Fractional CTO Engagements
Senior technical leadership for product-based SaaS companies, specifically in the AI space. I'm currently CTO at PatientNotes.app, an AI health-tech company, and I bring that day-to-day experience to your startup on a part-time basis.
Andrew + AI = amazing
AI coding has changed what a startup needs to look like. You probably don't need a full team anymore. You need senior judgement on what to build, and a small group that can move. I bring the judgement, direction and standards. AI does a lot of the building. Call it a triple A service: Andrew + AI = amazing.
The Model
# What Andrew + AI Actually Looks Like
What I bring
- Judgement about what to build, what to buy and what to leave alone.
- Architecture and quality decisions that don't need to be revisited in six months.
- A roadmap your team can actually run, with the trade-offs written down.
- Hiring, structure and the coaching your tech leads need to grow.
- A senior voice founders, boards and enterprise customers actually trust.
What AI brings
- First drafts of features, migrations and refactors in hours, not sprints.
- Tests, docs and boilerplate that used to be the first thing a team dropped.
- Exploration of three approaches in a day, so the decision is informed.
- Repetitive work that no longer needs a queue or a headcount.
- A small team producing far more than its headcount suggests.
The result is a team of two or three shipping like it's six, with someone senior accountable for the direction. That's the part founders usually get wrong: they hire for headcount before they've found out what the work actually needs.
Where I Work
# Product-Based SaaS, Especially in AI
Product is the business
You sell software, not services. Technical decisions compound, and a wrong one costs months, not hours.
AI is central to the roadmap
LLM features, agents, retrieval or a model-backed core, where the decisions are made with incomplete information and no precedent.
You're past the first version
You have users, revenue or a pilot, and the architecture, team and process that got you here won't carry you to the next stage.
Someone needs to own the direction
Not another senior developer. Someone accountable for what gets built, what gets bought, and what gets said no to.
Is This You?
# Signs a Startup Needs a Fractional CTO
- You're a non-technical or semi-technical founder and every technical decision gets escalated to you.
- You have AI demos that work beautifully and no clear path to shipping them reliably.
- You've been told you need to hire a full team before you can ship the AI roadmap.
- Nobody owns delivery. The roadmap slips, quality is invisible, and you've become the part-time project manager.
- You're hiring engineers but can't define the roles, or tell who's actually good in an interview.
- Investors, partners or customers ask technical questions you can't answer with confidence.
Scope
# What I Actually Deliver
Technical strategy and architecture
What to build, what to buy, what to defer, and the trade-offs written down so your team can act without you in the room.
AI product decisions
Build vs buy vs wait, model and provider choice, cost and latency budgets, evaluation and quality bars, and what to do when a demo doesn't survive production.
Team, hiring and structure
Role definitions, interview loops, hiring scorecards, onboarding and org design. In the AI era that often means hiring fewer, stronger people and building up the ones you already have.
Delivery and quality
Planning and prioritisation that matches a startup's pace, release and testing practice, and incident handling that doesn't rely on heroics.
Risk, security and compliance
Security, privacy and compliance work proportional to your stage. In regulated, high-trust spaces this is where AI products quietly win or lose.
Founder and board support
Translating technical reality into business language, roadmap and budget input, and the questions to ask before you sign a vendor or an enterprise deal.
How It Runs
# From First Call to Working Rhythm
1. Discovery call
A conversation about what you're building, where it's stuck, and what you actually need. If a fractional CTO isn't the right answer, I'll tell you there.
2. Written proposal
Scope, cadence, monthly fee and the outcomes for the first 90 days. You know the cost and the target before anything starts.
3. First 30 days
Audit the codebase, the team and the roadmap. Write down the decisions that actually matter, and fix the most expensive bottleneck first.
4. Ongoing rhythm
A reserved portion of my week in the tools and channels your team already uses, with a regular cadence and clear ownership of outcomes.
5. 90-day review
We look at what changed. Continue, narrow the scope, hand over to a full-time hire, or stop. No lock-in.
Boundaries
# What This Isn't
Not a bigger team
AI coding means you probably don't need a full team anymore, so I'm not here to add headcount or close tickets. If you genuinely need more hands on the keyboard, hire them, and I'll help you hire the right ones. But start by seeing what a small team, pointed properly, can already do.
Not a slide deck
Everything I recommend, I stay accountable for delivering alongside your team.
Not a permanent hire you can't exit
If after 90 days you'd genuinely be better off with a full-time CTO, I'll say so and help you find and assess them.
Why Me
# A Working CTO, Not an Advisor
- Currently CTO at PatientNotes.app, an AI health-tech company - shipping AI features in a regulated, high-trust space.
- 20+ years from developer to CTO across consultancies and SaaS companies including Linktree.
- Trained and mentored 1,000+ senior engineers, tech leads and engineering managers, so I've seen what makes teams work and what quietly breaks them.
- Based in Melbourne, working remotely with teams across time zones.
The reason I focus on AI product companies is simple: it's where I am right now. I'm making these decisions every week at PatientNotes.app - what to build, what to buy, how to keep quality and cost under control, and how to lead a team through it. That's what I bring to your startup, alongside the AI your team is already using.