AI-native engineering.
Fractional CTO for founders and technology leaders across AU / APAC.
When delivery has broken down, I fix it. When teams want to move to AI-native delivery properly (not just adopt the tools), I build the infrastructure. Either way, I leave your team in better shape than I found it.
AI-native delivery in practice
Trusted by
When does a fractional CTO make sense?
Your platform has been in build for months and hasn't shipped. You suspect the problem isn't the team, but you're not sure what it is.
Your architecture made sense at MVP. Now it's slowing everything down, and you're not sure whether to fix it or start over.
You're heading into a raise and your technical story needs to be airtight. You can't afford for diligence to surface things you didn't know about.
Something went wrong. Security incident, data issue, compliance gap. You need someone who's been here before.
You need senior technical leadership and hands-on capability, but a full-time CTO isn't the right move yet.
Your team has adopted AI coding tools but delivery hasn't actually changed. Code ships faster but review is getting skipped, security gaps are widening, and nobody's sure what the AI actually wrote.
What I find when I look
Technical Assessment — Vela
Code, infrastructure, product, team & compliance · May 2026
13 areas assessed
150+ findings
Technical Assessment — Vela
Code, infrastructure, product, team & compliance · May 2026
13 areas assessed
150+ findings
Engagements take different shapes.
AI-speed engineering, without losing control.
"A team of three with this infrastructure ships with the coverage and governance of a team of fifteen."
Three engineers. 300% more customers. 500% more suppliers. No additional headcount.
Most teams use AI to make coding faster. I use AI to make the whole delivery system faster, without weakening the controls.
Ships faster
A one-line fix clears in minutes. A new authentication flow gets specialist review before it merges. Review agents catch problems before a human sees the code. High-risk changes get more scrutiny, not more waiting. Low-risk changes get pattern-matched and move straight through.
Never blocked by security
Continuous scanning with findings routed directly to your issue tracker, not a quarterly report. Findings get smarter as your codebase evolves. Security runs in parallel with delivery, not instead of it.
Scales without headcount
Release notes, CI guardrails, and convention specs run automatically. Your team focuses on building. Three engineers deliver like ten. The infrastructure outlasts the engagement. Your team runs it themselves.
In practice
A production bug affecting 40% of users. Under one hour from identified to merge-ready.
Validated finding, Linear ticket, fix with tests, architecture review, CodeRabbit iteration, full E2E and API suite, Playwright, deterministic checks, PR raised. No controls bypassed. The point is not that AI wrote the fix quickly. The point is that the whole delivery control loop ran at AI speed.
Outcomes
What clients say.
About Shariq
I've been building and fixing software systems for 25 years. Starting on Unix, C, and shell scripts, working through trading systems, core banking, enterprise SaaS, and now startup and scaleup technology.
The thread through all of it: I'm most useful when the stakes are high and the situation is messy. Stalled delivery, fragile architecture, teams that need restructuring, platforms that should have launched months ago. That's where I do my best work.
Over the last three years, that's become the core of what I do: coming in when things are broken, finding what's actually wrong, fixing it, and leaving behind something better than I found.
The current version of "better than I found" involves AI delivery infrastructure. I build systems that automate the costly, error-prone parts of engineering (code review, security scanning, architecture governance, release management) so smaller teams can ship with the rigour of much larger ones.
Based in Melbourne. Working across AU and APAC.
Rates are transparent: $2,500/day, or from $16,000/month for an ongoing engagement.
If that sounds like what you need, let's talk.