Archetype 02 — Scale
You've built something that works. The next stage is different.
Sitting alongside your existing technical leadership through step-change growth. Raising the ceiling of the operation without displacing the people who got you this far.
What you're facing
Your growth is outrunning your infrastructure, your team, and your processes. Last year's org chart is unrecognizable. Your CTO — or the engineer who stepped into the role — is visibly exhausted.
The product has had major outages recently. Features that used to ship in a week now take six. An enterprise prospect walked over security concerns nobody on your team could articulate in plain language.
What you actually want
Someone senior enough to sit next to your CTO for six months, raise the ceiling of the technical operation, help you make the next two or three hires correctly, and leave the company in a shape that can survive the next 3x. Not someone who will replace anyone. Someone who helps you see clearly when everyone else in the room has too much emotional stake in any given answer.
What you've already considered
A full-time CTO search takes six months — by then the scaling window has closed or something has broken that can't easily be unbroken.
Your acting CTO might be the right person long-term, but evaluating them requires a credible alternative in the room.
A dev shop will scale what it's told to scale. It won't tell you what to scale or when to stop.
