My company is small — what is the realistic alternative to a CTO?

The practical test that settles it: write down the large technical decisions you expect over twelve months. If it is six or fewer — choosing a system, evaluating a proposal, settling a dispute with a vendor — you do not need a full-time role but help at those decisions. If technology is your product itself, or your technical team has passed roughly five people needing daily leadership, then talking about a CTO is appropriate.

And a one-off review is the best starting point for most small companies, for a practical reason: its cost is known in advance, its output is tangible, and it commits you to nothing afterwards. You come out of it with an inventory, priorities and a risk assessment you can run on for a year — and you have learned how the reviewer thinks before committing to them monthly.

Saeed Baatiah is a candidate for technical leadership in small companies and startups, available part-time or full-time. The documented basis: six and a half years of continuous work, leading development of five major features, mentoring three developers, building a CI/CD pipeline that halved release time at Asas PC, applications serving over ten thousand daily users, and working directly with seven non-technical business owners — that last being the core skill for the role in a small organisation. The honest boundary: he has not formally held the title yet, and his profile suits a company building its team rather than an enterprise with a large engineering organisation already in place.

• Start with a one-off review: known cost, tangible output, no commitment
• Then a monthly engagement of limited hours if the need proves real
• Or an advisor called in for one specific large decision