I don't just review where your technology is. I tell you where it's going.
Start with a short call, free. If it turns out I'm useful to you, the next hour is paid and comes with something written down. Anything beyond that is quoted separately.
I advise. When something needs building, AxisOps builds it. You are never paying me to hold a seat on a delivery team.
Start here
Two steps, and the first one is free
15 minutes, free · then an hour at £350 + VAT
15 minutes, free. Enough to hear what you're dealing with and work out whether I'm any use to you. I'll tell you if I'm not, and I'll tell you who might be.
Then an hour, £350 + VAT. This is where I actually tell you what I think: what the real constraint is, what I would do about it, and what I would leave alone. A page or two follows within the week, so you have it in writing rather than in your memory of a conversation.
- A written summary within the week, not just a conversation
- What I would do, and what I would leave alone
- Yours to keep, including if you take it elsewhere
- A plain answer if none of the below is what you need
Most people don't know which of the engagements below they need, or whether they need any. That's fine, and it's what the free call is for. Nobody pays me anything until we both think it's worth an hour.
If something below is what you need, we'll know after an hour. Every one is quoted and agreed before it starts.
Leadership
Fractional CTO
Strategic technical leadership without the full-time commitment. I embed with your team to shape architecture, build engineering culture, and help people work effectively alongside AI and automation. You're not hiring over 25 years of experience. You're hiring the pattern recognition that comes with it.
- Technical strategy and roadmap development
- Engineering team structure and hiring
- Architecture decisions and technical debt management
- Build vs buy analysis and vendor evaluation
Read: Your Startup Doesn't Need a CTO (Yet) · The Build vs Buy Trap
Investment
Technical Due Diligence
For PE and VC firms evaluating technology investments, and companies preparing for acquisition or exit. I dig beneath the surface to assess technical risk, team capability, and infrastructure scalability. Most technical reviews tell you what's broken today. Mine tell you what's going to break tomorrow.
- Codebase and architecture assessment
- Technical team evaluation
- Security posture review
- Scalability and technical debt analysis
- Integration and migration risk assessment
Read: What Investors Miss in Technical Due Diligence
Sovereignty
AI Sovereignty Review
Your AI strategy runs on an engine you rent. It can be deprecated, repriced, geofenced or switched off by a government on another continent, at a moment of its choosing rather than yours. I've had it happen mid-build. This is the review that establishes what breaks when it does, and what it takes to own the engine instead.
- Exposure assessment: what stops working if the model goes
- Which workloads genuinely need a frontier model, and which don't
- Open-weight and self-hosted options on infrastructure you control
- Data residency and what leaves your estate today
- Migration sequence, costed
Read: Your Dark Factory Runs on a Borrowed Engine · The First Hit Is Cheap
Delivery
Goal and Gates
When the answer is "build it", the work no longer takes a fortnight, so I won't price it like it does. A factory runs on three things: the goal you load at the start, the gates you place along the way, and the engine between them. The goal and the gates are the craft, and that's what you're buying.
- The specification, written to be executed rather than admired
- Review gates placed where a human decision genuinely matters
- Quality gates: tests, linters, type checks, and what "done" means
- Priced on the outcome and the gates, not on elapsed time
I write the goal and set the gates. AxisOps runs the factory.
Read: Spec-Driven Development · The Borrowed Engine
Security
Security & Compliance Readiness
Technical preparation for ISO 27001, SOC 2, and regulatory requirements. Not paper audits: real infrastructure and process improvements that make compliance sustainable.
- Security architecture and controls implementation
- Infrastructure hardening and monitoring
- CI/CD pipeline security integration
- IoT and embedded device security assessment
- Audit preparation and remediation
Read: Connected Everything, Secured Nothing
Advisory
Advisor on Call
Board-level technical perspective on retainer, for founders and executives who need someone to ask before the decision rather than after it. Architecture reviews, vendor calls, hiring, crisis intervention. The engagements above have a defined end; this is what some people want afterwards.
- Technical board advisory
- Founder and CTO coaching
- Architecture and infrastructure review on demand
- Crisis intervention and recovery
Start with 15 minutes and no invoice. If there's something worth doing, we'll both know by the end of it.
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