Seattle founders don't need a full-time CTO. They need the right one, part-time.

A full-time CTO in Seattle runs roughly $220K–$320K base plus equity and benefits, and the search takes 6–9 months because every candidate worth hiring is already being paid more than that by Amazon, Microsoft, or a well-funded Bellevue startup. All-in, year one clears $400K. A fractional CTO gives you the same strategic decisions and team oversight at $40/hr — typically $1,200–$3,200/month for a pre-seed or seed-stage company. You skip the search, skip the equity dilution, and skip paying an executive salary for a year while you work out whether the hire was right. And unlike most fractional CTOs, I'm also a working full-stack developer, so the person advising you on architecture is the one writing the code when your team is stuck.

All my engagements are remote and time-zone aligned, and Washington is one of the easier states to serve that way — a single weekly video call on Pacific time plus async Slack covers almost everything. I've worked with founders across multiple US states in fintech, healthtech, B2B SaaS, and warranty/insurance. The work is the same whether you're in Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, or Spokane: weekly call, same-day weekday response, code reviews on your repo, and I show up to your standup if you run one.

I work US business hours, and for Washington clients that means Pacific. The weekly call is booked on your calendar, not mine, and Slack messages you send during your working day get answered during your working day. The practical difference from hiring someone in Seattle or Bellevue is that code tends to land overnight rather than mid-afternoon, which most founders end up preferring — you review finished work at the start of your day instead of waiting on it at the end of it. If a launch, a security review, or an incident needs me on your hours for a stretch, I am on your hours for that stretch.

Sometimes no, and I will tell you when the answer is no. If you have not talked to customers yet, or there is no plan to charge, spend the money on neither me nor a developer. Where it does pay before a raise is when you are already paying someone to build — an agency, a contractor, an offshore team — and you have no way to judge what you are getting, or when the architecture decisions you make in the next two months are the ones a Series A diligence will read. Both are common in Washington because so many founders here come out of Amazon, Microsoft, or a Bellevue enterprise with the market knowledge and a budget but no technical counterweight. The 5 free hours exist exactly so you can find out which case you are in without paying to find out.

A senior full-stack developer in the Seattle metro runs $150K–$200K base, and Bellevue is at the top of that range because it competes directly with big tech for the same people. Add benefits and a recruiting cycle. My rate is $40/hr — $200–$1,200/week depending on hours, or roughly $800–$4,800/month for a typical retainer. A 10-hour/week retainer costs less per month than one week of a senior Seattle salary, and you get strategy plus hands-on shipping plus oversight of whoever else is on your team, not just code. Project-based work is quoted as a fixed total upfront — typically starting around $4,000 — so you know the number before you commit.

Often yes, and for a reason that surprises people. Big-tech experience gives you excellent judgment about what good looks like — you've seen real design reviews, real on-call, real scale. What it does not give you is practice making the early decisions yourself, because at that size the platform, the stack, the CI, and the security posture were all decided before you arrived. Those are exactly the decisions that are permanent at eleven customers. If you can already pick the stack, review the code, and interview engineers yourself, you don't need me. If you can describe the product perfectly but can't tell whether the person building it is doing a good job, that gap is the whole engagement.

Yes — and in Seattle it's one of the most valuable parts of the engagement, because you are hiring against the highest-paying employers in the country. Competing on salary is not a strategy for a seed-stage company, so the work is to write a spec that attracts the right person, screen properly, and run a technical interview that actually predicts performance instead of testing for interview practice. I write the spec and the screening rubric, run the technical interview, and review the take-home. The hires are yours — the process gets the experience of someone who has been hiring developers for 13+ years instead of guessing.