Your engineering team needs a senior leader now. The right permanent hire is months away.

You probably need this if...

These are the situations where founders and operators usually call me.

• Your CTO or VP Engineering just left, and the search for a replacement will take months.
• Delivery keeps slipping, and nobody clearly owns engineering execution.
• The founder is still the de facto engineering manager and has become the bottleneck.
• Your nearshore or partner team writes the code, but nobody senior owns the technical direction.

Interim Engineering Leadership

I step in as interim or fractional CTO, VP Engineering, or engineering manager when a startup, scaleup, or partner-led engineering team needs senior leadership before a permanent hire is in place.

Fractional & interim CTO in Berlin

How an engagement usually runs

1. Week 0: Teardown call 30 minutes on the actual problem: delivery, team, architecture, or the leadership gap. You leave with my read, whether or not we work together.
2. Weeks 1-2: Diagnose in the first two weeks I look at delivery, team structure, architecture, and how decisions get made, then agree the priorities with you.
3. Month 1 onward: Lead, then hand over I run engineering 2 to 5 days a week, help you define and hire the permanent role, and hand over cleanly.

Who I Am

25+ years in engineering, from production support to running engineering organizations. You work with me directly.

Thomas Übermeier, Interim CTO & Engineering Leader, Berlin

I've spent over 25 years in engineering, starting in production support at Red Hat before building the IT operations for Mercedes Pay at Daimler. Later, I moved into Web3 as VP Engineering at Parity and Head of Engineering for the Midnight protocol at IOG (formerly IOHK). My work is about shipping software that works, from stabilizing critical payment infrastructure to taking complex R&D projects to production.

EU Technical Readiness Sprint

Selling into Europe from the US? European buyers ask for DPAs, TOMs, data flows, and AI governance answers your team can't give cleanly yet. For funded US software and AI startups, I turn those questions into engineering work.

The plan is deliberately simple.

1. Map the blockers Review the product, architecture, data flows, subprocessors, AI usage, cloud setup, and operating model.
2. Separate legal noise from engineering work Identify what actually needs to change in the product, infrastructure, documentation, workflows, and team habits.
3. Ship the readiness roadmap Leave with a prioritized 30/60/90-day plan your engineering, product, legal, and sales teams can use.

You can answer European buyer, investor, legal, and hiring questions with confidence because the product, infrastructure, and engineering story line up.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does an interim CTO or interim engineering lead actually do?

I do the job of a CTO, VP Engineering, or Head of Engineering for a defined period: delivery, team structure, technical decisions, hiring, and operating cadence. Where the gap is one level lower, I step in as interim engineering manager. Usually 2 to 5 days a week, embedded with the team. I am based in Berlin and work with teams in Berlin, across Europe, and in the US.

What is the difference between a fractional CTO and an interim CTO?

The time commitment. A fractional CTO takes a fixed share of the week over a longer period, often two or three days. An interim CTO or VP Engineering covers the full role for a defined period, usually until the permanent hire starts. I do both, from 2 to 5 days a week, and an engagement can move from one to the other as the company changes.

Should we hire interim or go straight to a full-time VP Engineering?

If the gap is urgent, or you are not yet sure what the permanent role should look like, interim covers it while you find out. I can help define the role and assess candidates, then hand over to the person you hire.

Do you work with fintech and payment companies?

Yes. I built and ran the IT operations for Mercedes Pay, a payment platform operating under PCI-DSS Level 1 and GDPR. That means audit-ready operations: access control, change management, logging, incident handling, and vendor oversight, while the platform keeps running. Fintech and payments teams get an interim leader who already knows what auditors and payment partners ask for.

What does EU technical readiness involve?

It means looking at the system, not just the policy. I review data flows, cloud setup, subprocessors, security review artifacts, AI usage, and operating workflows, then turn the gaps into an engineering roadmap.

Do you replace lawyers, DPOs, payroll, or tax advisors?

No. I own the technical readiness and engineering implementation layer. I bring in or hand off to lawyers, DPOs, payroll, banking, and tax specialists where the work is theirs.

Talk to Me Directly

No account managers. You talk to me about the actual problem.

Ingenire UG (haftungsbeschränkt), Akazienstraße 3a, 10823 Berlin

contact@ingenire.com

Schedule a 30-minute teardown of your engineering org, a delivery problem, or your EU readiness.