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One call. Clear direction. Faster execution.
Your Business Deserves CTO-Grade Technical Leadership
We combine fractional CTO strategy, AI and automation implementation, engineering team leadership, cloud architecture, and product-engineering alignment — so you build the right things, the right way, without a $450K full-time hire.
No long-term contracts. Cancel anytime. Plans from $3,000/mo.
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Trusted by tech-forward founders at
One Tech Team. Every Engineering Function.
Most founders are either one technical co-founder stretched too thin, or a team of engineers without senior technical leadership making the hard architectural and strategic calls. We fix both — with a fractional CTO who has done it before at your stage.
Build the Right Thing. The Right Way. The First Time.
Technology roadmap, architecture decisions, stack selection, and technical debt strategy — so your engineering investment compounds rather than creates future cost.
- Technology roadmap & prioritisation
- Architecture design & review
- Stack & tooling selection
- Technical debt audit & remediation plan
Stop Doing Manually What AI Can Do 10x Better.
AI strategy, LLM integration, workflow automation, and internal tooling — designed to eliminate repetitive engineering work and build AI into your product before your competitors do.
- AI strategy & use-case identification
- LLM integration & fine-tuning
- Workflow & process automation
- Internal AI tooling development
A Senior Engineering Leader in the Room. Without the Salary.
Engineering culture, hiring strategy, performance management, team structuring, and process design — so your engineering org scales without losing velocity or quality.
- Engineering hiring & onboarding
- Team structure & org design
- Engineering culture & practices
- Performance framework & levelling
Infrastructure That Scales. Bills That Don't.
AWS / GCP / Azure architecture, cost optimisation, DevOps and CI/CD pipeline design, security posture, and reliability engineering — built for where you're going, not just where you are.
- Cloud architecture design & migration
- Cost optimisation & FinOps
- CI/CD & DevOps pipeline
- Security & compliance posture
End the Product vs Engineering War. For Good.
Sprint design, backlog architecture, estimation frameworks, and technical-product communication — so product ships faster and engineering builds things that actually get used.
- Sprint & delivery framework design
- Backlog structure & prioritisation
- Technical spec & RFC process
- DORA metrics & velocity tracking
Senior Technical Leadership at Every Level of the Business.
Board meetings, investor calls, technical due diligence, engineering strategy, and the calls that are too important to get wrong — your CTO is in the room, every week.
- Weekly CTO calls & Slack access
- Board & investor technical narrative
- Tech due diligence preparation
- Fundraising technical support
Tech Teams Scaled
Avg Increase in Shipping Velocity
Avg Reduction in Cloud & Infra Costs
Avg Annual Cloud Savings Per Client
From Tech Audit to Shipping Faster in 30 Days
No 12-week discovery. No theoretical frameworks. We get into your codebase, your team, and your roadmap fast — and start making a measurable difference within the first month.
Tech Strategy Call (30 min)
We understand your stack, your team, your technical debt, and your biggest engineering bottlenecks. We map what a CTO engagement would unlock at your stage.
Technical Audit & 90-Day Plan
Within the first two weeks we audit your architecture, codebase quality, team structure, and delivery process. You get a clear 90-day roadmap with priorities ranked by impact.
Embedded & Executing
We run engineering standups, architecture reviews, hiring interviews, and board technical briefings. Not advisory — embedded. Your CTO is actually doing the work.
Compounding Tech Advantage
Weekly CTO calls, monthly engineering health reports, continuous AI and automation identification. Every quarter your tech capability compounds — and the gap between you and competitors widens.
Every Technical Role Your Company Needs — Without the Hiring Risk
A full-time CTO costs $350K–$500K per year. Add a Head of Engineering, DevOps Lead, and AI Engineer and you're past $900K. We give you all of it on a flat monthly retainer.
Built for Founders Whose Technical Ambitions Have Outgrown Their Tech Setup
If any of these sound familiar, we built this for you.
You're a non-technical founder and no one is making the hard technical calls
Vendors over-promise. Developers under-communicate. You're making technical decisions without the context to evaluate them. We change that — permanently.
Your technical co-founder is stretched too thin to lead and build simultaneously
CTO work and IC engineering work are incompatible at scale. Your technical co-founder needs to lead — we give them the senior support to do that without dropping the strategic ball.
You're shipping slowly and don't know why
Technical debt, poor processes, misaligned priorities, missing tooling — slow delivery always has a diagnosable root cause. We find it and fix it, fast.
You're raising and investors are asking technical questions that need a CTO to answer
Architecture decisions, scalability plans, security posture, technical team structure — investors probe these hard. We prepare your technical narrative and stand alongside you in the room.
Your cloud bill is growing faster than your revenue
Unoptimised infrastructure, unused resources, and poor architectural decisions compound silently into massive bills. We audit, optimise, and build cost discipline into your engineering culture.
Sound like you?
Let's build the technical function your growth stage actually needs.
Book a Free Tech CallNot an IT Consultant. Not an Advisor. An Embedded CTO.
Consultants give you a report. Advisors give you opinions over coffee. We give you a senior technical leader who is actually in your Slack, your codebase, and your board meetings — doing the work.
Transparent Pricing. No Consulting Day Rates.
All plans include a dedicated technical leader, weekly calls, and direct Slack access. No hourly billing. No per-project fees. No surprises.
- Tech Strategy & Architecture Review
- Monthly CTO Strategy Call
- Stack & Tooling Recommendations
- Tech Debt Audit
- Dedicated CTO (Slack access)
- AI & Automation Implementation
- Engineering Team Leadership
- Cloud Optimisation
- Everything in Foundations
- Weekly CTO Calls
- Engineering Team Leadership
- AI & Automation Roadmap
- Cloud Architecture & Optimisation
- Product-Engineering Alignment
- DORA Metrics & Velocity Tracking
- Board & Investor Tech Representation
- Everything in Tech Engine
- AI Implementation (hands-on)
- Board & Investor Tech Representation
- Tech Due Diligence Preparation
- Engineering Hiring (interviews + assessment)
- Security & Compliance Posture
- Series A/B Technical Narrative
- Priority Same-Day Response
All plans customisable. Need a bespoke scope? Talk to us →
How We Stack Up
See exactly what you get — compared to every other technical leadership option available to you.
| Feature | IT Consultant | Tech Advisor | Skillfi Us | Full-Time CTO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Embedded in team daily | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI implementation included | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | Sometimes |
| Cloud cost optimisation | Charged extra | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Board & investor representation | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Engineering team leadership | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Flat monthly fee | ✕ Hourly | ✕ Equity/day rate | ✓ | ✕ Salary |
| Tech due diligence prep | Charged extra | Sometimes | ✓ | ✓ |
| Typical annual cost | $100K–$400K+ | $50K–$150K | $36K–$120K | $350K–$550K+ |
What Founders Actually Say
"We'd been meaning to move to microservices for two years. Every consultant we spoke to gave us a 6-month plan and a £200K quote. Skillfi audited our monolith in a week, identified the three services to extract first, and we had the migration running in 30 days. Total cost savings in year one: $180K."
"Our engineering team was talented but shipping slowly. No one knew why. Skillfi embedded in week one, identified the bottlenecks in our PR review process and deployment pipeline, and we went from 2 deploys a week to 12 a week inside 60 days."
"As a non-technical founder I was completely dependent on developers telling me things were fine. Skillfi gave me the technical literacy and the reporting to actually understand what was happening. For the first time I could have an informed conversation about our roadmap."
"Our AWS bill was $42K a month. Skillfi did a FinOps audit in two weeks, identified $28K of waste, and got our bill to $14K without touching performance. That's $336K a year back into the business. Worth every penny of the retainer."
"The AI implementation work Skillfi did in Q1 saved our team 40% of their time on repetitive tasks. We built internal tooling that automated our data pipeline, our reporting, and our customer onboarding checks. Things that took hours now take minutes."
"Our Series B investors sent their technical due diligence team. They expected a two-day review. It took four hours. Skillfi had prepared our architecture documentation, security posture, and scalability narrative to a standard the investors said they hadn't seen from a pre-Series C company."
Questions Founders Actually Ask
No. We work equally well with non-technical founders and with technical teams. For non-technical founders we act as the full technical leadership layer. For founders with technical co-founders we act as senior support, a sounding board, and the strategic layer that frees your CTO to focus on building.
Most clients see measurable changes within 30 days — faster deployments, identified cost savings, or a clearer technical roadmap. AI and automation projects typically show ROI within 60 days. Architecture and infrastructure changes are longer-term investments but show up in velocity and reliability metrics within 90 days.
We're stack-agnostic. Our CTOs have deep experience across React, Node, Python, Go, Ruby, and more — plus AWS, GCP, and Azure for cloud. For AI we work with OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source LLMs, and custom ML pipelines. We assess your current stack on the strategy call and work with what you have — or help you migrate where it makes sense.
Yes. All retainers are month-to-month with 30 days' notice. No lock-in, no penalties. We earn your business every month — we don't trap you in it.
It means your CTO is in your Slack daily, attends your engineering standups, reviews pull requests, participates in architecture discussions, joins your board meetings, and is reachable for ad-hoc questions throughout the week. Not advisory calls once a month — genuinely embedded in how your team works.
Both, depending on the engagement. On higher-tier retainers our CTOs can contribute directly to the codebase, particularly for AI integration, infrastructure as code, and automation tooling. The primary role is technical leadership and decision-making — but we're not afraid to get our hands dirty when it makes sense.
We work well alongside existing engineering leadership. A Head of Engineering manages the day-to-day team — a CTO makes the strategic architecture, technology, and board-level calls that sit above that layer. We often operate as the CTO layer that your Head of Eng reports into, giving them the senior support they need to thrive.
Yes — this is one of our most common use cases. We prepare your technical architecture documentation, security posture, scalability narrative, and engineering team structure for investor review. We also participate directly in investor technical calls and due diligence sessions, providing the senior technical presence that builds investor confidence.
Stop Guessing. Start Shipping. With a CTO Who's Actually There.
Book a free 30-minute tech strategy call. We'll audit your current stack, identify your three biggest technical risks and opportunities, and show you exactly what a Skillfi CTO retainer would look like for your business — no obligation, no pitch, just clarity.