For founders without a CTO
Your engineering is my problem.
A CTO and a full engineering team for less than a third of what it costs in the US. I set up the infrastructure, the process and the team from day one, run it, and hand it over with its own lead when you're ready. You focus on the business.
I've owned every part of this before: architecture, hiring, delivery, budgets, India operations and the transition to an internal lead. Nine years across three startups, four of them running engineering for a US venture studio.
Studio ManagementUS venture studio
Thistle$100M+ food-tech
CertaSeries B, enterprise
Level AISeries C, voice AI
Built for founders without a CTO, or paying too much for engineering.
- No CTO yetYou've raised or you're earning, and you need a product built and run properly.
- Your CTO just leftThe system is live, nobody owns it, and hiring a replacement takes six months.
- Burned by an agencyYou own code nobody understands and a vendor you can't leave.
- Launching venturesStudios and holding companies that need engineering for each new bet.
- Engineering costs too muchUS salaries, cloud bills and AI spend growing faster than revenue. Same output, a fraction of the cost.
All of it, from the first commit to the handover.
Seven things I own from day one, so you don't have to.
You own what and why: the business, the customers, what gets built. I own how, when and how well.
Infrastructure
Cloud, environments, CI/CD, monitoring and costs, set up in your accounts from day one.
Delivery
Planning, release cadence and on-call. A weekly written report on what shipped and what's next.
Hiring
Senior engineers from India's best product companies. I interview every candidate before you meet them.
Running the team
Reviews, one-on-ones, performance and pay. You manage one person: me.
Quality
Code review, tests, security basics and an AI-native workflow where agents draft and people decide.
Cost
Cloud, tooling, AI and payroll spend reviewed every month, with a written cost report. No surprises on the invoice.
The handover
A lead grown inside the team, documentation, and 90 days of transition when you take it over.
Small on purpose. Built for how software gets made in 2026.
You pay for a team sized around today's tools, not a 2020 headcount plan. Fewer people, each more capable, is cheaper twice: lower salaries and fewer of them.
A small team with clear owners
Every engineer owns a part of the system. No layers of management between you and the work.
AI in the workflow from day one
Agents draft code, tests and reviews. People decide, review and merge. Thinking is never handed to the model.
Grow only when it's needed
The team starts at the smallest size that can ship, and adds people when the work proves it, not before.
Proven on my own team
At EmailZap the team halved and kept the same release schedule. How the workflow works
Nine years, three startups, always the person accountable for engineering.
Hands-on engineering leader in Mumbai. Four years running engineering and India operations for a US venture studio. I still write code and still get paged.
- Georgia TechMS program in Computer Science, AI specialisation
- Delhi Technological UniversityB.Tech Computer Engineering
| Studio Management | 2023 to now | Engineering Lead, then Cofounder and CTO of EmailZap. 0 to 2,000+ MAU, six direct reports, $500K budget. |
| Thistle | 2025 | Fractional Engineering Lead for a year at a $100M+ food-tech company. Led their India engineers and drove AI adoption. |
| Certa | 2019 to 2022 | Lead Backend Engineer. On-call that cut incidents 90 percent; onboarding for Boeing, Walmart, Uber, McKinsey. |
| Level AI | 2017 to 2019 | Founding Engineer. Real-time voice assistant; grew the team from two to five. |
From day one to your own team.
- Day one
I start as your CTO. Audit what exists, set up infrastructure and payroll, write the hiring plan.
- Weeks 2 to 6
First engineers hired. IP, repos and cloud are yours from the first commit.
- Week 8
The team is shipping on a steady cadence, with a weekly written report.
- Month 12 onward
Take the team whenever you're ready. A lead from inside it steps up; you own the team, the process and the entity.
Why not the usual options.
| Option | What it costs | What goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Hire a US CTO | $250K to $400K a year plus equity, 4 to 6 months to find | One person, no team yet, and a bad hire costs you a year |
| An agency | Opaque day rates | Builds and leaves. Nobody owns the system, and you're locked in |
| Marketplace engineers | $8,000 to $17,000 a month each | Bodies, no leadership. You become the engineering manager |
| Me | About $23,000 a month for a CTO and four engineers | No engineering team to manage on day one. A team of your own at the end |
Three stages. No markup on people.
Salaries, benefits and payroll pass through at cost and appear on every invoice. My fees are fixed and written down before you sign.
Foundation
Once, at the start
| Foundation feeCode and infrastructure audit, environments, CI/CD, monitoring, hiring plan and salary bands, payroll set up | $12,000 |
Stop inside the first two weeks and this is all you pay.
Build and run
Monthly, from day one
| Me, as your CTOArchitecture, delivery, hiring, running the team, reporting | $6,500 / mo |
| Per engineerEach engineer I hire and run | $875 / mo |
| Salaries and payrollPaid in full to the engineers. Confirmed in writing before any offer | At cost |
6-month minimum, then 30 days' notice.
Transfer
Once, when you take the team
| Before month 12 | $40,000 |
| Months 12 to 24 | $25,000 |
| After month 24 | $10,000 |
| Outside CTO after handover, optional | $2,500 / mo |
Fixed in the contract, and cheaper the longer I've run the team, because by then your lead is already built. Includes the lead promoted from inside the team, employee transfer, documentation and 90 days of transition. Your own entity in India if you want one.
- WeeklyA written report: what shipped, what's next, what's at risk.
- Agreed cadenceA release rhythm we set together and I'm measured against.
- Uptime targetAgreed for production, with me on the escalation path.
Terms. 6-month minimum, then 30 days' notice. Stop inside the first two weeks and the foundation fee is all you pay. Free replacement of any engineer inside 60 days. No conversion fee to hire an engineer directly after 12 months.
How my teams build.
- We tried a lights-out software factory. It failed. Here's the SDLC we run instead.
The rule we run on now: thinking is never offloaded to the model.
- Building an AI agent the boring way: contracts first, model last.
Making the spec executable found 70 gaps before a single model call.
- I built my sales pipeline the way I build engineering: agents draft, a person decides.
Four scheduled jobs, one spreadsheet, and nothing sent until a human ticks a box.
What founders ask.
What if something happens to you?
Every team has a senior engineer I'm growing into its lead from the first month, and everything is documented because the handover is the plan from day one. The team never depends on me alone.
Do you make product decisions?
You keep product and business ownership. I shape the technical plan, challenge assumptions, and make the engineering trade-offs visible before you commit, then I own how it's built, when it ships and how well it runs.
We already have a couple of engineers. Does this still work?
Yes. I take over engineering as it is, run your existing engineers, and hire in India only where it makes sense. The per-engineer fee applies to everyone I run.
Why hand the team over at all?
Because that's what makes this trustworthy. An agency earns by keeping you dependent. I earn by building something you can own, on a date we agree up front.
What about time zones?
A fixed overlap window with your time zone, usually four hours with US Eastern, and a written weekly report. You talk to me; I handle the team.
How many companies do you take on?
At most three at a time. Owning engineering means being available, so I cap it and say so on the first call.
Who owns the code?
You do, from the first commit. Contracts assign IP to your company, and repos and cloud accounts are in your name.
Your engineering is my problem.
Thirty minutes. Tell me what you're building and where engineering stands today. I'll tell you what I'd do in the first month, and whether I'm the right person to do it.
Book a 30 minute call