Technical Consultancy
A senior architect on call for the decisions that are expensive to reverse, without hiring one full-time.
Most engineering teams don’t have an architecture problem so much as an architecture-decision problem. The choices that shape the next three years, a data model, a boundary, a vendor, a messaging pattern, get made in a sprint planning session by whoever sounds most confident. Not because the team is careless, but because there is nobody senior enough in the room to push back and no time to go and find out.
Ongoing advisory puts someone in that seat without the cost of recruiting a principal architect. That is a hard role to hire in Taipei at the best of times, and harder still if you also need them working in English with an overseas parent.
This is where most clients end up after a review or a design project. The value compounds: an advisor who already knows your system gives better answers faster than one who has to be briefed every time.
What it covers
Architecture decisions
The hard ones that keep recurring. Where a boundary belongs, whether something should be synchronous, how to model data two teams both think they own, and when a pattern is warranted rather than fashionable.
Technology selection
Database, queue, platform and vendor choices assessed against your constraints and what your team has actually worked with, written up with the reasoning. Selection notes age better than opinions do.
Design review before you commit
A second pair of eyes on significant designs before a quarter of engineering time goes into them.
Mentoring your senior engineers
Transferring the judgement, not just the answers. If the engagement is working, you should need less of it over time.
Translation to your headquarters
Turning your team’s technical position into something an overseas parent will fund. For subsidiaries in Taipei this is often the part that unlocks everything else.
Why teams in Taipei ask for this
I have been based in Taipei since 2018, leading architecture for a multi-region platform with engineering teams in Taiwan, Israel and Australia. The day job is keeping architectural decisions consistent across time zones, languages and engineering cultures, which is the same problem most of my consulting clients have.
The pattern repeats: a capable Taiwanese engineering team whose technical judgement is sound, and a headquarters that can’t easily evaluate it from eight time zones away. That gap costs teams budget, autonomy, and sometimes their better engineers. Closing it is most of the value here.
What I won’t do
I’m not a contractor delivering production code. My focus is architectural decisions, system design and engineering judgement; your team writes the code.
I’m also not a fractional CTO. That role owns the engineering organisation: hiring, budget, roadmap, people. This one advises on technical decisions while your leadership stays accountable for the org. If what you need is someone to run the function, you need a different person, and I’ll tell you that on the first call rather than the third month.
Common questions
How is ongoing advisory structured?
Priced per month against agreed scope rather than hourly. In practice: a standing session with your architects or leads, availability for the decisions that can’t wait for it, and written decision records for anything significant.
Is this the same as a fractional CTO?
No. A fractional CTO owns the engineering organisation: hiring, budget, roadmap, people. I advise on architecture and technical decisions while your engineering leadership stays accountable for the org. If what you need is someone to run the function, you need a different person, and I’ll say so.
Do you work with our engineers, or only with leadership?
With the engineers, in most engagements. Advice that only ever reaches leadership arrives at the team as an instruction with no reasoning attached, which is how good decisions get implemented badly.
What’s the minimum useful commitment?
Enough contact that I keep context. An advisor who turns up monthly with no memory of what changed spends the session being briefed instead of being useful. Cadence gets agreed up front against what you need.
Can you help us hire an architect instead of renting one?
Yes, and for a lot of teams that’s the better outcome. I can help define the role, assess candidates technically, and hand over once someone is in the seat. Taiwanese engineers I’ve mentored now hold senior roles at TSMC and Microsoft Taiwan. Growing the person you already have is often cheaper than recruiting.
Can you work with a Mandarin-speaking engineering team?
My working language is English. I don’t speak or write Mandarin, so engagements with a Mandarin-only team need an English-speaking bridge, usually a bilingual team lead or engineer on the client side, or a paid interpreter for key sessions.
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Start a conversation
Advisory work is priced per month against agreed scope, set after a short discovery call. I take on one or two new consulting engagements per quarter alongside my ongoing work, so lead times vary. Worth asking early.
Get in touch, or read more about my background.