Fractional Director of Engineering
Your CTO sets the direction.
Nobody’s building the road.
I’m Brooks. I step into growing tech companies as a fractional Director of Engineering — the layer that turns strategy into shipped work. Real support for your managers, teams that stop waiting on answers, and delivery that stops being a guessing game.
- 30 minutes, just talking shop
- I won’t sell you anything
- Leave with something to try, either way
The director gap
Six signs the director seat is empty.
If you nodded at more than one of these, we should probably talk.
Your best engineer said yes to managing. Nobody taught them how — so you’re losing a great engineer and gaining a stressed manager.
Every team plans its own way. Sprints here, kanban there, vibes over there — and nothing lands at the same time.
Your CTO’s week is 1:1s and status meetings. Architecture and strategy happen at 10pm, if at all.
Dates are wishes. When someone asks “when will it ship?”, the honest answer is a shrug.
Hiring and onboarding are improvised. Every new engineer gets a different first month, and it shows in their first year.
Retros produce sticky notes, not change. The fix everyone agreed on in April is a ticket again in June.
Plenty of consultants will tell you what’s wrong and wish you luck. I do the director job alongside your team — then hand it to one of your own people.
What I actually do
The director seat is really three jobs. Here’s how I cover them.
Job one
I grow your managers
I’ve spent years teaching engineers — at a code school, live on Twitch, and through my own courses. Coaching managers is teaching: real 1:1s, honest feedback, and a path from “promoted on a Friday” to leading with confidence.
Works with brand-new managers and accidental ones alike.
Job two
I make delivery boring
Boring is the goal. A steady planning cadence, work that’s sized honestly, and releases that land when we said they would. Surprises belong in demos, not deadlines.
One cadence across teams, so the whole org ships together.
Job three
I connect strategy to the ground
A roadmap only matters if teams can act on it. I translate your CTO’s direction into team-sized goals — and carry what the teams learn back up, so strategy stays honest.
Your CTO gets their calendar back. Your teams get clarity.
My goal is to make myself unnecessary. Every embedded engagement includes preparing one of your own people to take the seat.
Engagements
The diagnostic comes first. Continue only if those two weeks prove useful.
Everything I do starts the same way: two weeks, fixed scope, and a report you can use whether or not I ever come back. What happens after that is up to you.
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Engineering Org Diagnostic
$X,XXX one price · two weeks
I interview your managers and teams, then trace how work actually flows from idea to production. You get a plain-English read on your org’s health, plus your next 90 days ranked by what will help most. Useful on its own, even if we stop here.
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Embedded Fractional Director
$XX,XXX/mo 1–2 days a week · monthly
I run your management layer: manager 1:1s and coaching, the planning cadence, and ownership of delivery. We work the 90-day plan together, in the rooms where the work actually happens.
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Manager Coaching Retainer
$X,XXX/mo ongoing · lighter touch
After the embedded work, I keep coaching your managers: recurring sessions, async support between them, and a quarterly org-health check so nothing quietly slides back.
Hiring a full-time Director of Engineering means a $200K+ salary, a months-long search, and a year before you know if it worked. Two weeks with me tells you what the seat needs to fix — and whether you even need the full-time hire yet.
photo coming soon
About Brooks
I’ve spent my career growing engineers. Managers are engineers too.
I taught at a code school for years. My favorite week was one I called “courage time” — students had to build something in a language they’d never touched. The lesson stuck with me: people grow fastest when someone hands them a real challenge and stays close while they work through it.
That’s still my job. I teach live on Twitch and YouTube as Brooks Builds, I run my own course platform, and I’ve led engineering teams for years. A director’s real work is the same work: hand your managers real challenges, stay close, and grow them into leaders your org can rely on.
Need CTO-level strategy too? I partner with Dustin at UpShift HQ — between us, your whole leadership layer is covered.
- Years teaching engineers, in classrooms and live on stream
- Engineering leadership across startups and growing teams
- Builds your next director from inside your team
Ready when you are
One call. Nothing to sell you. See if the fit is real.
Book 30 minutes with me. We’ll pull up your org chart and dig into the project that’s been stuck the longest.
- No prep required — just show up
- Plain answers about your org, not a demo
- You keep the advice, whether or not we work together