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Fractional tech lead & team leadership.

Senior technical ownership for teams that don't need — or can't yet afford — a full-time lead.

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Overview

Somewhere between three and eight engineers, teams hit the same wall: everyone is shipping, nobody is steering. Architecture drifts, review standards vary by reviewer, and estimates stop meaning anything. A fractional lead fixes the steering without the cost of a full-time hire.

I do this work full-time as Technical Lead at CodeArrest and did it for two years at Mechlin — owning architecture decisions, setting review standards, and mentoring engineers into leads, while still writing production code. Fractional means you get that same ownership at the hours your team actually needs.

What's included

Scope of the service

Architecture ownershipDesign reviews for anything significant, written decision records, and a technical direction that outlasts any single sprint.
  • ▸Design review before anything significant is built — async or live
  • ▸Architecture decision records: every major choice written down with its context
  • ▸A technical roadmap maintained alongside the product roadmap
DELIVERABLEA decision log your next lead inherits — instead of archaeology.
Code review standardsA review bar that's consistent, teachable, and fast — quality stops depending on who happened to review.
  • ▸A written review bar: what blocks a merge, what's a suggestion, what's taste
  • ▸Review SLAs so PRs don't rot; rotation so knowledge spreads
  • ▸Exemplar reviews done visibly, so the team learns the bar by example
DELIVERABLEConsistent review quality that doesn't depend on the reviewer.
MentoringRegular 1:1s with your engineers; growth paths for the ones ready to become seniors and leads.
  • ▸1:1s focused on technical growth, not status updates
  • ▸Individual growth plans for engineers ready to step up
  • ▸Pairing sessions on the hardest problems — not advice from a distance
DELIVERABLEEngineers promoted from within — the exit plan for needing me.
Delivery disciplineSprint cadence, estimation hygiene, and a definition of done — so commitments start meaning something.
  • ▸Sprint cadence with smaller stories and honest uncertainty in estimates
  • ▸A definition of done that includes tests, docs, and deployment
  • ▸Blocker escalation paths so 'stuck' never lasts more than a day
DELIVERABLECommitments your stakeholders can plan around.
Hiring supportTechnical screens, interview loops, and honest calibration on candidates for your pipeline.
  • ▸Screens calibrated to the actual job, not puzzle trivia
  • ▸Interview loops run or shadowed, with written candidate assessments
  • ▸Offer calibration: level, comp-band sanity, and red flags surfaced early
DELIVERABLEA hiring pipeline where technical judgment isn't the bottleneck.
Escalation coverA senior engineer on call for architecture emergencies and incident postmortems, with a 48h response window.
  • ▸48h response window on architecture emergencies and incidents
  • ▸Blameless postmortems with action items that actually get done
  • ▸Vendor and client technical calls attended when a senior voice helps
DELIVERABLEA senior engineer in your corner when it matters.
How it runs

Phases specific to this service

These slot into the standard engagement process — discovery, requirement analysis, and a written proposal always come first.

1

Onboarding audit

First 2 weeks

Read the code, sit in the ceremonies, interview every engineer. Output: a candid written assessment of architecture, process, and people — shared with you first.

2

Standards & cadence

Weeks 3–4

Review standards, decision-record templates, and a delivery cadence agreed with the team — imposed process fails; co-authored process sticks.

3

Embedded rhythm

Ongoing

Fixed weekly hours in your standups, reviews, and 1:1s — plus async availability in your Slack for the decisions that can't wait.

4

Quarterly review

Every quarter

Architecture health, team growth, and delivery metrics reviewed with you — including whether you still need me, or whether someone internal is ready to take over.

Proof

Where I've done this before

Shipped work this service is based on — details on the projects page.

Technical Lead
CodeArrest Software Pvt. Ltd.Leads technical decision-making across projects while writing and reviewing production code; mentors engineers and associate leads.
Technical Lead
Mechlin Software TechnologyDirected architecture and technical strategy; championed DevOps adoption; set cross-team documentation standards.
Recommendations
Five LinkedIn recommendationsFrom managers, leads, and engineers I've worked with — unedited, on the portfolio's testimonials section.
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Fit

Is this the right service?

GOOD FIT IF
  • ▸A team of 3–8 engineers shipping without senior technical direction
  • ▸You're a non-technical founder who needs someone accountable for the stack
  • ▸Quality and velocity are slipping and code review has become a formality
  • ▸You're hiring engineers and nobody senior is running the technical screens
NOT A FIT IF
  • ·You need 40 hrs/week of feature production — that's the embedded model on the services page
  • ·You want a one-off code review — ask for that directly, it's a smaller engagement

ENGAGEMENT · Runs as a monthly retainer with fixed weekly hours; the embedded model on the services page is the full-time version of this.

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Contact

Sound like your problem?

Send a short description of what you're building and where it hurts. Discovery call is free; written proposal within a week of requirement analysis.

Email meAll services
[email protected] · +91 79862 35112