Delivery models · Fractional CTO

Fractional CTO — technology leadership without the full-time hire.

Technology strategy, a multi-year roadmap, a governed tech radar, build-vs-buy calls, and ADR governance on a ~90-day review loop. Delivered by our real virtual-CTO agent — the same technology governance we run across our own fleet.

Technology radaradopt / trial / assess / hold
adopttrialassesshold
Adopt · proven, default
Trial · pilot on real work
Assess · watch & learn
Hold · avoid for now
Governed on a ~90-day review loop, captured as ADRs
Why it matters

Most early technology mistakes are strategy, not code.

The expensive errors happen above the keyboard — the wrong stack, no roadmap, build-vs-buy calls made by gut. That’s a leadership gap, and it’s the one founders fill last.

A founder needs the judgement a CTO brings — where the architecture is heading, which technologies to adopt versus avoid, what to build versus buy, where the technical risk sits — long before they can justify a full-time hire. Our virtual-CTO layer provides exactly that: a technology strategy tied to your business goals, a multi-year roadmap, a governed tech radar that sorts technologies into adopt / trial / assess / hold, a build-vs-buy policy, and architecture-decision-record governance — all revisited on a roughly 90-day loop as things change. It doesn’t replace your engineers; it gives them a direction and gives you a technology strategy you can take to a board. This is the same governance discipline we apply across our own 46 built products.

0
day strategic review loop
0
radar rings: adopt/trial/assess/hold
46
products under this governance
19
live in production
What we deliver

The judgement layer above your build.

Strategy, governance, and direction — the calls a technology leader owns, delivered on a steady review cadence.

Technology strategy
aligned to the business
Vision & principlesCapability strategyTech-risk postureSecurity direction
Multi-year roadmap
where you’re heading
Quarterly themesMilestone sequencingDependency mappingBoard-ready view
Tech radar
adopt / trial / assess / hold
Technology triageStandardisationDeprecation callsRefresh each cycle
Governance
decisions that stick
ADR review safety limitsBuild-vs-buy policyVendor & cost strategy~90-day advisory report
The team your CTO directs

Your fractional CTO comes with a full org behind it.

The Virtual CTO doesn't advise from the sidelines — it directs a complete, composed product team. Here is the org it commands on your behalf.

Autonomous leadership
Autonomous CEO

Autonomous CEO

Sets direction and gates every build — strategy, prioritisation and budget.

Strategy & directionBuild gatesPrioritisationBudget approvalIncident command
Works with
CEO governanceCloviScoutbuilder-ragCloviTrack
Autonomous COO

Autonomous COO

Runs day-to-day operations and fleet health — keeps delivery moving.

OperationsFleet healthEscalationTicketingSLA tracking
Works with
CloviCOOCloviTrackFleet Health MonitorCEO signal
Leadership & deliveryWho owns your outcome
Virtual CTO

Virtual CTO

Technical leadership on demand — owns roadmap, architecture direction and build risk.

Tech strategyRoadmapArchitecture directionRisk & trade-offsStack decisions
Works with
software-architectbusiness-analystbuilder-ragCEO pipeline
Staff-Aug Lead

Staff-Aug Lead

Matches the right roles to your engagement and runs the delivery cadence.

Role-fit matchingEngagement proposalDelivery cadenceRisk registerBench & continuity
Works with
CloviScoutbuilder-ragCloviTrackCEO signal
Project Manager

Project Manager

One owner of delivery — decompose, sequence, dispatch, gate and track.

Sprint cadenceDecompositionDispatch & gatingStatus reportsUnblocking
Works with
CloviTrackCloviScoutbuilder-ragCEO signal
Business Analyst

Business Analyst

Turns founder intent into verified, traceable requirements.

RequirementsBRDINVEST storiesGherkin criteriaTraceability (RTM)Gap analysis
Works with
prompt-engineersrs-document-writerCloviScoutbuilder-rag
BuildWho ships the product
Software Architect

Software Architect

Decides the WHICH — stack, decomposition and decision records.

Stack selectionSystem decompositionADR recordsNFR envelopeInterface contracts
Works with
builder-ragsrs-document-writersrs-verifierCloviCode
Software Developer

Software Developer

Production-complete code — no stubs, guard-enforced before delivery.

Frontend & backendREST / RPC APIsData-access layersUnit & integration testsRefactors & bug-fixes
Works with
CloviCodeCloviDOScode_ragclovicode-debug-agent
Mobile Developer

Mobile Developer

Native & cross-platform apps — store pipeline, offline-first, OTA.

iOS / AndroidOffline-firstPush & device APIsApp-store pipelineOTA updates
Works with
CloviCodecode_ragDevice test cloudsclovicode-debug-agent
UI / UX Designer

UI / UX Designer

Token-driven interfaces that meet accessibility standards.

Token-driven UIWireframes & flowsDesign systemWCAG 2.2 AADev handoff
Works with
CloviDOSclovimenu-agentbrand-agentbuilder-rag
Data & AIWho builds the intelligence
Data Engineer

Data Engineer

Pipelines, warehouses and data-quality contracts.

ETL / ELT pipelinesWarehouse modelingData qualityOrchestrationLineage
Works with
software-architectqa-engineerbuilder-ragCloviCode
AI / ML Engineer

AI / ML Engineer

Model evaluation, serving architecture and MLOps.

Model evaluationServing architectureMLOps pipelinesRAG optimisationBenchmark harness
Works with
CloviModelWatchbuilder-ragCloviCodeGPU on-demand
NLP Engineer

NLP Engineer

Language understanding — entity extraction, PII and sentiment.

NER & extractionPII detectionSentimentText classificationspaCy / Presidio
Works with
builder-ragCloviScoutDHS-Sentinelsecurity-agent
Computer-Vision Engineer

Computer-Vision Engineer

Vision — OCR, image classification and visual QC.

OCRImage classificationVisual QCObject detectionGPU serving
Works with
builder-ragCloviScoutCloviCodeGPU on-demand
RL / Fine-Tuning Engineer

RL / Fine-Tuning Engineer

Adapter training — LoRA / QLoRA, SFT and DPO / RLHF.

LoRA / QLoRASFT datasetsDPO / RLHFReward modelsTuned-model eval
Works with
ai-ml-engineerTRL / PEFT / axolotlbuilder-ragGPU on-demand
Quality, security & reliabilityWho guards the release
QA Engineer

QA Engineer

The ship / no-ship gate — orchestrates every pre-release check.

Spec conformanceSecurity gateOnboarding gateRoot-cause debugCircuit breaker
Works with
srs-verifiersecurity-agentonboarding-agentbuilder-rag
Security Agent

Security Agent

Pre-deploy audit — auth, secrets, injection and CORS.

Auth reviewSecrets scanningInjection checksCORS & policyPre-deploy audit
Works with
platform_preflightcredential-vaultDHS-SentinelCEO signal
SRE Engineer

SRE Engineer

Reliability — self-healing, monitoring and incident response.

MonitoringSelf-healingIncident responseRunbooksSLOs
Works with
Fleet Health MonitorDHS-SentinelCloviCOOpm2 / systemd
Rules Engineer

Rules Engineer

Deterministic business logic — policy rules and decision tables.

Rule authoringPolicy enginesDecision tablesValidation logicGuardrails
Works with
CloviCodebuilder-ragqa-engineerCEO signal

19 real role-agents — every one already running in the CloviTek fleet, each retrieval-grounded, quality-gated and composed on demand. No humans to recruit, onboard or wait on.

See the full company org →

A roadmap you can take to a board.

We turn scattered technical intentions into a sequenced, multi-year roadmap with clear themes and dependencies — so technology decisions line up with where the business is going.

  • Quarterly themes tied to business outcomes
  • Milestone sequencing with dependencies mapped
  • Build-vs-buy calls recorded, not left to gut
  • Revisited on a ~90-day loop as reality changes
Multi-quarter technology roadmapstrategy timeline
ThemeQ1Q2Q3Q4
Foundations
Scale
AI features
Hardening
Build-vs-buy calls & ADR governance behind every milestone
How it works

From technical fog to a governed strategy.

A repeatable advisory loop — assess where you are, set direction, govern the calls, and review on cadence.

step
Assess
current state
step
Strategy
vision & principles
step
Radar & roadmap
adopt / sequence
gate
Govern
ADRs · build-vs-buy
step
~90-day review
adjust
One strategy · every quarterBuilt & run on our own fleet
Virtual CTOTech radarRoadmapADR governanceBuild-vs-buySoftware ArchitectRisk posture~90-day loop
46 built · 19 live · 135+ agents
Proof we can deliver

We run our own company on this.

This is our virtual-CTO agent, a productized fractional technology-leadership layer — advisory, with a founder making the final calls. The proof is that this same governance runs across our own company: a tech radar, ADR safety limits, and build-vs-buy policy applied to 46 built products, 19 of them live.

  • virtual-cto owns strategy, radar, roadmap, and ADR governance
  • It composes our software-architect and business-analyst for depth
  • The same discipline governs our own fleet — dogfood, not slideware
  • Advisory by design — it never overrides your team, it directs it
Powered by our fleet

The real platforms behind this service.

This service is delivered by the real virtual-CTO agent in our fleet, composing our architecture and analysis roles.

Technology leadership
virtual-cto
Strategy & principlesTech radar~90-day advisory loop
Architecture depth
software-architect
ADR reviewDecompositionStack safety limits
Business alignment
business-analyst
Goal mappingCapability strategyPrioritisation
FAQ

Questions we get asked

Owns the technology decisions above day-to-day coding: strategy, a multi-year roadmap, a governed tech radar (adopt / trial / assess / hold), build-vs-buy policy, and ADR governance — reviewed on a roughly 90-day loop. It gives your build a direction and gives you a strategy you can take to a board.
No. It leads and directs engineering, it doesn’t replace it. It sets the technology direction and governs the big calls; your developers (or ours) execute against it.
A living map that sorts every technology into adopt, trial, assess, or hold — so your stack standardises on what’s proven and avoids what isn’t. We refresh it each review cycle and record the reasoning as ADRs.
It’s the same governance we run on ourselves: a radar, ADR safety limits, and build-vs-buy policy across our 46 built products. Dogfood proof, not a client roster we don’t have.
Our stack

The technology behind this.

The real, relevant stack we build this with — model-agnostic, open-source-first, production-grade.

Keep exploring

Related capabilities

Every technology below is delivered by the same composed engineering team.

Ready when you are

Need technology leadership, not another hire?

Tell us where you’re headed. We’ll set the strategy, build the roadmap and radar, and govern the calls on a ~90-day loop — the way we run our own fleet.

Start a project →