The Collective
We are the engineers other engineers call when it cannot fail.
A closed group of principal engineers and CTOs taking a limited number of high-stakes builds each quarter. If the work is hard and the standard is non-negotiable, we should talk. If it isn't, we're probably not the right call.
01 — What we take on
01 — What we take on
Rescue & rearchitect
Your system is on fire. We've put out worse.
Legacy that nobody dares touch, a migration that stalled, a platform buckling under its own success. We go in, stabilise, and rearchitect without stopping the business.
Build 0 → 1
From whiteboard to production, with senior hands only.
New product, hard deadline, no room for a learning curve. We design the architecture and ship the first versions ourselves — no juniors practising on your runway.
Fractional CTO
Top-end technical leadership, without the full-time hire.
Strategy, hiring bar, architecture review, and the hard calls — from people who've held the CTO seat at scale. Embedded for as long as you need, gone the moment you don't.
App review
You shipped fast. Now you need the risks in plain sight.
A fixed-scope review for AI-built or fast-moving apps: architecture, security, reliability, product gaps, and the next technical decisions that actually matter.
02 — Selected work
Hard problems. Shipped.
Client names withheld. We'll walk you through the architecture and references under NDA.
03 — The seats on your build
No account managers. The people who build it.
Jonathan Koch
Fractional CTO · Technical Architect
STRATEGY · ARCHITECTURE · EXECUTION
A war-time CTO who still ships code — infrastructure to interface, strategy to execution. The seat you want when the call is hard and the standard can't move.
Daniel Amireh
Full-Stack Engineer · Ruby/Rails
RUBY · RAILS · DEVELOPER TOOLING
Full-stack Rails and the developer tooling around it — the plumbing that makes a team ship faster. Berlin-based, and the work is public.
Christian Rühringer
Systems & Web Engineer
TYPESCRIPT · C · SYSTEMS
From Linux drivers in C to a Quake engine in TypeScript — at home from the metal to the browser. The work is public; check the repos.
Principal Engineer · Security
CRYPTO · REGULATED DATA · AUDIT
Designs the trust boundary and the audit trail so the system clears review the first time, not the third. Built for the regulated case from day one.
Staff Engineer · Platform & Delivery
KUBERNETES · CI/CD · ZERO-DOWNTIME
Owns the path from commit to production: migrations that don't take the system down, releases you can reverse. The boring discipline that keeps the lights on.
Named members lead — the rest we share under NDA. Ask in the intake for the full CVs.
04 — How we operate
04 — How we operate
We don't publish testimonials we can't attribute. Get to a fit and we'll put you on a call with people we've shipped for — direct, under NDA.
05 — Request an engagement
We're selective — so this form is too.
This goes to a partner, not a sales inbox. If it's a fit, you'll hear back within 48 hours. If it isn't, we'll tell you straight.