You're a CTO, VP Engineering or Head of Engineering at a scale-up. Your tech is in good shape — that part you can handle. The part eating your time is people and org. Hiring drags on. Middle management is stretched and uneven. The gap between what leadership expects and what teams actually deliver keeps widening. You can feel something is off, but every time you sit down to fix it, something more urgent burns through your week.
That's the messy middle. It's where I work.
I embed with your engineering org as a fractional engineering leader. I'm in your Slack, in your one-to-ones, talking to your teams — close enough to see what's really happening, not just what gets reported up.
Engagements typically run three to six months at three days a week. When a permanent senior leader is being hired, I'll often stay through to a clean handover.
I still write code and enjoy it. Enough to speak to what your engineers are dealing with day-to-day, and what your leadership team needs to hear.
Engineer first with 25+ years in software. Manager for the last decade. Consulting since 2022.
20–30 one-to-ones in the first two weeks, starting with the people who hired me, then Product and HR, then following the threads. I sit in on the group meetings — leadership team, team standups, ops reviews — to see how decisions actually get made. By the end of week two I can tell you what the real problems are: usually overlapping with what you suspected, but with the parts you couldn't see filled in. Then we agree what we're going to do about them.
Veed — built the engineering management layer end-to-end for a 70-person engineering org. Two of the EMs I hired are now Director-level, still there three years on.
Oodle — embedded as EM and Delivery Manager, reset processes and leadership in a stuck ~50-person engineering org.
NHS England — delivered a ways-of-working programme on a major platform migration. Coined "the messy middle" in a presentation to senior leadership; they adopted both the term and the argument.
"I think you've built some solid foundations for effective management here, and could help any scaling company begin to develop a good engineering culture."
— Tom Butterwith, Senior Director of Engineering, Veed
"In a very short amount of time, he made the team materially better."
— Graham Jackson, Tech Lead, NHS England
Embedded: ~Three days a week, three to six months. The default. Best when the messy middle has shape and you need someone in the room to fix it.
Advisory: One day a week or less, ongoing. Best when you have a permanent senior leader in place and want a sounding board, with the option to step in when something specific needs work.
