Fractional CTO / technical leadership
Executive-level judgment, team guidance, architecture review, hiring support, and operating cadence.
Useful when the company needs senior technical leadership before a full-time hire makes sense.
Struhl Advisory, LLC
A product-minded technical executive for teams that need senior judgment before they need a full-time hire.
I help founders and leadership teams make better technical decisions, ship with less drag, and turn ambiguous product ideas into working systems.
Who I help
Senior judgment before the permanent hire.
I work with founders, seed-stage teams, and growing product organizations that need senior technical judgment but do not yet need, or cannot yet justify, a full-time CTO, VP Engineering, or product-minded technical executive.
I am especially useful when the problem is still taking shape: product direction is changing, the roadmap is fuzzy, the team is moving slower than expected, or the company needs someone who can connect business goals to technical execution.
- Product direction is changing faster than the plan can keep up.
- The roadmap is fuzzy, but the next technical choices matter.
- The team is shipping, yet execution feels slower or messier than it should.
- You are preparing for fundraising, diligence, hiring, or a major product push.
- You need interim technical leadership while hiring the permanent role.
How I help
Problem areas, not service packages.
The work usually starts with a company decision, product question, or execution problem that needs a practical technical read.
Product-to-engineering translation
Vague product bets become buildable plans, scoped milestones, and clear technical tradeoffs.
Useful when the product direction is real, but the shape of the work is still ambiguous.
Architecture and execution review
A practical outside read on system design, delivery bottlenecks, technical debt, tooling, and build-vs-buy decisions.
Useful when technical drag is present, but the cause is not yet obvious.
Technical diligence and advisory
Support for fundraising, investor diligence, product feasibility, technical narrative, and risk assessment.
Useful before a consequential decision needs a clear technical read.
Engagements
Scoped around the problem, urgency, and level of involvement required.
01
Advisory retainer
A lightweight ongoing relationship for founders and teams that need a senior technical sounding board.
02
Fractional leadership
A more involved engagement for interim technical leadership, execution support, or help while hiring.
03
Focused assessment
A short, concrete engagement around a specific question: architecture, process, feasibility, team shape, or technical risk.
About
Engineering depth, product judgment, and design sense.
I am an engineering leader with 15+ years of experience building products from early ideas to production systems. I have worked as a founder, architect, product partner, and team lead, usually in places where the problem is still taking shape.
I came up through interaction design and front-end engineering before moving into product architecture, technical leadership, and company-building. That gives me a useful mix of design judgment, engineering depth, and product sense, especially in early-stage environments where those disciplines are hard to separate.
- Simple systems that can survive change
- Comfort with ambiguity
- Product-minded, not ticket-minded
- Deep enough technically to be useful
- Clear enough for founders, boards, and investors
Contact
Working through a technical, product, or engineering leadership problem?
Send a short note. I will reply directly.