Fractional Leadership

A senior product and engineering leader,
embedded in your team

Let's
talk

I come in as your CPO, CPTO, or VP Product. Not as a consultant who delivers a deck and leaves, and not as extra delivery capacity. As a leader on your team, in the room, accountable for whether the product works.

Executive-level product and technology leadership without the delay, the cost, or the commitment of a full-time hire. The seat gets filled in week one instead of six months into a search.

When this makes sense

  • Engineers are shipping, but nobody decides what gets built. Velocity looks fine. Direction does not.
  • The founder is still head of product and has become the bottleneck. Every decision routes through one calendar.
  • You raised, you hired PMs, and the function is not gelling. Good people, no operating model.
  • You are between product leaders. A search takes months. Drift is expensive and momentum is hard to rebuild.
  • You need a credible product voice for the board or the next raise. Someone who can defend the strategy under real questioning.
  • Product and engineering have stopped speaking the same language. I have run both, so I can sit in the middle without picking a side.

What I do

Strategy and direction

Product vision and strategy tied to measurable outcomes. Where you play, what you refuse to build, and why a customer would choose you.

Roadmap prioritization the whole company can follow, including the parts that say no.

Building the function

A product operating model that fits the company you are, not the one in the textbook. Team charters, rituals, cross-functional ownership.

Hiring, leveling, and mentoring your PMs so the function becomes self-sufficient. You should need me less over time.

Product and engineering together

Getting product, design, and engineering to behave like one group. Clear decision rights, shared commitments, fewer meetings that exist only to resolve confusion.

Plus board and investor communication when it is needed.

The first ninety days

Observe, orient, act. The same structure I built into Launch Sequence for leaders stepping into something new. The difference in a fractional engagement is speed. I am not learning the job, only the company, so the phases overlap rather than run in sequence. The goal is speed to impact, not a tidy timeline.

Days 1–30
Observe

Listen deeply, learn the real landscape

Conversations with founders, product, engineering, design, sales, and support. I read the roadmap, the tickets, the customer feedback, and the last few board decks. I sit in the meetings you already have rather than creating new ones.

I am also acting from week one where something is obviously broken. Waiting thirty days to fix a thing everyone can already see costs you time and costs me credibility.

Days 31–60
Orient

Form a point of view, earn the right to it

A written read-back to the leadership team. What is working, what is broken, and what I think it is costing you. Direct, in plain language, with the uncomfortable parts left in.

We agree the two or three changes that move the most, and I score some early wins so the team sees a difference before anyone is asked to trust a bigger bet.

Days 61–90
Act

Make the move, shape the team

The operating model goes in properly. Roles, rituals, and decision rights become how the company runs rather than a document nobody opens.

Hiring gaps get filled or scoped. The first significant strategic bet gets placed. And we set what the next ninety days need to prove.

How engagements work

Time
One to three days a week, either consecutive or spread across the week. Set in advance so your team knows when I am there and can plan around it.
Length
Three months minimum. Beyond that it depends entirely on need. Some engagements are a focused stretch through a raise, a launch, or a leadership gap. Others run longer because the company keeps growing into the role. We review it as we go rather than fixing a number at the start.
How I work
Embedded, not advisory. I am on the leadership team, in the standups, in the hard conversations, and named to the company as the person who owns product. That is the whole point.
Accountability
I take ownership of product leadership and I am accountable for whether the initiatives succeed. Unlike a consultant, I am still there when the results land.
Where
Remote first, based in Cardiff. On site for kickoff, planning, offsites, and anything that needs a room.
Ending it
Planned, not abrupt. Either I hand over to a full-time hire I helped you find, or the function has matured enough that it no longer needs me. Both are good outcomes.
Availability
Currently fractional CPTO at a travel startup. Open to one additional engagement.

What this is not

Not staff augmentation. I am not a contract PM picking up tickets. If you need delivery capacity, hire delivery capacity.

Not a strategy engagement with a report at the end. I stay long enough to be accountable for whether the strategy works.

And if you need a full-time CPO and can afford one, hire one. I will help you write the role and sit on the panel. Fractional is the right answer for a particular stage, not for every stage.

Why me

25

Years in tech, leading product and engineering at Amazon, Expedia, and two Sequoia-backed startups. Twice a CPTO, running product, design, and engineering at the same time.

PCC

ICF-credentialed coach with around 1,500 hours. I can fix the operating model and develop the people running it in the same engagement.

Hands on

I still ship full-stack applications myself. That keeps me technically grounded rather than commenting on engineering from a distance.

Also for investors

Product due diligence for VCs and PEs →

Want to talk it through?

Most good engagements start with a conversation about what is actually going on. No pitch, no proposal until we both think it fits.

Book a call →