase, and budget. What the team needs to be in six and eighteen months.

Design

Roles, seniority mix, hiring order, comp bands, and whether in-house or managed fits better right now.

Hire or assemble

Path A: sourcing, interviews, offers, onboarding. Path B: I bring the engineers and start delivery.

Stabilize and hand off

Standards, process, and a lead in place. I move to advisory, stay as managed lead, or step out.

Fit

A good fit if you…

Have product-market fit and need to move past one contractor
Are a non-technical founder who doesn't want to guess at engineering hires
Want a long-term engineering function without running one yourself
Have a team already but no one senior enough to lead it

Not a fit

Not a fit if you want…

Résumés by the dozen with no accountability for the outcome
The cheapest possible hourly rate
Bodies for a three-week sprint (see forward deployed engineer instead)
A team you don't intend to invest in

FAQ

Team building questions

How is this priced?

Scoped per engagement after a free call. In-house builds usually run as a Fractional CTO Embedded retainer for the duration of hiring, with no placement fees per head. Managed teams are a flat monthly rate per engineer plus my lead time, month to month.

Are you a recruiter?

No. I'm the hiring manager you don't have yet. I source and interview as a CTO would, and I stay to onboard and lead, which is the part recruiters never do.

Where do the engineers come from?

For in-house builds, wherever the best candidates are: my network, direct sourcing, and your own applicant flow. For managed teams, senior engineers I've worked with and would stake my name on. Remote-first, with time-zone overlap matched to your team.

Can a managed team become our in-house team?

Yes, and that's often the plan. Engineers can convert to your payroll when you're ready. No buyout drama.

How long does it take?

A managed team can start delivering within a few weeks. Building an in-house team of three to five senior engineers typically takes a few months of hiring, with the first hire landing much sooner.

What happens when you leave?

That's the goal of Path A. By the time I step back, there's a lead, a process, and documented standards. Many clients keep an Advisor-tier retainer for the occasional hard call.

Need a team, not a contractor?

Tell me where you are and where you need to be. Thirty minutes, free, and an honest read on which path fits.

Talk About Your Team ↗