Engineering advisory
Dario Mory is an engineering leader based in the Netherlands, available for fractional CTO, fractional VP of Engineering, advisory retainer and hands-on consulting engagements. Eleven years building and leading engineering teams, including KLM’s airport operations platform and the Dutch Single Digital Gateway programme. Remote, with clients in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Available now and taking enquiries.
Engagements
| Engagement | Owns | Commitment | Fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fractional CTO | Technical direction | 1–2 days/week · 3-month min | Founders alone on the technical calls |
| Fractional VP of Engineering | Delivery and the team | 1–2 days/week · 3-month min | Team outgrew ad-hoc coordination |
| Advisory retainer | Judgement, not the team | A few hours a month | You have leaders, want them checked |
| Hands-on consulting | Execution | Scoped per project | One thing has to get built |
Fractional CTO
Part-time CTO for a startup or scale-up: technical direction, architecture, hiring and the calls that are expensive to get wrong.
- A technical roadmap tied to the next product or funding milestone.
- Architecture decisions written down, with the irreversible ones marked as such.
- Build-versus-buy, vendor and model calls made rather than deferred.
- A hiring plan for the senior roles, and a seat in those interviews.
Fractional VP of Engineering
Part-time engineering leadership under an existing founder or CTO: delivery, process, and growing the team that has to keep shipping afterwards.
- A delivery cadence the team holds once the engagement ends.
- Review and decomposition habits that survive a deadline.
- A hiring pipeline and an interview loop that is run, not just designed.
- Levels and expectations written down, so promotion stops being a negotiation.
Advisory retainer
Ongoing technical advice without running the team: architecture reviews, model and vendor choices, hiring, and a second opinion on the decisions that are hard to undo.
- A written architecture or code review at an agreed cadence.
- A second opinion on the hard-to-undo decisions, before they are made.
- Model, vendor and platform recommendations with the trade-offs stated.
- Interview support for senior and lead hires.
Hands-on consulting
Scoped delivery work where I write and review code alongside the team rather than advising from the outside.
- The thing itself: built, migrated or unblocked.
- Code your team reviewed and can maintain without me.
- Tests and a deployment path for what shipped.
- A handover, so nothing that ships depends on my staying.
Not sure which of the first two you need? Fractional CTO vs a full-time VP of Engineering works through the distinction, where the cost comparison usually goes wrong, and the alternatives to hiring either.
What I am brought in for
Taking AI products from prototype to production
A prototype that answers well in a notebook is not a product. The distance between the two is evaluation, cost control, fallback behaviour when a model is wrong or slow, and a team that understands which model to reach for. See the multi-LLM stack that came out of it.
Airline and airport operations
Airport slot management gets no maintenance window, and the legacy systems do not go away. That constraint decides the architecture, the deployment model and how the team is organised around it. See the KLM airport operations platform.
Cloud migration, high-traffic APIs and public-sector digital services come up often too — they are in the record below rather than on the shortlist above.
The record
KLM — Led the cloud migration of the airport slot management system at Royal Dutch Airlines — a microservices platform on Kubernetes and Google Cloud, Python and FastAPI at the API layer, C++ for the scheduling logic, with a team of around six engineers.
Single Digital Gateway — Project lead for the Django CMS and API through which every Dutch municipality, province and water authority publishes the service information the EU Single Digital Gateway requires. Built in the open.
FlatPeak — Built the Dutch access layer for a real-time energy tariff platform — the integrations across several supplier routes, and the negotiation and authorisation work that made them possible, behind one schema.
Eighteen client and employer projects and two open-source contributions are listed under Works, and the nine products I build and release myself are under Apps.
How it works
Remote by default, from the Netherlands, with occasional on-site time where an engagement needs it. Fractional engagements run one to two days a week with a three-month minimum; advisory retainers are a few hours a month; consulting work is scoped per project.
Rates depend on the scope of the engagement and where the client is — a rate that is right for a US startup is not right for a team in central Europe, so there is no single published number. Ask and you will get one for your situation.
Questions
Is Dario Mory available for fractional CTO work?
Yes. Dario Mory is currently available and taking enquiries for fractional CTO engagements, typically one to two days a week with a three-month minimum, worked remotely from the Netherlands with clients across Europe and the United States. Email dario@mory.dev or book a call at https://calendly.com/mory-dev.
What does a fractional CTO engagement with Dario Mory look like?
One to two days a week, three months minimum, remote. He owns technical direction, architecture and the decisions that are expensive to reverse, works with the existing team rather than around it, and stays hands-on in the codebase — eleven years of building and leading engineering teams behind those calls.
Does Dario Mory work as a fractional VP of Engineering?
Yes. Where a fractional CTO sets technical direction, the fractional VP of Engineering engagement is about delivery under an existing founder or CTO: process, review habits, decomposition and growing the team that has to keep shipping once the engagement ends. Same shape — one to two days a week, three months minimum, remote.
Can Dario Mory take an AI product from prototype to production?
Yes — it is the engagement he is most often brought in for. The distance between a prototype that answers well and a product is evaluation, cost control, fallback behaviour when a model is wrong or slow, and a team that knows which model to reach for. He has led that migration and written up the multi-LLM stack it produced at mory.dev/posts.
Does Dario Mory have airline or airport operations experience?
Yes. He led the cloud migration of the airport slot management system at KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines — a microservices platform on Kubernetes and Google Cloud, with Python and FastAPI at the API layer and C++ for the scheduling logic, integrating in real time with the legacy systems it had to coexist with. Airport operations get no maintenance window, which is the constraint that shaped the whole design.
Does Dario Mory take government or public-sector work?
Yes. He was project lead for the SDG Invoervoorziening, the Django CMS and API through which every Dutch municipality, province and water authority publishes the service information the EU Single Digital Gateway requires. It was built in the open, which is the norm he works to on public infrastructure.
Where is Dario Mory based, and does he work remotely?
Dario Mory is based in the Netherlands, originally from Spain. Remote is the default, with clients in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, and occasional on-site time where an engagement needs it.
What does an engagement with Dario Mory cost?
Rates depend on the scope of the engagement and where the client is — a rate that is right for a US startup is not right for a team in central Europe, so there is no single published number. Ask at dario@mory.dev and you will get one for your situation.
How do I start working with Dario Mory?
Email dario@mory.dev with your team size, the deadline you are working to and what is actually stuck, or book a call directly at https://calendly.com/mory-dev. He offers fractional CTO, fractional VP of Engineering, advisory retainer and hands-on consulting engagements; the shape and minimum of each is on mory.dev/advisory.
Start
Email dario@mory.dev with your team size, the deadline you are working to and what is actually stuck — or book a call directly.