Why Startups Hire a Fractional VP of Engineering

It’s an unfortunate reality that no one reaches out to me when things are going great. If a founder gets in touch, they’re grappling with something serious. They may have hit a bottleneck, what used to work isn’t scaling, or they have an immediate crisis they’re struggling to get through. While everyone’s circumstances are unique, there are some common situations that come up repeatedly. Here are some examples of these moments.

You have more people, but they’re getting less done…

You expected things to move faster once you finally expanded the team. Instead, features take longer than ever to deliver, and major projects take two to three times longer than everyone expected. 

The engineers aren’t idle. Commits are happening. But the big things, the ones that wow customers or impress investors, keep slipping. Worse still, no one is quite sure why.

It’s one of the most frustrating phases of growth: the machine’s bigger, but output’s smaller. The habits that worked with five engineers haven’t scaled to fifteen, and the weight of coordination is starting to crush speed. Luckily, the skills and habits that allow teams to scale can be learned. It’s something I’ve taught many startups. Most importantly, I’ve taught them to do so without sacrificing the speed and agility that got them to this inflection point to begin with.

Someone Vital is Suddenly Gone

Maybe it was a founding engineer, a co-founder, or a respected early hire. They held context no one else had, and without them, the team is adrift, rattled by the departure.

In some cases, the loss is emotional: they were a stabilizing presence. In others, it’s functional: everything is harder without them in the loop. Either way, everyone feels it, and the hole it leaves is slowing everything down.

Even though it’s normal for early teams to evolve, it still stings. You’re mourning both the person and the sense of certainty they gave you. This mourning period is also an opportunity for members of your team to emerge as new leaders, filling gaps that have been left. This won’t happen on its own, though. That’s why startups bring me on in these situations. I provide a steady hand to a team that needs stability, and begin building up their next wave of leaders.

You Can’t Find the Right Full-Time VPE

You decided to hire a VP of Engineering. You expected a three-month search. It’s now been six, and you’re no closer.

In the meantime, problems aren’t pausing. The team needs direction, releases keep slipping, and you’re playing interim manager while also trying to fundraise and talk to customers. You’re burning energy in all directions.

Rather than replace the search, I help these founders buy time, stabilizing things until the right full-time hire is made. It’s a way to stop the bleeding without making a rushed decision they’ll regret. As a bonus, it’s much easier to target your search for an engineering leader when you have one at your disposal.

People Quit, but You Don’t Know Why

Losing one engineer happens. Losing two or three in quick succession, especially decent performers, starts to feel like a pattern. And when you can’t clearly explain why they left, it becomes an unsettling mystery.

You replay conversations in your head, wondering if something about the culture shifted or if leadership missed a signal. The departures make everyone a little twitchy; those who remain start quietly looking around.

Turnover happens, but unexplained turnover is different. Getting to the bottom of it while also trying to build a company is a tall order. Having someone like myself on hand, who has diagnosed issues like this before, you can rest easier knowing you’ll have a path forward in short order.

You Hired Great People, but They’re Not Delivering

You brought in impressive hires, people with strong resumes, great references, maybe a touch of big tech prestige. And yet, their impact feels flat. They’re smart, experienced, and somehow not moving the needle.

You tell yourself they’ll ramp up soon. Then months pass. They take initiative, but it’s on things that don’t matter. Or they wait for direction, but nothing they deliver surprises you in a good way.

You start to wonder if they’re not that good, or if you’re the one getting in their way. It’s hard to be objective when you’re a part of the equation. Luckily, I bring an outside perspective that will help you dig through the details and understand what’s going on.

You’re Constantly Surprised by Your Team

A major deadline with a high value customer approaches, and you’re shocked to learn no one has been working on it. Despite talking about this deal for weeks, no one has prioritized it.

When they do deliver product, it’s not what you expected. It’s missing key features or solves the wrong problem entirely. The team insists they built what was asked for. They’re not wrong, but they’re not right either.

After enough surprises, trust erodes. You try to get more involved in the day to day but it doesn’t help, it might even be making things worse. You’ve realized there are communication issues. You’ve tried to solve them by communicating more, but what you really need is to communicate better. I help teams at this juncture understand who is listening, who isn’t, and how their signals got crossed in the first place.

Your Last Engineering Leader Didn’t Work Out

You finally filled the role you’d been stretched to cover. For a moment, it felt like relief, someone to take the wheel so you could zoom back out.

But then it started to unravel. Maybe expectations didn’t line up. Maybe they were more focused on strategy and process when you needed someone to get things done. Maybe it just wasn’t a good fit.

Whatever the reason, you’re back where you started, only now the team’s uncertain and the problems you hoped to solve are still sitting there. You can feel momentum slipping again, and restarting the search from this spot feels heavier than before. This is where I step in, filling the hole left by your last leader and stabilizing the team, all while partnering with you to help restart the leadership search.

You’ve Got a Gut Feeling Something Isn’t Right

Everything on paper looks fine. The team’s growing. Product is getting shipped. The metrics aren’t disastrous. But something about it all feels off. You can’t quite articulate it, yet it’s keeping you up at night.

Maybe it’s a vibe. Maybe it’s communication. Or maybe it’s intuition, you just know this isn’t the company you set out to build. You don’t know what’s wrong, only that something is.

Trusting your instincts got you to where you are. Now is not the time to start ignoring them, but where do you go from here? I’m here to act as a sounding board, to dig into what’s driving this concern and help guide your intuition. Together we’ll get to the bottom of what’s going on and build a plan to address it.

Wrapping Up

These situations can be uncomfortable to name, but they’re part of building something real. They don’t mean you’ve messed up, they mean you’ve hit the limits of what the current setup can sustain.

If that sounds like where you are, let’s talk. A short conversation can help clarify what’s actually happening and what to do next.