Engagement 05
Architect-on-Retainer
A fractional principal engineer — effectively your part-time CTO — embedded with one client at a time. Engineering-led, not strategy-led: the architect is in your systems, on your roadmap, and accountable for what ships, the way an in-house principal would be.
Engagement specs
| Length | Quarterly |
|---|---|
| Fee format | $30K–$60K / quarter |
| Team size | Principal architect (fractional) |
| Deliverable | Embedded fractional principal engineer |
| IP ownership | You own everything built |
Capabilities
- Embedded engineering leadership across your whole system.
- Architecture decisions, technical hiring input, and roadmap ownership.
- Hands-on building, not just advising from a slide.
- One client at a time — genuine focus, not a shared bench.
Engagement · ARCH-002: embedded fractional principal, 1 of 2 active slots, quarterly roadmap ownership.
Questions
About this engagement
The retainer maintains and extends one system on a monthly cadence. Architect-on-Retainer is broader and deeper — the architect owns your technical direction the way an in-house principal engineer would.
We cap this to a very small number of concurrent slots to keep it real. When the slots are full, there is a waitlist. Intimacy is the product.
Engineering-led. The architect writes code and owns delivery — the technical decisions are made by the person doing the work, not handed down from a deck.
Quarterly, renewable. Long enough to own outcomes, structured enough that both sides re-confirm fit every quarter.
