Hands-on fractional CTO

From roadmap to shipped. In weeks, not quarters.

I'm Giulio De Luise. I set the technical direction, ship the product, and build the team — a few days a week, for early-stage startups.

01 — What I do

The CTO job, minus the payroll line

/01

Technical direction

The decisions that are expensive to get wrong: architecture, stack, build-vs-buy, roadmap.

  • Architecture that survives your growth
  • Build-vs-buy calls with real cost numbers
  • A technical story that holds up in due diligence
/02

Hands-on delivery

I stay in the codebase, not just the meetings — full-stack builds, data pipelines, and AI features shipped to production.

  • LLM, RAG, and agentic features that reach users
  • Coding agents under engineering discipline
  • Documentation maintained like code
/03

Team & hiring

Your first hires set the culture for the next twenty. I'll help you hire people better than me.

  • Sourcing, interviewing, and closing your first engineers
  • Code review and engineering standards
  • Working software demoed every week

02 — About

About

25 years in software engineering — enterprise systems, high-growth startups, two companies of my own. My focus is data-driven products: pipelines, analytics, and AI, all of it running in production.

I work best with founders who value speed, pragmatism, and getting things shipped.

03 — Questions

What founders ask before we start

How much of your time do I get?

Typically one to three days a week, weighted to your stage.

What does it cost?

A monthly retainer scoped to the days you need, fixed before we start.

Cash or equity?

Primarily cash. For the right startup, a mix.

We already have engineers — does this still work?

Yes — then I tilt toward direction, standards, and unblocking your team.

What happens when you leave?

Documented decisions, clean code, and hires who own it. No lock-in.

Remote or on-site?

Remote-first from London, on-site when it matters.

04 — Contact

You need a CTO before
you can afford one.

Tell me where you are. I reply within a day — and if I'm not the right fit, I'll say so.