Too early for a full‑time CTO.
Too far along to keep winging it.
I'm Sean Calarco, a fractional CTO for seed to Series B founders. I build your engineering team, set the technical direction, and give your board a plan it can trust, while your engineers keep shipping.
Free 30-minute call. No sales pitch.
I've led engineering at four high-growth companies, through two IPOs.
- RedditIPO
- WayfairIPO
- Handshake
- The Predictive Index
Why founders call
You got your startup to product-market fit, closed a round, and let out a deep breath. Then you realized your product wasn't built to scale.
It usually shows up like this:
- A round just closed, and the hiring plan says double the engineering team.
- The team is busy, but deadlines keep slipping.
- Your strongest engineer is managing a team for the first time.
- The board wants a technical roadmap, and you need one you can defend.
Results
I've solved these problems before, at companies you know.
12 to 40+engineers in the department I founded, in about six months
99.9%uptime, up from about 92%
50%lower latency on nearly every platform request
$10M+a year cut from transportation costs
Services
Choose how involved I am: lead engineering for you, advise your leadership team, or answer one hard question.
Fractional CTO
I join your leadership team part-time and run engineering: hiring, technical strategy, delivery and the board conversation, until you're ready to hand it to a full-time hire.
How fractional CTO worksAdvisory
Regular working sessions with you and your leaders. You keep the decisions; I bring what I've learned scaling four companies.
How advisory worksWorkshops
A focused session with one clear deliverable, such as a hiring plan or a roadmap your board will trust.
See the workshops
About Sean
What I bring isn't a framework off a slide. It's judgment earned making these calls myself, at companies where the stakes were real.
I've hired the engineers, run the post-mortems, and made the architecture calls that are expensive to get wrong. Now I bring that experience to founders who need it before they can hire it.
More about how I workWhat colleagues say
“If you need someone who can build an engineering function from the ground up and keep it shipping while it grows, this is the rare person who has actually done it.”
“Sean was also adaptable in pushing his teams to adopt new technologies with a focus on the quality of outcomes, not just adoption for sake of it. He's able to move a team quickly but keep the bar high.”
Tell me where your team stands.
Tell me a little about your business. I'll reply personally and set up a free 30-minute call to get an honest read on what to do next. No sales pitch.
Start a conversationPrefer email? Write to Sean@consultcalarco.com or message me on LinkedIn.