esence.io

I help startups ship fast and build right with smart architectural choices and right implementation.

Everyone is shipping code, but few are building infrastructure that survives scale. I act as your tactical fractional CTO, bringing mathematical precision and deep systems engineering to your startup's core backend architecture. Book an Appointment Now!

Offload Latency to the Edge!

Your system's operational efficiency begins the exact millisecond a browser opens your application. Strategically utilising Edge Computation to offload intensive workloads directly onto the user's device, I can neutralize your backend bottlenecks before they even contribute to server costs while ensuring your platform scales effortlessly.

High-Availability = Happy Users

Predictable app speed during a sudden or seasonal virality isn't a stroke of luck, it's pure engineering. I build horizontally distributed server clusters that duplicate and share user traffic dynamically, ensuring your app stays lightning-fast whether ten or ten thousand users hit checkout concurrently.

Scalability means hunger for data

The biggest bottleneck in software systems is moving data around. By routing high frequency lookups into ultra-low latency caches with strategic cache-invalidation, I get rid of the slow database search queries entirely, dropping loading times to near-zero while dramatically reducing your monthly cloud hosting bills.

Fault-Tolerant Event Processing

Heavy operational processing should never slow down a user's experience. I decouple slow background tasks onto an immutable event streaming backbone, safely handling data spikes so that your app remains responsive even if your microservices return internal server errors.

The Inevitable Database Scaling

A million items or a million transactions, in Cassandra or PostgreSQL, every database management system eventually crumbles when your business grows. I engineer highly available and scalable databases that can meet your growth requirements adequately.

Let's Architect an Idea Right!

If your startup is ready for the technical pivot or your ideas need to be engineered. Let's talk about it!
I provide Fractional CTO  and  Software Architect  services for ambition-driven startup founders like you!

Starter

Best For: Early stage startups

$ 1500 / month
Up to 10h / Async Support

Key Services:

Tech Strategy

Architecture Review

Product Roadmap

Technical Debt Assessment

Popular

Growth

Best For: Scaling/Series-A startups

$ 3500 / month
4h Weekly / Priority Slack

Key Services:

Everything in Starter, plus:

Database Scaling

Microservice Design

Sprint Planning Participation

Cloud and DevOps optimisation

Team Hiring Assistance

Enterprise

Best For: Established Startups

$ 6500 / month
Leadership / 2 Days Weekly

Key Services:

Everything in Growth plan, plus:

Full Fractional CTO Role

Codebase Audit

Code Reviews

Due Diligence

Team membership

Custom

Best For: Heavy Engineering

On Request / month
Flexible per month

Key Services:

Flexible Engagement

Project-based billing

Build your own plan

FAQs

A Fractional CTO provides the strategic technical leadership of a full-time Chief Technology Officer, but on a part-time, retained basis. I don't just write code; I design scalable architectures, optimize engineering velocity, manage technical debt, and help founders hire and structure their internal engineering teams.

Yes. A full-time, elite CTO in the US or Europe costs upwards of $200k–$300k+ in base salary, plus equity. Most early-stage startups (Pre-Seed to Series A) need that level of architectural expertise to avoid building a fundamentally flawed product, but they don't need it for 40 hours a week. Hiring fractionally gives you enterprise-grade technical leadership at a fraction of the financial burn.

There are three common triggers:
The Launch: You are a non-technical founder who needs to vet an agency or build an MVP without getting ripped off.
The Bottleneck: Your product is live, but your development velocity has stalled, features take forever to ship, and infrastructure costs (like Vercel or AWS) are spiking.
The Scale: You just raised a round and need to scale your engineering team from 2 to 15 developers without breaking your culture or your codebase.

A dev shop's business model relies on selling you more engineering hours. My goal as a Fractional CTO is the exact opposite. I sit on your side of the table. I audit your systems, implement efficient workflows (like Nx monorepos and CI/CD pipelines), and help you build a self-sustaining in-house team so you eventually don't need me anymore.

Rarely. My focus is on architecture, infrastructure setup, codebase reviews, and mentoring your lead engineers. I might jump in to configure a complex CI pipeline, set up a zero-drift monorepo, or refactor a bottlenecked database, but I do not take tickets from your daily Jira sprint.

Yes. One of the highest ROI activities a Fractional CTO can provide for a non-technical founder is translating business requirements into strict technical specs, conducting code reviews, and holding external agencies accountable for code quality and security.

Every engagement begins with a comprehensive Systems Architecture Audit. I spend 1–2 weeks deep-diving into your codebase, infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and team workflows. I deliver a candid report of your bottlenecks and a strict roadmap on how to fix them. From there, the engagement moves into a monthly retainer to execute the roadmap.