# Forward-deployed Fractional CTO Source: https://normanholz.de/en/ Language: en Inside the team, close to the code, accountable for shipping. Your software works in the demo. I make it work in production. I help founders and engineering teams ship software, rescue struggling products, and make confident technical decisions. I do this as a forward-deployed Fractional CTO, embedded engineering leader, and hands-on software architect. ## Three situations where I can help. - The prototype is stuck at 80%: The idea works in a demo, but lacking reliability, unclear security, complex architecture, and the last product details block a real release. - The delivery setup no longer works: Agency handoffs, brittle code, unclear ownership, or growing technical debt make every release slower and riskier. - The team needs senior direction: Developers are capable, but product priorities, technical decisions, and business outcomes are no longer connected. ## Who I work best with. ### Good fit - A founder or managing director owns a software product but lacks senior technical leadership - An agency, freelancer, or internal team has left a project stuck - A prototype needs to become secure, maintainable production software - Technical and product decisions are becoming expensive - The company needs senior judgment without a permanent executive hire ### Probably not a fit - You only need extra implementation capacity - The project has no internal decision-maker - You want a long strategy document without execution - The cheapest available developer is the main selection criterion ## What I actually do. - Technical Strategy: Architecture decisions, build vs. buy analysis, technology selection. The decisions that keep you from burning runway down the road. - AI & Data: From LLM integrations to data pipelines. Practical AI that solves real problems, not hype-driven demos. Certified AI Engineering Expert, currently deepening the craft with an M.Sc. in Data Science. - Team & People: Hiring, mentoring, conflict resolution, motivation. A psychology background means I don't just manage developers. I understand what makes them tick and what makes them quit. - System Architecture: Cloud infrastructure, microservices, API design. Scalable systems that don't collapse when user numbers grow. - Mobile & Web: Cross-platform, Android & iOS, modern web stacks. I've shipped production apps, not just drawn wireframes. - Vendor & Due Diligence: Supporting tenders, evaluating proposals, auditing codebases, assessing tech stacks before acquisition. Your technical BS filter. ## Working together, without detours. - We talk: We establish what exists, what is blocked and which of the three engagements fits, if any. - I look at what is actually there: I assess the product, code, architecture, team and constraints through a CTO lens: can it ship, scale and support the business? As a standalone CTO Assessment or as the start of a sprint or retainer. - We make decisions and ship: I turn the findings into priorities, take ownership of the hard technical decisions and stay involved through delivery. ## Three ways to work together. ### 1. Diagnosis: CTO Assessment **Start here** Within five business days. An experienced CTO's assessment of whether your product can ship and scale, and whether your technology, team and delivery setup can support the business. - A written CTO assessment for your board, investors, or vendor - A clear call: ship, repair, rebuild, replace, or reduce - A prioritized action plan based on business risk Fixed price: €4,800 plus VAT Discuss the assessment ### 2. Delivery: Release Sprint In two-week sprints. Focused senior execution for a promising product or an urgent release. - A release you can ship to paying customers - An architecture your team can build on without me - A clean handover, so the momentum stays when I leave Fixed price per sprint, agreed before we start, based on the CTO Assessment or a scoping call Discuss a Release Sprint ### 3. Leadership: Fractional CTO 2 or 4 days per week. Technical leadership from inside the team, hands-on in delivery when needed. - Technical decisions that hold up under scale, due diligence, and hiring - A team that ships predictably instead of firefighting - One person who owns the technical course Flat monthly retainer, sized by scope and stage. Cancel anytime, no notice period. Discuss an engagement ## How pricing works Fixed price or flat monthly retainer. Agreed before we start. You're buying results, not hours. Full budget certainty from day one. The yardstick isn't a day rate, it's what the decision behind the work is worth: architecture that carries. A release that holds. CTO-level judgment without a full-time CTO. ## Selected results. ### Hanseatic Bank: First-mover on Apple Pay, built to run in-house Starting point: Through its Digital Hub, a startup within the company, Hanseatic Bank set out to build a mobile app for its credit card product and become an early mover on Apple Pay and Google Pay. It started lean with external developers, but from the outset the app was meant to move to an internal in-house team later on. My contribution: I designed and built the React Native app, delivered the Apple Pay integration, and helped hire and mentor the bank's own mobile team. I advised on hiring, architecture, and product decisions and set up the development practices and CI/CD pipelines to build and run the app. Result: One of the first banks to offer Apple Pay, it won new customers who could pay without opening a separate account. Today the bank develops the app in-house, and it has passed 500,000 downloads on the Play Store. ### Hamburg Startups: A multi-tenant platform that widened reach, and a pragmatic pivot Starting point: A data platform in the startup ecosystem had grown organically into a tangle of home-grown features that were hard to maintain. It was expensive to run, leaned on outside specialists, and had been built into a full product before anyone tested its product-market fit. My contribution: As Interim CTO, I took technical ownership, rebuilt the platform to be multi-tenant across regions, improved data collection, and cut the dependency on freelancers. Result: One codebase powered several regional and themed platforms, including a dedicated variant for female founders. When profits stayed below expectations even after that expansion, we pivoted with the client to a leaner suite of tools, now run by an internal team. ### LifeBonus: From scattered pieces to a product that trained its own AI Starting point: LifeBonus set out to digitize an analog business: health trainers who visited care facilities to teach caregivers correct movements, now delivered through an app that read movement patterns with AI. A prototype, an on-site AI team, and a cloud-first backend existed, but the pieces did not yet fit together. My contribution: I designed and built the video upload end to end and wired the video processing pipeline into the existing cloud-native backend. I reworked onboarding and advised management on positioning and monetization. Result: The app turned user videos into reliable training data for the AI team's movement-recognition model and gave new users a simpler onboarding flow. That foundation, together with my advice on positioning, let the company test new sales models, from professional care facilities to private caregivers looking after family members at home. ## Profile ### Senior enough to make the call. Hands-on enough to carry it through. I have spent more than 20 years building software and leading engineering work across startups, banking, healthcare, agencies and enterprise environments. My background combines systems engineering, product delivery, team leadership, psychology and applied AI. - Experienced Interim CTO and Engineering Manager for mobile and web front-end teams - Certified AI Engineering Expert - M.Sc. IT-Systems Engineering and B.Sc. Psychology - Hands-on architecture and implementation ## Your move.