Every engagement starts with a conversation.

The usual first step. I look at how your engineering org actually works: structure, delivery speed, regulatory readiness, and how the people are doing, which I learn by talking to them, because the answers live in people, not in dashboards. Four things get tested: how fast bad news travels upward, whether anyone can name who owns the decision they’re blocked on, whether mistakes get studied or flinched from, and whether people do the bare ask or a little more. You get a ranked, written plan you can run with me or without me.

Ongoing technical leadership, sized to your stage. I take responsibility for the engineering org the way a full-time CTO would: the architecture, the hiring, the regulatory reality, and the margins that keep all three standing when the unplanned thing lands. When a phase comes where getting it wrong is expensive (a fundraise, an audit, a migration), I go deeper for it: more days, more hands-on, full ownership of getting you to the other side. I’ve taken a team through an acquisition and a platform migration on a deadline the next round depended on. The trick is getting through the window without spending the team to do it; that part pays off the year after. Async-first from France, with real weekly overlap for US and UK teams.

Being the most senior technical person is a lonely job. The board wants confidence, the team wants certainty, and the decision you’re least sure about is the one you can’t think out loud about with either. I’m the third party with no stake in the answer. We talk on a standing rhythm, or whenever it’s live: a hire you’re second-guessing, an architecture bet, a cofounder problem, the strategy for the next two quarters. I’ve been in the chair through audits and an acquisition, so what you get is judgment from someone who has made the call, not a framework off a shelf. This works best over the long run, once I know your company well enough to argue with you properly. Nothing leaves the room.

Your managers set the temperature of the room, and most were promoted for being great engineers, which is a different job with the same title. I work with them on the actual craft: running a 1-1 that surfaces the real problem, giving feedback that lands, noticing the person who’s about to leave before they hand in the notice. Most of it is listening. One question, then silence; the truth arrives around minute fifteen, never in the first sentence. You end up with a leadership layer you can hand the hard conversations to, instead of one that routes all of them back to your desk.