Move your technology forward when the stakes are high.
I work alongside founders and technology leaders to get delivery back on track, control costs and navigate growth, investment or acquisition.
Whether you are a technical founder, an existing CTO or a CEO, I can be a trusted adviser and coach, take ownership of a difficult initiative, or step into a leadership role.
Discuss an engagement See how I can help
Tell me what you’re working through. We can explore whether there’s a fit and discuss scope and timing.
Current engagements
- Fractional CTO at Deepnote Helping move Deepnote from a data science platform to an agentic AI workspace: AI-native engineering standards, enterprise delivery and more than 100 merged pull requests. Substantial savings in server infrastructure and AI token costs while usage kept growing.
- Fractional CTO at AdsDroid and Adigy.ai The changes I drove in my first couple of months roughly halved the AWS bill. Since then I have helped hire developers, raised the team’s technical standards, and shipped a large core feature that had been stalling for months.
Previously
- CTO at Remo Through hypergrowth and contraction, advising the CEO on an exit strategy, completed shortly after I left when Events.com acquired Remo’s key assets. Infrastructure and vendor spend cut by more than 80% over 14 months, normalised for user-hours in events.
- BBC News and World Service Directly led dozens of engineers across several teams for services reaching hundreds of millions of people, and served on the BBC’s internal TED (Technology, Engineering and Design) board, one of approximately 12–15 members overseeing digital standards and strategy across the CTPO’s department.
- Interim CTO at Festicket Took over from the founding CTO and scaled the team from 3 to 17 through more than 1,000% company revenue growth.
Read the case studies, including the context behind the results.
What do you need help with?
A consequential decision, delivery that keeps slipping, or an investment you need to understand. Start with what you are working through; we can agree the role from there.
Explore support for founders, AI in engineering and products, and security and compliance, or see all the ways I can help.
Already have a CTO? Good.
I work alongside existing CTOs and engineering leaders as a trusted peer, and take on fractional or interim leadership when it is needed.
The remit and reporting line are agreed with your CTO first, and they stay in charge of technology. I support their decisions with the board and the team rather than going around them, and I leave them stronger, not replaced. Coaching and supporting CTOs.
Experience and judgement
Figures describe the organisations and teams I led. Read the case studies for the context behind each result.
| Organisation | What changed |
|---|---|
| DeepnoteFractional CTO. YC-backed, $23.5M raised | Contributing to the shift from a data science platform to an agentic AI workspace: AI-native engineering standards, enterprise delivery and more than 100 merged pull requests. Substantial savings delivered in server infrastructure and AI token costs, while usage kept growing. |
| RemoCTO, 2021 to 2024. Events and remote-office SaaS | Led a 24/7 engineering organisation spanning GMT−8 to GMT+8 through pandemic hypergrowth and contraction, and advised the CEO on an exit strategy, completed when Events.com acquired Remo’s key assets. Cut infrastructure and vendor spend by more than 80% over 14 months, normalised for user-hours in events. Held approximately 99.99% uptime during event hours, with recovery from live-event failures in less than two minutes, and achieved SOC 2 and ISO 27001. |
| BBCSenior Engineering Manager, 2017 to 2021. News and World Service | Directly led dozens of engineers across several teams for BBC News and World Service, which reach an audience of 400 million people, sharing a £9M budget as part of a leadership trio. Moved a PHP monolith from on-premises servers to AWS, holding BBC News uptime above 99.99%, and rolled out HTTPS and a Tor mirror for audiences under censorship. |
| FesticketInterim CTO, 2015 to 2017. Sixth in the 2017 Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100 | Took over technical leadership from the founding CTO, scaled the team from 3 to 17 through Series B and C, and reengineered the platform to support substantial increases in concurrent demand during a period of more than 1,000% company revenue growth. |
In their words
From people I worked for and people I led: the founders of Deepnote, AdsDroid and Adigy.ai, the co-founder and CEO who hired me at Remo, a co-founder of Festicket, the head of product for BBC News, World Service and Weather, engineers in my teams, and a partner from my own events business.
James has been Deepnote's fractional CTO for the past year, and I'd hire him again tomorrow.
Read the full recommendation
James has been Deepnote's fractional CTO for the past year, and I'd hire him again tomorrow.
The obvious thing to say about a fractional CTO is that you get senior engineering leadership without a full-time salary. That's true, but it undersells what James actually does. The work I value most from him isn't technical at all. He's been in our board conversations as a genuine participant, not a technical presenter, and he's just as comfortable talking about margins, pricing and where the business should go as he is about architecture. He's shaped our product direction as much as our engineering, and he has a good instinct for which parts of the roadmap deserve the team's time and which don't.
On the engineering side, he can go as deep as the problem needs, whether that's infrastructure, cutting cloud costs, optimizing token costs, security, or the guts of how our product runs. He ran hiring end to end and raised the bar, restructured the team in a day when we lost someone, and made us genuinely AI-native in how we build. The result is a small team that ships far more than its size suggests. He also prototypes things himself before asking anyone else to commit to them, which saves more arguments than I can count.
If you're a founder or CEO who needs someone who can sit in the board meeting, run the engineering org, and tell you the thing you don't want to hear, that's James.
Within his first couple of months, James identified and drove changes that roughly halved our AWS bill. The annual saving alone effectively paid for a full year of his involvement with us.
Read the full recommendation
James has brought an enormous amount of value to our business since joining us as CTO.
He combines very deep technical expertise with something I think is much rarer: a constant focus on the commercial outcome. He is very good at stepping out of the developer mindset and asking, “Does this actually matter to the end user?” That has had a real impact on how we prioritise, build and make technical decisions.
The results have also been extremely tangible. Within his first couple of months, James identified and drove changes that roughly halved our AWS bill. The annual saving alone effectively paid for a full year of his involvement with us.
He has also made a major difference to our engineering team. He has helped us hire developers, raised our technical standards, and isn't afraid to get directly involved when something important needs to be shipped. One particularly large core feature had been causing difficulties for months; James stepped in and completed the majority of the work within about three days.
What I value most is that he operates as a CTO rather than simply a very senior developer. He can go extremely deep technically when required, but always connects technology back to customers, speed, cost and the wider objectives of the business.
I would highly recommend James to any founder who needs serious technical leadership rather than just technical advice.
If you were lucky enough to get someone who is technically amazing, amazing at project management, and has business sense, then I would say that you just met a unicorn. In my experience, James is a unicorn. … He is someone that I would hire and work with again in a heartbeat.
He played a very important role in the technical and product roadmap and scaling of the company’s long-standing technical product into a more viable and modern platform.
… a skilled and wickedly smart technical leader who thinks broadly and systemically about the multiple challenges his own teams and wider groups face. … He has played a crucial part of the journey of BBC News engineering over the last few years - driving a complete overhaul of the department’s technical strategy in response to really tough deadlines and cloud migrations, improving security practices, hiring and developing wonderful teams across the UK …
It’s ironic but very often you have to manage your manager more than they manage you. With James this was never the case. He enables the team to do their best work.
James is easily amongst the objectively best leaders I’ve worked with. … it didn’t take long for me to find myself with a deep respect and appreciation for his insight.
… He managed my expectations and ensured that what was delivered fitted into and enhanced our strategic direction. He is a clear communicator who can articulate complex issues in plain English.
More recommendations on LinkedIn (opens in new window)
In my own words: Hiring engineers as a non-technical founder (opens in new window), written by me and published by Digital Reference.
How I work alongside people and teams
Within one relationship I might advise the board, coach a leader and help engineers change how work gets done. These often overlap.
- Improving delivery and developer experience
- CI/CD, fast feedback loops and sound engineering practices, and removing the friction that stops good people doing good work.
- Coaching across the organisation
- Founder-to-founder and CEO-to-CEO conversations, supporting CTOs and heads of engineering, and working directly with engineers.
- Making analytics central to observability
- Starting from what customers experience and what the business needs to know, then working back to the product signals, instrumentation, reliability, testing and delivery practices that support them.
- Connecting decisions with the work
- Turning board and leadership decisions into plans, team changes and engineering practice, and following them through.
Quality and observability, from the outcome backwards
Observability is more than infrastructure dashboards, and quality is more than test coverage. Product analytics and operational evidence should shape priorities and decisions.
Define a good outcome
What good looks like for customers and for the business, in plain terms.
Decide how we will know
The product analytics and operational evidence that show whether it is happening.
Work backwards
Improve the product, systems and engineering practices that move that evidence, and let it set priorities.
Calm in messy phases
Scaling, contraction and leadership changes are rarely tidy. I bring steady leadership when the pressure is highest.
Trust first
I build high-trust relationships with founders and technology leaders, and I tell you plainly what I see, including when I am not the right person.
Commercial judgement
Every technology decision is a business decision. I connect engineering choices to customers, cost, risk and the next stage of the company.
Leaving you stronger
Lean, repeatable practices and leaders of your own, so the organisation keeps improving after I step back.
How we start
We start with a focused look at what you’re trying to achieve, what’s getting in the way, and how I could help. From there, we agree whether there’s a useful role for me and what it should involve.
- Understanding the business and what you are trying to achieve
- Meeting the people who matter to the work
- Looking at enough evidence to see where I could be useful
- Deciding together whether an ongoing role makes sense, and what it should be
Questions
For longer answers on technology leadership, delivery, costs and AI, see all 25 answers.
What does James Hobbs do?
James Hobbs is a technology executive, founder and trusted adviser based in London. He coaches CTOs and heads of engineering, gives investors independent technical due diligence, partners with founders on consequential technology decisions, and leads companies through growth, transitions and acquisitions, including as a fractional or interim CTO.
Do you work with companies that already have a CTO?
Yes. Much of my work is alongside an existing CTO: as a trusted peer, as additional leadership capacity, or by taking ownership of one difficult initiative. The remit is agreed with them first, and they stay in charge of technology.
Do you coach CTOs and heads of engineering?
Yes. I routinely coach and mentor founding CTOs, established CTOs and heads of engineering, through new roles, growth, board conversations and difficult decisions.
Can you help with board and investor conversations?
Yes. I help founders and CTOs prepare for board meetings, investor questions and due diligence, and I give investors independent technical due diligence before they invest or acquire. I have advised and presented to boards, and since as early as 2009 I have pitched to the boards and investors of publicly listed companies. None of this is a statutory appointment as a director.
How do we start?
We start with a focused look at what you’re trying to achieve, what’s getting in the way, and how I could help. From there, we agree whether there’s a useful role for me and what it should involve.
How are fees agreed?
Privately. Scope, fees and timing depend on what you need, so we agree them once we both understand the situation.
Where do you work?
I am based in London and work remotely with clients globally, occasionally on site where it helps.