Fractional engineering leadership
A steady hand for founders building something hard.
I step in as your fractional CTO, VP of Engineering, or trusted advisor, bringing the calm of someone who has done it before.
Experience from
How I help
Senior engineering leadership, shaped to the moment your company is in, without the cost or permanence of a full-time hire.
Fractional CTO
Your senior-most strategic voice. I own technical risk, board governance, financial alignment, and compliance bedrocks so you can scale safely.
Learn more →VP of Engineering
Execution leadership to fix the people, process, and delivery friction that slows you down, turning teams into a predictable, high-accountability shipping engine.
Learn more →Mentoring & advisory
A tactical sounding board for founders navigating growth, and high-accountability coaching for the emerging internal leaders you want to grow.
Learn more →
Why me
I’ve sat in the chair.
I’m Cj, a VP of Engineering with 15+ years building the teams and technical foundations high-growth companies need to scale. I’m currently VP of Engineering at Productiv, and before that I led engineering at Scoop through its acquisition, with earlier stops at Cruise, Splunk, and Walmart eCommerce, where I spent a decade.
My principle is simple: build high-performing, motivated teams that let your product counterpart deliver the roadmap with speed and predictability.
How I work
No frameworks for their own sake. Just a calm, senior partner who gets close to the problem and helps you move.
01
Understand
I get into the real situation, the team, the codebase, the pressures, before suggesting anything.
02
Steady
We set direction, make the hard calls, and bring calm to how the team plans and ships.
03
Strengthen
I leave your leaders more capable than I found them, so the org keeps running well without me.
What people say
What founders and engineering leaders say about working with me.
“A short, specific quote from a founder or CEO, ideally naming a concrete result you delivered, goes here.”
“Great engineering partners are rare. Cj was my VP Engineering partner at Productiv through a business pivot and significant organizational change. We operated our org as one team with a high bar. We owned decisions together, even when we didn’t agree.”
Insights
Field notes on building and leading engineering teams, the kind of judgment I bring to the work.
Professional plate spinning
How I keep many projects in the air at once without dropping the ball, and a method you can use to do the same.
Read →I repeatedly build high-performing teams
My evolving ethos: culture and morale as engines of productivity, and engineering as a service to product.
Read →The five abilities
How I build infrastructure teams around developer productivity, cost, and five foundations beyond Google’s SRE.
Read →Common questions
You get senior leadership now, at a fraction of the cost and commitment, and without the risk of a permanent hire before you’re ready. When the time comes for a full-time leader, I’ll help you hire and hand off to them.
Mostly early and scaling startups, from pre-seed founders making their first technical hires to scale-ups that need structure. I’ve worked everywhere from seed-stage to the world’s largest retailer.
Both, depending on what you need. I can run engineering day to day, or act as a lighter-touch advisor and mentor. We’ll scope it together.
It varies. A fixed-scope health check can be a couple of weeks; a fractional leadership engagement is usually an ongoing monthly commitment. The conversation is the best place to figure out the right shape.
A team that’s growing but shipping has become slow or unpredictable. A company heading into a raise, an audit, or acquisition diligence and needing the engineering story to be tight. A VP of Engineering seat that just went empty. A leader who holds the title but wants a seasoned partner for the hard calls. Or a founder who needs the org built properly now, but plans to own it long-term.
Let’s talk about where you’re headed.
Tell me what you’re building and where it hurts. A short conversation is the best place to start.
Currently taking a limited number of new clients.