Skip to content
CH FRFractional leadleadership, not embedded days

Plenty of teams have hands. What's rare is the person who's seen enough water to call the route — and a full-time one runs $180k plus equity and a six-month search. This is that judgment, on retainer.

Advisory

$4,500/mo

Half a day a week

Architecture direction, code review, vendor and proposal oversight, hiring help. Every decision written down and yours to keep.

Advisory — AI & data

$6,500/mo

Half a day a week

Roadmap ownership for the AI and analytics side, vendor and proposal oversight, buy-versus-build calls with the arithmetic shown rather than asserted, and a model and data inventory that stays current. Every decision written down and yours to keep, including the ones where the answer was to buy something off a shelf.

Embedded

$8,500/mo

One day a week, one seat

Roadmap ownership, architecture direction, code review, vendor oversight, hiring input, and presence in your standups one fixed day a week.

The shape, printed

Priced in days, not an hours bucket — because that’s how a calendar actually works, and because you’re buying direction at full strength rather than a discounted body in a chair. Cancel monthly. The decision log is yours either way. Regulated estates — HHS 504, ADA Title II, a PCI-bound checkout — run 25% on either rung, because the documentation and evidence trail that kind of work needs is real work. And if what you need is one decision reviewed rather than a retainer, the $2,000 Second Opinion is the single-serving version, and its fee credits toward your first month here.

CH 01Who this is forfour rooms we keep ending up in

The team with hands but no compass

Two or three good developers shipping features — and nobody senior enough to say which architecture survives year three. The devs feel it too: code review from someone who's carried the big migrations is the cheapest training a team ever gets.

The org between technical leaders

The CTO left, the search is running, and decisions won't wait. A fractional lead keeps the roadmap honest for a season — and helps you run the hiring loop for the real thing, with no incentive to make themselves permanent.

The founder signing things unread

Vendor contracts, agency quotes, a platform decision that smells expensive — and nobody on your side of the table who reads code. A standing half-day a week of a technical conscience routinely pays for itself on one avoided contract.

The agency that needs an architect on tap

Your PMs and designers are great; the gnarly technical calls land on nobody's desk. Retain the desk. (If what you need is hands under your brand instead, that's the bench — different tool, same shed.)

CH 02What a month looks likethe cadence, honestly

Standing

A working session every other week — architecture on the table, decisions made in the room, written down before we hang up.

Weekly

Async code and PR review with real comments: what ships, what waits, and why — the kind your team learns from instead of dreads.

As it comes

Vendor quotes sanity-checked, hiring loops for technical roles, the 'can you look at this before we sign it' messages. Answered by someone who has signed a few.

Always

The decision log. Every call we make together, taped: the choice, the road not taken, the reasoning. Yours to keep, forever.

What it isn't: a dev-hours bucket, a people manager, or a body in your standup. When the work needs hands, we say so and scope it separately — or hand it to your team with a review safety net, which is usually the better answer.

CH 03The receiptsdirection with a track record

The judgment on retainer here is the same judgment that led a millions-of-nodes migration without losing a record, built the observability agent watching 327 production sites, and standardized the test practice an agency still runs on. Thirteen years, Drupal to .NET, mobile to cloud — the whole story's on the about page, and the decision-log habit you'd be buying is visible right there in the case studies.

Fit check, honestly: if what you need is development hours rather than decisions, this is the wrong product — a build or Air Time fits better. If you need someone to own the thinking, this is the one.

Talk it through →

One conversation, no deck required · honest fit assessment first