Consulting · technical leadership for companies with a software product
Fractional CTO services. Technical leadership without a full-time hire
A fractional CTO is a senior technical lead who works with your company a few days a month instead of full time. Amazing Soft, a software company in Bucharest since 2016, provides this through its CTO, who has been building software since 2010 and holds the PECB Chief Information Security Officer certification. He reviews the architecture before it gets expensive to change, sets up infrastructure that can be rebuilt from code, and helps the developers you already have ship without surprises. The fee is monthly and fixed.
The problem. Nobody owns the technical decisions
The product exists and customers pay for it. An agency built it, or freelancers, or developers who are good at their work and have never run a system of this size. Nobody in the company can say whether the architecture will hold next year, whether the cloud bill is reasonable, or what happens if the lead developer leaves. Hiring a full-time CTO means a long search and a senior salary, for work that at this stage takes a few days a month.
What a fractional CTO does. Six kinds of work
Architecture review.
We read the code and the infrastructure and write down what will hold, what will not, and what to change first.
Technical roadmap.
What gets built next, in what order, and what is left out. One plan, read the same way by the board and by the developers.
Infrastructure and delivery.
Servers created from code with Terraform and Ansible, a CI/CD pipeline, separate staging and production environments, and backups with a tested restore.
Security.
Access, secrets, dependencies and data protection, reviewed by someone who holds a CISO certification. The findings are ranked by risk.
Hiring and suppliers.
Technical interviews for the developers you hire, and a second opinion on proposals and estimates from agencies.
A technical voice next to you.
When investors, a client’s IT department or an auditor ask technical questions, someone in the room answers them.
Say you run a startup. How the first months would go
Say you run a startup whose product was built by an agency. The app works, the first customers are in, and an investor has asked for a technical roadmap. A fractional CTO would read the code and the hosting setup in the first month and write down what the next year requires. He would join planning with the agency, question the estimates and decide what moves in-house first. When you were ready for a full-time CTO, he would help write the role and interview the candidates.
How it works. From the first conversation
The free 30-minute consultation.
You tell us what you have and what worries you. We tell you whether you need a CTO, an audit or nothing at all.
The assessment, in the first month.
Code, infrastructure, accounts and suppliers. You receive a written report: what to keep, what to change, and in what order.
The monthly work.
A few days a month, on an agenda agreed in advance: architecture decisions, planning with your developers, reviews, hiring. You receive a short written summary every month.
The handover.
When you hire a full-time CTO, we hand over the documentation, the accounts and the list of open decisions.
When you do not need one. Three cases
You already have a senior technical lead.
A one-off review is enough. See technical due diligence and architecture audits.
You need more developers.
A fractional CTO gives direction and does not add developers. For building, see custom software development.
The product is still an idea.
Start with the free consultation. We discuss what is worth building and what you can buy off the shelf.
Who this suits. Companies with a product in production
Companies in the UK, the EU, the US and Canada with a software product in production, between ten and a hundred people, and no senior technical lead on the payroll. It also suits founders without a technical background who work with an agency and want someone on their side of the table.
Proof. Software we have run since 2016
Alcedo
The catalogue app for sales agents and farmers has been in production since 2016. We designed its database, rewrote the app in Flutter, merged two apps into one, and we still develop it. See this work →
Our own product, asoft-desk, runs on servers in Germany that we create with Terraform and configure with Ansible, so any of them can be rebuilt from code. The setup and the reasons behind it are in Hetzner vs AWS. Our CTO’s certification can be verified with the issuer from the Leadership page.
Questions. Short answers
What is a fractional CTO?
A fractional CTO is a senior technical lead who works with a company part-time, usually a few days a month. He takes the decisions a full-time CTO would take: architecture, infrastructure, security, hiring and the technical roadmap.
How is a fractional CTO different from an interim CTO or a consultant?
An interim CTO fills the role full time until a permanent hire arrives. A consultant delivers a report and leaves. A fractional CTO stays part-time, takes decisions with you and answers for them month after month.
How much do fractional CTO services cost?
We do not publish prices. The fee is monthly and fixed, and it depends on how many days a month the work needs. The cost is agreed after the consultation, in the written proposal.
How many days a month does a fractional CTO work?
A few days a month. The number is written in the proposal after the assessment and can change from one month to the next as the product evolves.
Does the fractional CTO also write code?
Yes. Our CTO writes code as well as plans: mobile apps in Flutter, Kotlin and Swift, backends in Java, Python and Node.js, desktop software in C++, and infrastructure with Terraform, Ansible, Docker Swarm and Kubernetes. Building a product is a separate project, with its own proposal.
Do you work remotely?
Yes. We work remotely, in English, from Bucharest. Our time zone is EET, which overlaps the working day in the UK and the EU and the morning on the North American East Coast.
Who we are. A software company in Bucharest
Amazing Soft SRL is a software company in Bucharest, Romania, founded in 2016. We work remotely with companies in the UK, the EU, the US and Canada, in English. Our data processing agreement is published on our legal page. The price is set after the free 30-minute consultation, in the written proposal.
Tell us what you have built. We tell you what it needs
If you are not sure whether you need a CTO, an audit or nothing at all, the free 30-minute consultation is where we find out. We reply on the channel you wrote on.