Former CTO building high-availability systems and engineering teams for AI-first startups.
I provide the technical maturity of a seasoned CTO without the executive overhead — specializing in distributed systems, AI integration, and engineering leadership for founders and small teams.
Engagement models for growth-stage teams
Fractional CTO
Strategic technical leadership, hiring roadmaps, and architecture oversight for seed to Series B founders.
Architecture Audit
End-to-end review of your stack, infrastructure, and engineering practices with a prioritized remediation plan.
AI Integration Sprint
Ship a production-grade LLM or RAG feature in weeks — built on your stack, owned by your team.
Career trajectory
- 2022 — Present
Clear Glass Consulting
Founder & Principal Engineer
Independent consulting practice serving AI startups and growth-stage tech companies.
- Vetted Toptal expert and Equal Experts consultant
- Founded RecipeBranch, an AI-native recipe app
- Engagements span fractional CTO, architecture audits, and senior execution sprints
ConsultingAIFractional CTO - 2018 — 2022
Philosophie
Chief Technology Officer
Led engineering at an innovation lab through scale and a successful acquisition.
- Scaled engineering org to 45+ engineers
- Established hiring, delivery, and architecture standards
- Led technical workstream through acquisition
CTOInnovationM&A - 2016 — 2018
SiriusXM
Senior Software Engineer
Built large-scale streaming and personalization systems.
- High-throughput backend systems for connected devices
- Cross-team architectural design
StreamingScaleBackend
"Steve was instrumental in auditing our core services. His seniority meant he could dive into the weeds while keeping the executive roadmap in focus."
James Dalton
Founder & CEO, QuantAI
Ready to harden your stack?
Currently accepting strategic advisory and deep-technical projects.