Fractional VP Eng & Principal Engineer for Series A/B Companies
Who This Is For
You might be a good fit if:
- You’re a Series A or B company with traction and users
- Your engineering team is 5-20 people and growing
- You’re hitting scaling challenges — hiring, architecture, delivery, AI adoption
- You need senior technical leadership but $400K+ for a full-time VP Eng or Principal Engineer doesn’t make sense yet
Problems I Solve
“Our engineering team is a mess.”
Delivery is unpredictable. People are frustrated. Nobody knows what “good” looks like anymore. I’ve walked into teams on fire and turned them around.
At Humi: Delivery was unpredictable and payroll bugs had financial/compliance consequences. Overhauled the operating model. Doubled delivery speed. Reduced payroll bugs from 67% to 40% within four months.
“We want to implement AI/LLMs.”
Most companies are either paralyzed by AI or shipping demos that don’t work in production. I’ve shipped AI to production at multiple companies. I know the difference between a cool prototype and a system that works reliably, at scale.
At Spellbook: Rebuilt the playbook agent to address accumulated tech debt with slow response times and high inference costs. Achieved 50% speed improvement and 60% cost reduction across 8,000+ users.
“We need to hire the right engineers and grow them.”
Hiring is hard. Knowing what “good” looks like is harder. Keeping good people is even harder. I help with hiring strategy, interview process, career ladders, and making your engineering org a place people want to stay.
At Humi: Only 1 engineer could drive projects end-to-end. Rewrote the hiring process, built scorecards to reduce bias. Grew from 1 to 4 capable end-to-end engineers in 9 months. Zero attrition during my tenure.
“We want to build a new product line.”
You have a core business that’s working. You want to diversify — add revenue streams, expand into adjacent markets. I’ve done this multiple times: take a company with existing customers and ship something new.
At Aerial.ai: Transformed the CTO’s technical demo into product specs and GTM strategy. Facilitated 8 strategic partnerships worth over $150K with Amazon, Samsung, Panasonic, Sony, and Videotron.
How I Work
Relationships first. I’m not the consultant who hides behind frameworks and slides. I build real relationships with the people I work with.
Start with listening. Before I tell you what to do, I need to understand what’s actually happening — not just what leadership thinks is happening, but what the engineers experience.
Have the hard conversations. A lot of engineering problems are actually people problems that nobody wants to address. I’m direct but not harsh.
Make it stick. I’m not trying to create dependency. I put structures in place — processes, career frameworks, technical patterns — that keep working after I’m gone.
What I Don’t Do
- Pre-traction companies. If you have an idea but no users, no revenue, and no proof that anyone wants what you’re building, that’s not me.
- Substitute for a technical cofounder. If you’re a non-technical founder at the idea stage, you need a cofounder or an agency.
- Pure strategy. I don’t write 50-page roadmaps and hand them off. I stay involved in execution.
- Manage offshore dev teams. I work with companies building real internal engineering teams.
- Full-time VP Eng. This is fractional work. If you need someone full-time, I can help you hire that person.
Let’s Talk
If that sounds like where you are, email me: jevin@quickjack.ca