Technical direction
Architecture, build-or-buy calls, and a roadmap the team can actually ship.
Fractional & interim CTO in Berlin
Your CTO just left, delivery keeps slipping, or the founder is still running engineering on top of everything else. The right permanent hire is months away.
I'm Thomas Übermeier, a Berlin-based engineering leader with 25+ years in engineering. I step in as fractional or interim CTO, VP Engineering, or engineering manager, 2 to 5 days a week, embedded with your team, until the permanent leader is in place.
When founders bring me in
- 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.
What I take over
Delivery
Planning cadence, clear ownership, and a release rhythm that holds under pressure.
Team and hiring
Team structure, coaching the leads you already have, hiring senior engineers, and defining and hiring the permanent CTO or VP Engineering.
Board and investors
Technical risk and progress explained in business terms, and preparation for technical due diligence.
Infrastructure and reliability
Cloud cost, security, incident handling, and an on-call setup people can sustain.
Fractional or interim?
Fractional CTO
A fixed share of the week over a longer period, usually 2 to 3 days. Fits companies that need senior technical leadership and judgment before a full-time CTO makes sense.
Interim CTO or VP Engineering
The full role for a defined period, usually 3 to 5 days a week, until the permanent hire starts. Fits companies where the technology leader left or delivery needs an owner now.
Fintech and regulated payments
I built and ran the IT operations for Mercedes Pay, a payment platform operating under PCI-DSS Level 1 and GDPR. Fintech and payments teams get an interim CTO who has run audit-ready operations: access control, change management, logging, incident handling, and vendor oversight, while the platform keeps serving customers.
Background
- VP Engineering, Parity Technologies
- Head of Engineering, IOG / Midnight
- Head of IT Operations, Mercedes Pay
- Infrastructure at scale, ServiceNow and Red Hat
Questions founders ask
How many days a week does a fractional CTO work?
Fractional engagements usually run 2 to 3 days a week, interim ones 3 to 5. I set the share with you after the first two weeks, once the real workload is visible, and adjust it as the company changes.
Do you work on-site in Berlin?
I'm based in Berlin and work with teams in Berlin, across Europe, and in the US. How much time I spend on-site is part of the plan we agree in the first two weeks.
Can you help us hire the permanent CTO?
Yes. Defining the role, writing the brief, assessing candidates technically, and handing over to the person you hire are part of most interim engagements.
How does an engagement start?
With a 30-minute teardown call about the actual problem. You leave with my read on it whether or not we work together. If we do, I spend the first two weeks diagnosing delivery, team, and architecture, then we agree the priorities.
Need a senior engineering leader before the permanent hire?
Bring the delivery problem, the open CTO seat, or the team that has outgrown its founder-led setup. I will tell you what I see and what I would fix first.