Seattle founders don't need a full-time CTO. They need the right one, part-time.
For non-technical founders building in Seattle, Bellevue, and across Washington: hire a former CTO as your fractional tech partner. Strategy, architecture, developer oversight, and hands-on development — without the $250K+ salary or the equity hit. Most fractional CTOs stopped coding years ago. I didn't.
$40/hr · Former CTO · Toptal Top 3% · 5 free hours · 13+ years shipping production software
Fractional CTO for Seattle startups
Most Seattle founders I speak to arrived at the idea from inside a big engineering org. They were a PM at Amazon, a program lead at Microsoft, a commercial owner at a Bellevue enterprise — sharp about the market, well-networked, and used to a company where someone else already decided the stack, the CI, and the security posture. Starting a company removes all of that scaffolding at once, and the first six months of technical decisions turn out to be the permanent ones.
That is a different starting position from a bootstrapped founder in Austin or a technical co-founder in the Bay Area, and it needs a different kind of help. You usually don't need someone to explain what good engineering looks like — you have seen it. You need someone on your side of the table who will make the early calls with you and then tell you honestly whether the developer you are paying is delivering.
Every engagement is remote-first and scheduled on Pacific time: a weekly video call in your working hours, async Slack in between, and same-day responses on weekdays. Founders here tell me it feels like having a technical co-founder — without the equity conversation.
Serving founders across Washington
I work with founders across Washington, not only inside the Seattle city limits. Seattle and Bellevue are where most of the conversations start — B2B SaaS, cloud tooling, healthtech, and fintech, usually selling to companies that run a real security review before they sign. Tacoma and Spokane founders tend to be building for industries with actual operations behind them: logistics, healthcare services, manufacturing, insurance. Both need the same thing early, which is architecture decisions that will still hold when a serious customer starts asking questions.
Because the work is remote and Pacific-aligned, where you sit in the state changes nothing about the engagement. There is no travel premium for Spokane and no in-person retainer for Seattle. You get the weekly call, the code reviews, and the same-day weekday response wherever you are.
What that produces is worth judging on output rather than on a promise. The products shipped under my technical lead are the honest version of what a part-time technical partner delivers — real platforms, live users, and the architecture decisions that kept working after launch.
What a fractional CTO does for a Seattle startup
Five areas where Seattle and Bellevue founders — most of them one or two years out of a big-tech org — lose the most time and money when they guess. A senior technical partner closes the gap.
Tech Stack Decisions
Seattle defaults to AWS because half the city used to work there, and Bellevue defaults to Azure for the same reason. Both are fine. What is not fine is a managed-service bill that outgrows your revenue by month nine. I help you pick the stack that fits your product and your runway, not the one your last employer could afford.
Architecture Reviews
Selling B2B out of the Puget Sound region means your first real customer will run a proper security review — and they will run it early, because that is how buyers here are trained. I find the multi-tenancy gaps, auth shortcuts, and data isolation issues before that questionnaire lands in your inbox.
Hands-on Development
When your team in Seattle or your offshore team hits a hard problem, I jump in and ship the code myself. Not 'review and suggest.' Open the PR, write the tests, deploy the fix. I write production code every single week.
Developer Oversight
You managed engineers at Amazon or Microsoft, so you know what a healthy team feels like — but you had a director, a bar raiser, and a whole org reading the code for you. You don't now. I review your developers' work, sit in on standups, and give you an honest read on whether the velocity you're paying for is real.
Roadmap Planning
Big-tech instincts push founders toward building the platform version of everything on day one. That is the right call at scale and the wrong call at eleven customers. I help you sequence features so each sprint moves toward revenue, and so the shortcuts you take now are the ones you can actually undo later.
Seattle founders need an advisor and a builder — in one hire
Seattle salaries make the two-hire version expensive fast. A CTO-level advisor who can't ship and a senior engineer who won't think past the ticket will cost you more here than almost anywhere else in the country, and you'll still be the one carrying context between them. You need one person who does both. I do — every single week. Strategy call in the morning, production code by afternoon, code review for your team that evening. One brain, one context, no handoffs.
The Advisor in me
- Stack and cloud decisions sized for your runway, not your last employer's budget
- Roadmap that hits revenue milestones, not just feature counts
- Developer hiring help — vet candidates from the Seattle, Bellevue, and remote pools
- Security and compliance planning for enterprise procurement reviews
- Long-term technical vision that survives a Series A diligence
The Builder in me
- Ships production features end-to-end, every week
- Unblocks your Seattle or Bellevue dev team mid-sprint
- Fixes the performance issue your customer just complained about
- Builds the tricky third-party integration nobody wants to touch
- Reviews PRs from your team and opens them myself
In a city where a senior engineer is a $180K hire and an experienced technical advisor bills like a consultant, splitting the role is the most expensive way to buy it. One hire who does both removes the translation layer as well as the second salary.
A working CTO who still writes the code
Strategy and shipping. Same person. Same week.
The fractional CTOs available in Seattle are often ex-big-tech leaders who last shipped code before their first management promotion. They'll review your architecture and recommend a vendor. I won't. When your team is stuck, I open the editor and ship the fix myself — typically the same day.
I spent 4+ years as Executive Director of IT at Jacana Warranty, building the tech org from zero, hiring and managing developers, and reporting directly to the CEO. So I know what the leadership chair feels like. I also never gave up the builder's chair — and that's the half most fractional CTOs lost.
13+ years shipping production software across B2B SaaS, fintech, and warranty platforms. I know what breaks at 100 paying customers, at 10K, and at 100K, because I've written the code that had to survive each of those thresholds. Not in a deck. In production.
Shipping production software
Not just a dev — I've led teams
Vetted by the top freelance network
Still a working full-stack developer
This is NOT for you if…
I take a small number of clients at a time, so I'd rather decline a bad-fit engagement than take your retainer and disappoint you. Read these honestly. If any sound like you, we're probably not a match — and I'll save us both the call and tell you that upfront.
You're validating a weekend idea, not building a startup
If there's no business model, no plan to charge, and no first conversations with potential customers, you don't need a fractional CTO. You need a weekend, a notepad, and 5 customer interviews. Come back when there's a real reason to invest in engineering.
You want a technical co-founder for equity
Co-founders take equity, take risk, and commit to the company for years. I'm a paid advisor and builder — cash, not stock. If your pitch is "work for free until we raise," I'm not the right person, and I'd be skeptical of anyone in Seattle who says yes to that.
You want a 'set it and forget it' build
The founders I work with successfully show up to the weekly call, give fast decisions on Slack, and stay in the loop on tradeoffs. If you want to disappear and come back to a finished product, you're better off hiring an agency. They'll quote you a price, build exactly the wrong thing, and you'll have nobody to blame but the spec.
You expect engineering to fix a market problem
If your SaaS isn't getting customers, the answer is rarely "more features." It's usually positioning, sales, or product-market fit. I can build whatever you describe, but I won't take your money to build version 4 of a thing the market already rejected at version 2. Be honest about what's actually broken.
5 free hours — then we decide if we keep going
Every engagement opens with 5 hours of real, billable-quality work that I do for free. An architecture audit, a team assessment, a strategy call with concrete deliverables. No "discovery call" disguised as a sales pitch. You see the work product before you see an invoice. If we both want to continue, we pick a model.
Embedded with your Seattle team
$200–$1,200/week depending on hours
- Flexible weekly hours — anywhere from 5 to 30 hrs/week
- Weekly strategy call scheduled on Pacific time
- Async Slack/email — same-day response on weekdays
- Architecture reviews and hands-on shipping when needed
- Code reviews and 1:1s with your developers
- Roadmap planning, quarterly goals, hiring help
- Best for: ongoing technical partnership for a Seattle, Bellevue, or Spokane startup
Fixed scope for a specific technical question
Fixed total quoted upfront — typically starting at $4,000
- Architecture audit before raising your seed or Series A
- Or: enterprise security review prep (SOC 2 readiness, multi-tenancy hardening)
- Or: fixed-scope build sprint (specific feature, integration, or refactor)
- Fixed timeline — usually 6 to 12 weeks
- Fixed price quoted upfront, no scope creep
- Written report and recommendations you can hand to your board
- Best for: specific, time-bounded technical questions
Not sure whether your problem is recurring or one-time? Book the call. In 30 minutes I'll know whether you need ongoing technical leadership (retainer) or a one-shot project (architecture audit, team assessment, build sprint). And if it turns out you don't need a fractional CTO at all, I'll tell you that and recommend what you actually need.
Questions Seattle founders ask before hiring fractional
Direct answers from someone who works with Pacific-time teams remotely. No pitch.
Let's Build Your Seattle Startup's Technical Foundation
Book a free call. 30 minutes, on Pacific time. Tell me where you are — Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, Spokane, or anywhere else in Washington — what's stuck, and what you're trying to reach. I'll tell you whether a fractional CTO is the right answer for your stage, and if it is, exactly what the first 5 free hours would deliver.
Based in a different state? I also work with founders in San Francisco & the Bay Area, Texas (Austin, Dallas & Houston), and Los Angeles & Southern California.
Outside the Pacific Northwest? Start with the national overview of my fractional CTO for startups.