XADI Tech leadership
Fractional CTO-style guidance, without the overhead.
Sound familiar?
Architecture decisions are piling up. Quick fixes keep shipping, but the foundations are getting harder to change.
Pressure to "do AI" is real. So are the security and compliance risks. The buzz is loud, the guidance is thin.
Vendor lock-in and jurisdiction questions creep in with every new SaaS. When did your stack quietly become someone else's leverage?
You need to hire engineers, but there's no senior tech leader internally to vet them — and the wrong hire costs a year.
Tech decisions compound. A few good calls now save a year of rework later. I bring the structure to make the hard calls — and the discipline to test them before they become commitments.
How I can help
Fractional CTO
Senior tech leadership at 1–3 days per week. Architecture, hiring, vendor calls, and the engineering team's back-channel.
Architecture & build-vs-buy
Focused reviews and decision support: where your stack is solid, where it's fragile, and which trade-offs deserve attention first.
AI adoption, the lean way
The hype is loud, the risks are real. I structure experiments that reduce uncertainty on AI use-cases before they become expensive commitments.
EU data sovereignty
Right now, most leadership teams under their tech remit are looking at one decision they didn't expect to be making: where their data — and their suppliers' data — actually lives, and under whose laws.
I assess this across four layers: direct user data, indirect user data, employee data, and intellectual property. The output is a concrete picture of exposure and a prioritized list of what to address first — not a 200-page report.
I run my own products on 100% EU infrastructure, so the recommendations come from hands-on implementation, not theory.
Explore the 4 layersWant to know how I actually work? Read about my approach below ↓
My approach
Listen first
Read the code, talk to the team, understand the constraints. I don't prescribe before I understand what's actually there — the tech, the people, and the business context.
Key activities
- Codebase and architecture walkthrough
- Engineering team conversations
- Business and stakeholder context
- Constraints and non-negotiables
Frame the trade-offs
Most "tech decisions" are business decisions in disguise — speed vs flexibility, cost vs control, build vs depend. I map them by certainty and impact so the team can decide with eyes open.
Key activities
- Decision framing and trade-off mapping
- Hypothesis × certainty × impact prioritization
- Build-vs-buy and vendor analysis
- Risk, lock-in, and jurisdiction assessment
Smallest bet that proves the claim
For high-impact, low-certainty decisions: design the cheapest experiment that reduces the uncertainty before committing. AI use-cases, new vendors, architecture shifts — all benefit from a small test before the big bet.
Key activities
- Spike and proof-of-concept design
- AI use-case experiments with clear success criteria
- Vendor and tool trials with exit criteria
- Honest go/no-go evaluation
Hand it back
Build internal capability, not a dependency on me. Decisions and architecture should survive my departure without falling over — that's the real test of good tech leadership.
Key activities
- Decision records and lightweight documentation
- Knowledge transfer to internal leads
- Team coaching and review rhythms
- Exit planning from day one
Need senior tech leadership, fractional commitment?
Whether you're scoping an architecture review, weighing a build-vs-buy call, or trying to figure out what "doing AI" actually looks like — let's talk.
Get in touch