I make the technical calls founders can't afford to get wrong.
A senior technical hand for early-stage teams — architecture, AI, and delivery. The judgment you bring in before the expensive decision, not after it.
I shipped my first paid project at 14 — an online insurance auction, built in PHP, of genuinely terrible quality. It was, in hindsight, a startup. I've been building them ever since.
Ihor Klymchuk
Over the last 12 years I've grown from engineer to CTO - leading distributed teams from a handful of people to 150+ engineers, and learning, usually the expensive way, what makes technical decisions hold up under real commercial pressure. That foundation came from high-traffic commerce and SaaS; today I bring it to founders who need senior judgment without a full-time hire.
I'm a hands-on leader, not a slide-deck one. Deep in PHP, JavaScript/TypeScript and Python, with strong ownership of architecture, cloud, and CI/CD. Lately my focus is production-ready AI - multi-agent systems and real automation - with a pragmatic, no-hype approach. I build with these tools daily, which is the only way to advise on them honestly.
I work best with founders and small teams making decisions that are hard to undo: what to build, how to architect it, who to hire, where AI actually helps. I come in for focused engagements, do the work, and leave you stronger.
Not a list of skills — a record of what I've built and owned.
Each area below is something I've held end to end across teams and projects. Pick one to see the specifics.
Embedding AI into how teams design, decide, and ship — not as a demo, as the process.
Built a company-wide AI assistant for resource and project management.
Wired AI agents into the dev lifecycle — an automated changelog validator and CV screener among them.
Stood up a dedicated AI agent team that carries work from idea to delivery.
Ran a continuous internal AI education program so adoption actually stuck.
Defined a high-quality AI development process — disciplined delivery, not vibe-coding.
Agent systems and retrieval that hold up against real, messy problems.
Designed agent systems that resolve complex tasks across many third-party services.
Researched and delivered production RAG systems.
Run continuous research on emerging AI approaches, models, and tooling.
The structural calls that decide whether the next two years are cheap or expensive.
Partnered with architects to define the company's system-design process.
Led system design for large enterprise and B2B platforms.
Built a reusable internal package library to accelerate future projects.
Drove migrations off legacy systems.
Making a roadmap mean something — predictable, documented, on time.
Introduced clean technical delivery processes and standards.
Established a clear technical delivery roadmap.
Instilled estimation discipline across teams.
Made documentation a first-class deliverable, not an afterthought.
From one department to four — and from 20 engineers to 150+ without losing the bar.
Scaled the engineering org from 20 to 150+ engineers — which meant rebuilding the processes underneath it.
Managed distributed, multi-timezone teams.
Designed a clear team hierarchy and progression.
Founded a Junior Academy, ran conferences, and shipped an internal EdTech platform.
Grew a single department into four technology departments.
Standards and gates that keep quality from eroding as a team grows fast.
Set company-wide development standards per technology stack.
Implemented gates that block code smells from reaching the repo.
Established cross-team code review processes.
Integrated third-party code-quality tooling and AI-assisted review.
Infrastructure that takes humans out of the slow, risky parts of delivery.
Built clean CI/CD pipelines.
Expanded internal tooling infrastructure to speed up project delivery.
Created tools to monitor delivery health across projects.
Built an internal resource-management system.
Sensible, audited security baked into both how we work and what we ship.
DB anonymization, role-based access, and regular internal audits.
Security monitoring and reporting across delivered products.
Defined a security incident response process.
The numbers I run engineering against — so improvement is visible, not asserted.
Estimation accuracy, bug rate, and predictability.
Skill growth, internal promotion rate, time-to-onboard, and team satisfaction.
Core Web Vitals and load time, plus error rates in production.
Helping shape the right technical answer before a single line is committed.
Built a clean pre-sale process — standardized templates and flow.
Led discovery and R&D for prospective engagements.
Joined pre-sale calls to find the optimal technical solution with the client.
The tools I reach for, by domain.
A working subset — chosen for the job in front of me, not for the résumé.
A small part of my everyday stack — the foundation under almost everything I build.
Agent systems built to be grounded — engineered against hallucination, not around it.
My team delivered 100+ projects, including well-known enterprise & B2B builds.
SaaS products, open source, and B2C apps — from food delivery to ticketing.
Three ways founders bring me in.
Pick the seat that fits where you are. Each is the offer in plain terms — what you actually get.
Startup technical advisor
A senior technical brain on retainer for the decisions too important to guess on.
A comprehensive audit of your architecture and the decisions behind it.
Pressure-testing the technical roadmap against what the business actually needs.
When to build, when to buy, and what each really costs you long-term.
An independent technical read for fundraises, acquisitions, or partnerships.
Defining the role, screening candidates, and getting the first hire right.
AI process engineering
Make AI move the needle inside your business — not just inside your demos.
Mapping where AI removes real work — and where it just adds noise.
Grounded, multi-agent systems engineered to hold up in production.
AI-powered tools that take humans out of the slow, repetitive parts.
A rollout your team actually uses, not a demo that gathers dust.
Fractional CTO
I hold the technical seat so you can keep building the business.
Holding the technical seat — hiring, mentoring, and setting the bar.
Predictable delivery built on standards, estimation, and a real roadmap.
Long-range technical direction aligned with where the business is heading.
Translating engineering into the language investors and boards trust.
I'm taking on a small number of free technical audits — an honest, written read on your architecture, team, and risks. No pitch attached. Selective by design.
If there's a decision in front of you, let's talk.
No pressure and no pitch. Book a short call or send a note — whichever's easier. Worst case, you get a second opinion worth having.
- Email ihorklymchuk.dev@gmail.com
- LinkedIn /in/ihor-klymchuk
- GitHub @ihor-klymchuk