01 About

The senior engineering person you don’t have yet.

I’m a fractional CTO based in Berlin. I work with founders and companies across Europe.

Most of my work sits at two points. One is the stage where a startup has something that works and now has to turn it into a proper engineering organisation: the first real hires, an architecture that no longer fits, decisions that get harder as the team grows. The other is companies that want to use AI and automation in how they operate but haven’t made it real yet. I roll up my sleeves wherever and whenever necessary.

In practice that means sorting out architecture and technical decisions, setting up how a team hires and works, or getting an actual AI or automation workflow into production rather than leaving it as a plan. I stay hands-on, and I build with AI myself, so I can usually tell what’s useful from what isn’t.

I’ve led engineering at scale, most recently as a Director at Spotify, and I’ve been a co-founder, so I’ve seen these problems from both sides. What I offer is judgment more than a track record: knowing which decisions matter, and handling the expensive ones without drama.

I think engineering works best with clarity, trust, and a pace people can keep up. I’d rather leave a team more capable than more dependent on me.

What that looks like in practice is below.

02 Approach

Engagements with structure, not just availability.

Most fractional engagements start vague and stay vague. Each of mine begins with a structured diagnostic so we both know what we’re actually solving for, then moves through a series of focused workshops. You’ll always know what we’re working on this week and what you’ll have at the end of it.

  • 01

    Engineering diagnosis & roadmap

    What’s actually slowing your team down, and the order to fix it in.

  • 02

    Hiring system & first engineers

    Job specs, interviews, scorecards, calibration. Done properly, once.

  • 03

    Team structure & sociotechnical design

    Most “process problems” are structure problems in disguise.

  • 04

    Engineering principles & culture

    The explicit norms that keep smart people pulling in the same direction.

  • 05

    Quality strategy & flow metrics

    Knowing whether you’re actually getting better, not just busier.

  • 06

    Strategic technical decisions, incl. AI

    Translating board-level pressure into a real, scoped plan.

// 2–3 days/week · 3–6 months · often starts with a fixed-scope diagnostic

03 Fit

You might be in the right place if…

  • You’ve raised your seed or Series A. You’re about to grow your engineering team fast, and you want to do it well, not just quickly.
  • Your team has hit the wall where shipping has slowed down, but the reason isn’t obvious.
  • You need to hire your first head of engineering and you don’t know how to evaluate the candidates in front of you.
  • You’re being pulled in five directions on AI strategy and you’d like a senior partner who can help you decide what to actually do.
  • You want to build an engineering culture you’d actually want to work in, not the burnout factory the industry tends to default to.

If any of that sounds like the conversation in your head right now, we should probably talk.

04 Contact

Let’s talk.

30 minutes. No pitch, no slide deck — a conversation about where you are and whether I can help. If I’m not the right fit, I’ll tell you, and I’ll often know someone who is.

dom@vosventures.tech ↗ Berlin · Working across Europe