Leadership lacks a reliable technical view
The board or management team needs to know what is working, what is risky, and what deserves attention first.
Product and engineering leadership for companies in transition.
I help leadership teams understand what is going wrong, decide what needs to change, and lead the work with the team.
The company has changed. The product and engineering setup has not caught up.
Typical situations
The organization no longer fits the strategy
Responsibilities are unclear, important capabilities are missing, or the current structure is slowing decisions and delivery.
Product and engineering need a reset
Priorities, technical constraints, and commercial goals are pulling in different directions. Work is happening, but progress is hard to see.
A difficult change needs temporary leadership
The team needs someone to make decisions, lead the work, and leave behind a setup that can continue without them.
Three stages, from assessment to handover.
The first stage establishes what is actually happening. The rest of the engagement follows from that evidence.
- 01
Assessment
I interview leadership, product, engineering, and the people closest to the work. I review strategy, roadmaps, documentation, delivery practices, architecture, infrastructure, and code.
- Interviews across the company
- Product and technical review
- Written report with risks, priorities, and decisions
- 02
Retainer
We align on priorities and milestones. I stay on part-time to lead the work with leadership and the team.
- Explicit priorities and milestones
- Decisions across product and engineering
- Hands-on execution where needed
- 03
Handover
I transfer ownership to the team. If the next phase needs permanent leadership, I help recruit the right CTO, CTPO, VP Engineering, or Head of Engineering.
- Clear ownership inside the team
- Documentation and operating cadence
- Permanent leadership recruited when needed
Selected work
Post-acquisition stabilization at Connect Earth
The situation
A newly acquired platform, no senior technical leadership in place, and production incidents surfacing through customer complaints.
What I did
I started by assessing the codebase, infrastructure, team process, and delivery risk. I then worked with product and engineering to stabilize production, reduce key-person risk, introduce observability, and turn the roadmap into an execution plan the team could own. The full engagement, from assessment through handover, lasted 11 weeks.
Recommendations
From people who worked with me.
“When Christian came in, we had just acquired a platform our team didn't build, with no senior technical leadership in place and incidents surfacing through customer complaints. Within 11 weeks he assessed the technology, defined a roadmap, and executed it. He stabilized production, reduced key-person risk, and built the clarity the team needed to operate on the codebase independently.”
“Christian helped Product and Engineering make the tough one-way-door decisions on a newly acquired product platform. Within weeks he sorted through the noise, created an in-depth audit of our platform and process, and built a concrete roadmap aligned with high-level goals.”
“Christian was our CTO and co-founder. He built scalable technical systems and developed our engineering team with equal attention to both. Pragmatic in approach, clear in communication, focused on quality.”
Christian Schulze
I have worked as a CTO, co-founder, and hands-on engineer across European startups for more than ten years.
My work spans product, engineering, security, infrastructure, and organization design. I can work with a leadership team in the morning and review architecture or code with engineers in the afternoon.
I hold a BSc and MSc in Computer Science, with a focus on theoretical computer science and machine learning. I am based in Frankfurt and work with teams internationally.
- 2019–2025
- CTO and Co-Founder, Digital Office 24
- 2016–2019
- CTO, Aivy
- 2014–2015
- Full-stack Developer to CTO, feelyt
Let’s fix your engineering org.
We can use a first call to understand the company, the team, and the decisions in front of you. I will tell you whether I think I can help.
Prefer a separate window? Open the calendar.
Loading calendar…