You’re building something real. Your product is gaining traction. But your cloud bill is creeping up, your infrastructure feels fragile, and you don’t have a senior technical leader who’s been through this before - someone who’s seen the scaling playbook at companies handling millions of users and multimillion-dollar budgets.

That’s where I come in.

Who This Is For

Startups in the US and EU that are post-seed, pre-Series B, or anywhere in between - and need senior cloud infrastructure, SRE, or technical operations leadership without the $250K+ full-time hire.

You might be:

  • A founder who’s strong on product but needs someone to own the infrastructure conversation
  • An engineering team that’s outgrown “the one DevOps person” and needs real reliability strategy
  • A company navigating a cloud migration, an M&A integration, or a cost crisis
  • A startup that wants to operationalize AI without burning cash on overhyped tooling

What I Bring

I’ve spent 15+ years leading cloud infrastructure, SaaS operations, and Site Reliability Engineering across four industries - Aerospace/Defense, SaaS, Retail, and Education. I currently lead six technical functions and 24 people across three countries, keeping production at 99.95% uptime for platforms serving millions of users.

Some things I’ve actually done - not advised on, done:

  • Cut cloud spend by 34% ($4.2M in real savings) through governance, right-sizing, and efficiency - not by gut feel, by instrumenting every dollar
  • Reduced incidents 40% over five years by building SLI/SLO frameworks that made reliability measurable and accountable
  • Consolidated 46 AWS accounts into 25 after an acquisition, migrating data center workloads to AWS with Terraform and Ansible
  • Built AI-powered operations tooling that catches configuration errors before they become incidents - using Python, Bedrock, and a lot of pragmatic skepticism
  • Negotiated multimillion-dollar vendor contracts alongside C-suite and Legal - including uptime guarantees, MTTR commitments, and compliance terms

I work across AWS and Azure, Kubernetes and Terraform, Grafana and Datadog. But the tooling isn’t the point. The point is that I know what breaks at scale, what costs real money, and what actually moves the needle.

How I Work With Startups

Three flexible engagement models. No retainer minimums. No vague “strategy” decks that collect dust.

Advisory
Hourly or project-based

You bring the problem, I bring the scar tissue.

  • Architecture reviews and cloud cost audits
  • SRE strategy, incident response playbooks, and reliability roadmaps
  • Vendor selection - helping you buy the right thing, not the thing with the best sales team
  • AI operations strategy - what’s real, what’s hype, what earns its keep
Good for teams that know what they need and want an experienced outside perspective.
Fractional Leadership
Ongoing, part-time - most common engagement

I function as your de facto CTO, VP of Engineering, or Head of Infrastructure - embedded enough to own outcomes, flexible enough you’re not paying a full-time salary.

  • Technical strategy and roadmap ownership
  • Engineering team mentorship and structure
  • Cloud cost governance (I will find money you’re leaving on the table)
  • C-suite partnership on technical decisions, contracts, and compliance
  • Hiring and team scaling - because culture beats credentials every time
Good for startups that need senior leadership but can't justify a full-time executive.
One-Day Deep Dives
Focused, high-intensity session

One day, one system, one set of recommendations you can act on next week.

  • Full cloud infrastructure audit with prioritized findings
  • Architecture review with migration or scaling roadmap
  • Incident postmortem review and process overhaul
  • AI/automation opportunity assessment
Good for teams with a specific, urgent problem and a tight timeline.

The Process

Connecting is simple. I keep it lightweight because I know you’re busy.

1
Reach out
Send me an email with a paragraph about your company, what you're building, and the problem you're trying to solve. No formalities, no decks. Just tell me what's keeping you up at night.
2
30-minute call
If it looks like a fit, we'll talk. No pitch, no up-sell. I'll ask questions, you'll ask questions. We'll figure out if working together makes sense - for both of us.
3
Scope and start
If we're aligned, I'll send a simple scope of work that fits your budget and timeline. No long contracts. No minimum commitments. We start small and earn trust in both directions.
Most engagements begin within a week of the first email.

Pricing

I don’t publish a rate card because every engagement is different. But here’s what you can expect:

  • Advisory: hourly or fixed-project. Competitive with senior independent consultants. You’re not paying Big Four rates.
  • Fractional: monthly retainer scaled to scope and company stage. Designed to be affordable for post-seed startups - significantly less than a full-time salary plus equity.
  • Deep Dives: flat project fee, scoped upfront. No surprises.

I’m selective about who I work with - not because I’m picky, but because I only take on engagements where I can make a real difference. That means availability is limited. It also means when we work together, you get my full attention.

Let’s Talk

If you’re building something interesting and you need infrastructure or operations leadership that’s been in the trenches - not just in the boardroom - reach out.

Get in touch →

No automated sequences. No sales funnel. Just a real person who ships infrastructure for a living and wants to help startups do the same.