Work with me

I take on a small number of engagements at a time so that each one gets real attention. Whether it’s a mission-driven nonprofit that needs its first technical leader or an engineering organization with a problem cutting across teams, I help by asking the hard questions about how the people, the technology, the product, and the governance all fit together.

Your whole technical brain

For mission-driven orgs (15–100 people) that need the full picture.

You don’t have a CTO, or your technical lead is stretched thin. You need someone thinking about product strategy, AI strategy, engineering delivery, and team building, not just one slice. But you can only justify a fractional role, and your budgets are tight.

I’ve been a technical executive at three organizations like yours: Open Supply Hub, Cadasta Foundation, and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team.

What this looks like:

• Architecture decisions and platform trade-offs
• Product strategy and roadmap
• AI strategy, what’s worth adopting for your engineering and your product
• Hiring plans and interview loops
• Developer enablement, delivery cadence, and team rituals
• Turning your product from a cost center into a revenue source
• Making hard calls when budgets tighten, including restructuring teams

A cross-cutting problem, solved

For orgs (100–1,000 people) that have a CTO but need a senior operator for a specific gnarly problem.

Your CTO doesn’t have bandwidth for the problem that’s cutting across teams: a framework decision, platform architecture, engineering enablement, or AI adoption strategy. You need someone who can facilitate cross-functional decisions, drive them to closure, and execute the change.

At the Wikimedia Foundation I led the cross-functional process that adopted Vue.js, founded the Architecture Team, and led Engineering Enablement. That’s this kind of work.

What this looks like:

• Fractional technical chief of staff or embedded system architect
• Cross-functional decision processes that force closure without steamrolling
• Large-scale technical and human process change that sticks
• AI adoption that changes how the org works, not just what tools are installed

Someone technical on your side

For organizations navigating technical decisions without in-house technical leadership.

Maybe you’re switching vendors. Maybe you’re getting proposals and can’t evaluate them. Maybe you need to shape an RFP but don’t have the technical staff to know what to ask for. Sometimes you just need someone who has been a CTO, sat on boards, and shipped products, asking the right questions alongside you.

What this looks like:

• Vendor evaluation and selection
• RFP scoping and review
• Technical due diligence
• Board coaching on technical decisions and stakeholder navigation

Coaching technical founders

For founders who are great at building but navigating new territory as a leader.

You built the product. Now you’re hiring, managing a board, talking to funders, and wondering when you stopped writing code and started running an organization. I’ve been on both sides of this: a technical executive who scaled organizations, and a board member who has coached executives through exactly these transitions.

What this looks like:

• Navigating board dynamics and funder relationships
• Making the shift from builder to leader without losing what makes you good
• Hiring and managing your first team
• Figuring out what to delegate, what to hold, and when to ask for help

How to start a conversation

Book thirty minutes on my calendar with no agenda other than figuring out whether this would be useful to you. If you’d rather write first, kate@untanglingsystems.io, tell me a paragraph or two about what you’re working on and what’s on your mind. I reply within a couple of days.