Daniel Engelhardt · Interim CTO & tech leadership on demand
When your company grows faster than your tech leadership, I work with your CTO to build what's missing: team, processes, hiring. If there's no CTO, I step into the role for a while.
Things CEOs typically say
30 minutes, free, ideally with your CTO.
15+
years in tech
3×
CTO or CTO/CPO
0 → 7
team built
~30%
faster delivery after switching to AI
The problem
“A small change takes three weeks.”
Nobody breaks work down and prioritises it, so everything runs in parallel and nothing gets finished
“We can't go faster, they say. Technical debt.”
Nobody has quantified it or planned for it, so there's no path to paying it down
“I don't know what the team is working on.”
There's no roadmap anyone outside engineering can read
“My CTO has no time for anything.”
They're best developer, team lead, product owner and ops in one person
“Roles stay open for months.”
There's no hiring process, and the only person who can judge candidates has no time
“Every release turns into a fire.”
Tests, reviews and the release process never grew with the team
“If our best person leaves, the product knowledge goes with them.”
The knowledge lives in one head, not in documentation and the team
The biggest risk isn't speed. It's a CTO who has been doing two jobs for months. They burn out or leave, and the knowledge about your product leaves with them.
The cause
Almost every founding CTO, and every tech lead promoted from the team, reaches this point. They built the product because they could. Leading, hiring and setting up processes is something they never learned, and it comes on top of the day job.
You can wait until they figure it out alone. Or you can put someone next to them who has walked the same path.
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.
I go through the diagnosis with you and your CTO together before it goes to the team.
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
Predictability:
you give customers and investors dates that hold.
Visibility without micromanagement:
one update a week, three to five metrics, no ticket discussions.
A CTO who stays:
they hand off what others can do and grow into the role your company needs in two years.
A team that doesn't depend on one person:
knowledge written down, ownership shared, onboarding in weeks instead of months.
Alternatives
If it turns out you do need a second leader, after three months we'll know exactly which one. I help you find and onboard them.
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
Tell them what you're seeing and that you want to get them support, not oversight. Or send them the page for CTOs. The first call works best as three.
Then we talk one to one first, CTO to CTO. Usually the pushback is a worry about losing control, and that can be cleared up.
Your CTO. I bring structure, experience and a second opinion.
Then I'll tell you openly and explain why. The decision stays with you, and I help find a good solution for both sides.
Alongside a CTO usually 1–2 days a week; as interim CTO 2–3 days a week.
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
30 minutes, ideally as three. You describe what you're seeing, your CTO what they're dealing with. You get my honest assessment and a proposal for how to start. If I'm not the right person, I'll say so.
Free, no obligation.
Phone
+49 (0) 173 / 58 83 192Location
Düsseldorf