Mike Atherton

Fractional technical leadership and process improvement

Technical leadership for teams moving fast with AI.

I work with founders, AI-native startups, and expert teams that need sharper engineering judgment, better decisions, and a stronger technical culture, cleaner internal processes, and a way to fix ugly workflows without adding full-time senior overhead too early.

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AI engineering guardrails Fractional technical lead Workflow and platform rescue Process improvement ADRs, policies, and operating standards

Best suited to teams that need senior technical judgment, direct execution, and practical process improvement without the delay or cost of hiring too early.

Why teams bring me in

The code is moving. The system underneath it is not.

AI has changed the speed of execution, but it has also made it easier for teams to ship noise, drift away from sensible standards, weaken focus, break internal process quality, and hide poor technical decisions behind apparent velocity.

I am most useful when a team is building quickly, expectations are rising, and the gap between output, judgment, and operating discipline is starting to cost money.

The codebase is moving faster than the architecture.
Important decisions are being made without clear ADRs or ownership.
Critical platform work keeps stalling or getting reworked.
Policies, procedures, and operating standards are too loose for the stage you are at.
Junior engineers are shipping too freely with AI.
The team needs a stronger engineering culture, not just more output.

Services

Three concrete offers.

These are designed for small teams that need direct senior help quickly, without a long consulting process or vague transformation programme.

Ask about an audit Discuss your situation
01

AI engineering guardrails

For teams moving quickly with AI-assisted engineering and starting to feel quality drift, weak review discipline, unclear decisions, or architecture debt building underneath apparent speed.

What you get

Standards, review bar, codebase risk audit, AI usage rules, ADRs, delivery workflow changes, and hands-on intervention where the hard technical work needs owning.

Outcome: clearer engineering standards, less AI-generated noise, and a team that can move faster without losing quality.

Typical engagement

2-week audit, £2k-5k.

02

Fractional technical lead

For founders and small teams that need senior technical leadership, cleaner direction, stronger focus, and somebody who can translate business pressure into solid implementation and operating decisions.

What you get

Roadmaps, architecture, team guidance, decision records, hiring support, prioritization, critical-path delivery, and direct ownership of the technical problems nobody else is fully carrying.

Outcome: cleaner decisions, better focus, stronger leadership coverage, and fewer expensive technical mistakes.

Typical engagement

Monthly retainer, £2k-6k per month.

03

Workflow and platform rescue

For expert businesses and product teams with a painful internal workflow, broken platform area, messy process, or recurring systems problem that is wasting time, eroding focus, and creating avoidable friction.

What you get

Internal tools, system cleanup, automation, process hardening, policies, procedures, runbooks, delivery rescue, and practical technical execution with AI as leverage rather than theatre.

Outcome: a painful technical workflow becomes stable, usable, and much less dependent on heroics.

Typical engagement

Scoped project or short retainer, from £2k.

Approach

Senior technical judgment, applied directly.

01

I work close to the real failure mode.

Not abstract strategy. Not vague advisory. I focus on the part of the system where quality is actually leaking, delivery is actually slowing down, decisions are getting made badly, or technical choices are starting to get expensive.

02

I improve focus, not just velocity.

Speed on its own is cheap. I care more about whether the team is working on the right things, with clear ownership, sensible tradeoffs, and enough structure to move without thrashing.

03

I care about the culture underneath the code.

Strong engineering culture is rarely loud. It shows up in how people review work, write things down, make decisions, support each other, and keep standards high without becoming rigid or unfriendly.

04

I leave teams with a stronger operating system.

That can mean ADRs, policies, procedures, risk registers, runbooks, review standards, or clearer ownership. The goal is not just to fix one issue, but to raise the baseline.

Proof

Selected recommendations and relevant experience.

Strong recommendations matter because they show how people experience working with me in practice: technical depth, judgment, focus, and the ability to deliver cleanly.

LinkedIn recommendation

Alexander Marks

Engineering & Platform Leader | Cloud-Native Systems, Data & AI

“As a Full Stack Product Engineer, Mike brought a rare balance of exceptional technical capability and genuine product thinking. He consistently approached problems with an understanding of both the user experience and the underlying engineering trade-offs, resulting in well-rounded, impactful outcomes.”

“Mike was dependable across the full stack, able to move seamlessly between frontend, backend, and product considerations. He engaged thoughtfully with requirements, challenged assumptions when needed, and maintained a clear focus on delivering value rather than just shipping code.”

LinkedIn recommendation

Jack Bramhall

Deputy Director | Service Management | Operations & Reliability

“Mike has a huge amount of technical knowledge and an amazing ability to understand requirements paired with a solid grounding in understanding business challenges.”

“He began immediate design and implementation soon after starting with us and his work is of extremely high standard and most importantly built to last. I would recommend Mike to anyone and would not hesitate to work with him again.”

Relevant experience

Recent experience

SOC 2 readiness

Policies, procedures, controls, and the practical operating discipline needed to make them real.

Operational hardening

Runbooks, risk registers, ownership clarity, and stronger standards around delivery and reliability.

Engineering culture improvements

Higher standards, clearer feedback loops, and a friendlier culture that still keeps the bar high.

Agentic development workflows

Using AI productively without letting velocity outrun judgment, ownership, or code quality.

Monorepo consolidation

Bringing fragmented code and tooling into a cleaner, more manageable engineering base.

Deployment frequency improvements

Taking teams from roughly weekly deployments to multiple safe releases per day.

Initial platform build for an energy-sector startup

Early product and platform delivery where speed mattered, but so did making the right structural decisions.

Good fit

When this is worth bringing me in.

Team shape

You have a small engineering team or a handful of contractors, but no strong senior technical layer keeping quality and decisions coherent.

Pain level

The problems are already costing time or money: rework, confusion, weak standards, blocked platform work, or AI-driven output that looks fast but feels unreliable.

Best engagement style

You want direct senior help, not a long discovery phase or a generic dev agency. You are comfortable with blunt technical judgment and practical changes.

Contact

If there is a painful technical problem with money attached, send me the short version.

The best messages tell me what is broken, why it matters, what has already been tried, and what kind of help you think you need.

If useful, include team size, current stack, and whether you think this is closer to an audit, a retainer, or a rescue job.

Get in touch with Mike

This is the best email to use if you have a painful technical or workflow problem worth fixing.