Daniel Engelhardt · Interim CTO & tech leadership on demand
I build them: alongside your CTO when they're stuck in day-to-day work, or in their place for a while when there isn't one. Until your team delivers reliably without me.
Things CEOs typically say
30 minutes, free, directly with me.
15+
years in tech
3×
CTO or CTO/CPO
0 → 7
team built
~30%
faster delivery after switching to AI
Symptoms
If your company has grown over the last few years but your tech team still works the way it did at the start, you've probably said at least one of these.
Everything on the board says “In progress”. When a customer asks for an update, you have to go and ask first.
You hear about delays after the deadline has passed. You've stopped giving customers firm dates.
Every planning meeting ends with the same argument. Nobody can say what the debt costs or when it gets paid down.
Hiring, processes and the roadmap stall because they're busy solving the hardest tickets themselves.
When the CTO is on holiday, the team stops. So do your questions.
New hires take months to deliver and tie up your best developers in the meantime. There is no real hiring process.
Nobody deploys on Fridays. Customers find the bugs first.
Features miss the customer's problem. Nobody knows whether anyone uses what was built.
Every month like this costs more than salaries. It costs commitments you can't make to customers. And eventually it costs you your CTO or your best developer, because nobody wants to do two jobs forever.
The cause
They're expected to keep building the product while leading a team, hiring and setting up processes. They were brought in for the first job. Nobody taught them the second, and there aren't enough hours in the day for both.
If there's no CTO at all, someone does the second job on the side: you, or your best developer.
Case Study · Evolute
0 → 7
Engineering organisation built from scratch (1 product owner, 1 designer, 4 developers, 1 working student)
Gut feeling → discovery
Product decisions moved from the founders to continuous discovery and opportunity-based prioritisation
Predictable releases
Development workflow that cleared delivery bottlenecks; CI/CD made releases far more stable
Services
Tech Team Audit
Before we talk about a longer engagement, I spend two weeks inside your team. I talk to you, your CTO and everyone on the team, read the code and follow how work gets from idea to customer.
Request the auditFixed price from €3,900 plus VAT
Then you decide whether we continue together or your team implements the recommendations on its own.
How I work
week 1
I talk to you, your CTO and everyone on the team one to one, read the code and trace how an idea reaches the customer.
Outcome: your team feels heard, not inspected.
week 2
You get a few pages without jargon: what's slowing you down, what's urgent, what can wait.
Outcome: you and your CTO share the same picture and the same plan.
months 1–3
Roadmap, weekly rhythm, small releases, a hiring process, three to five metrics.
Outcome: on Fridays you read an update you understand. On Mondays everyone knows what they're working on.
from month 4
I anchor ownership with your CTO and the team.
Outcome: it keeps running after I leave.
Results
You know where your team stands.
A weekly update in plain language replaces “it's in progress”.
You can commit to dates again.
Forecasts are based on the team's actual pace. Risks surface before the deadline, not after.
Your CTO has time for what matters.
They hand off what others can do and focus on what only they can do.
New hires get productive faster.
There's a hiring process, an onboarding plan and written-down knowledge instead of knowledge in one head.
About
At keepist I co-founded the company and built the product myself, from architecture to operations. At Evolute I joined as the second CTO when the product was in pieces: only one backend developer was left from the original team. I rebuilt the team to seven people, moved the apps from native development to React Native and put in the processes and structure that had been missing. I know what it feels like when your company grows faster than your role.
My background is technical, but for years I also carried product responsibility: as Product Owner at a FinTech start-up before I became CTO there, and as Senior Product Owner for federal and state software projects, among them the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the NRW economics ministry and the NRW tax administration. At Evolute I wore both hats as co-founder, CTO and CPO, and owned the entire product development. So I speak both languages: your CTO's and yours.
At Evolute we grew the product into a B2B SaaS with around €1M ARR and moved development to AI-native workflows. Delivery time dropped by around 30%.
Request the full CVBeen there:
as a founding CTO and as a CTO who had to rebuild a team
CTO and CPO in one person:
technology and product from one hand
Hands-on:
I still write code, so your CTO talks to me as a peer
More services
your team delivers measurably faster with AI, not just with new tools. At Evolute: around 30% shorter delivery time.
turn a prototype built quickly with AI into a secure, scalable product without a full rewrite.
assess developer candidates reliably in the age of AI. Built by me.
I work with them, not around them. Technical decisions stay with them. Most CTOs in this situation are glad to have someone on their side who has walked the same path.
Ideally together: we hold the first call as three. That makes it their decision too from day one.
Alongside a CTO usually 1–2 days a week; as interim CTO 2–3 days a week.
No. I tell you honestly what I see. The decisions stay with you.
If it makes sense for your team, AI becomes part of the build phase, with a measurable goal rather than a tool purchase.
The audit is a fixed price from €3,900. After that it depends on mode and scope; I'll give you a concrete range in the first call.
Contact
Tell me in 30 minutes what you're seeing, ideally together with your CTO. You'll get my honest view of where things are stuck and how I would start. If I'm not the right person, I'll tell you that too.
Free, no obligation. Not a sales call.
Phone
+49 (0) 173 / 58 83 192Location
Düsseldorf