Technical leadership and software architecture
Sometimes the problem is not that you need more people — it is that nobody is deciding and standing behind it.
I was tech lead at Pulselive, BASF and Capitole Consulting: architecture design, code reviews, defining best practices, mentoring and technical interviews. In all three I stayed long enough to live with my own decisions, which is the only way to learn how to make them.
I can come in as short-term reinforcement to unblock one decision, or as technical owner of a project for a season. What I do not do is write an architecture document and disappear.
What's included
Architecture design
Service boundaries, data strategy, contracts and a migration plan. With the consequences of each decision written down, not just the diagram.
Audit of what you already have
Review of the system and the process, with findings prioritised by impact and effort. Including what I recommend leaving alone.
Code reviews
Reviews that teach rather than just flag. The goal is for the team to stop needing them.
Best practices and standards
Conventions, test strategy, branching and deployment. Agreed with the team, not imposed from outside.
Mentoring
Support for junior and mid engineers, in regular sessions and on their own real work.
Technical interviews
Designing the process and sitting in the interviews. I interviewed candidates at Amaris.
How we work
- 01
Diagnosis
One or two sessions with the team to understand what hurts: the code, the process, or the decisions nobody is making.
- 02
Prioritised report
What to tackle first, what can wait and what is not worth touching, with estimated effort per block.
- 03
Ongoing support
Regular sessions, reviews and presence in the decisions, at whatever weekly commitment we agree.
- 04
Orderly exit
The stated goal is that the team stops needing me. Documentation and handover from day one.
Contexts I have led in
- Microservices
- Event Sourcing
- CQRS
- Java / Spring Boot
- Kubernetes
- OpenShift
- Terraform
- AWS
- Distributed teams
- Code reviews
Frequently asked questions
How much of my time do you need?
It varies. An audit with a written report is days of work. Ongoing tech lead support usually runs one to three days a week, which is enough to sustain decisions without becoming a bottleneck.
Do you replace our CTO or complement them?
Complement. I typically cover the deep backend and cloud side so whoever owns technology can focus on product and people.
How does this fit a team that already has its own ways of working?
I come from distributed international teams and four consultancies. I am used to fitting into processes that already exist. Changing things for the sake of it costs more than it returns.
Can you review a decision we have already made?
Yes, and it is one of the most useful things to ask for. A second opinion before executing a large migration costs far less than discovering the problem halfway through.
Got a technical decision that is stuck?
Tell me the context and I will tell you on the first call whether I can help. No commitment.