Fractional CTO & Technology Leadership · UX/UI · Christchurch, NZ
Clearer technology decisions. Faster, more predictable delivery.
We help founder-led SaaS companies and SMEs get delivery under control, without bringing on a full-time executive to do it.
OUR SERVICES
The technical leadership your team needs.
Technology strategy, architecture, UX/UI, and delivery in a single engagement. You deal with two people. Everything is connected.
Fractional CTO & Tech Leadership
You need a senior technical voice in the room for architecture decisions, engineering direction, and stakeholder conversations. Someone who has done this before, without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire.
Architecture & Systems
System design reviews, cloud architecture (AWS and Azure), technical debt prioritisation, and build-vs-buy guidance. Architecture decisions that are clear, documented, and ones you can explain to a board.
UX & Product Design
Product experience shaped alongside the technology, not bolted on afterwards. We bring UX and UI into the same engagement, so design and engineering decisions inform each other from the start.
Delivery & Execution
Predictable shipping is a system problem, not a people problem. We redesign delivery process, improve flow, clarify requirements, and build the team practices that let you ship with confidence. Then keep doing it.
AI Enablement
Practical AI adoption with governance built in. We identify where AI genuinely adds value, establish the guardrails and data governance your business needs, and build it into your team's practices. Something you can actually use and defend.
Not sure where to start? That is what the intro call is for.
HOW WE WORK
A clear start. A defined path.
Every engagement starts with listening.
Current State Review
We spend time understanding where things actually are — delivery patterns, architecture, team dynamics, and the decisions that have been piling up. No templates, no assumptions. We read the room before we say anything.
Stakeholder Conversations
We talk to the people doing the work and the people owning the outcomes. The gaps between those two groups are usually where the real problems live — and where the clearest improvements start.
Findings and Recommendations
A clear, written assessment of what is working, what is not, and what to address first. Opinionated and specific. We prioritise rather than catalogue.
90-Day Improvement Plan
A focused, sequenced plan of action built around your actual constraints. We work through it with you — hands-on when the situation calls for it, advisory when that is the right fit.
Current State Review
We spend time understanding where things actually are — delivery patterns, architecture, team dynamics, and the decisions that have been piling up. No templates, no assumptions. We read the room before we say anything.
Stakeholder Conversations
We talk to the people doing the work and the people owning the outcomes. The gaps between those two groups are usually where the real problems live — and where the clearest improvements start.
Findings and Recommendations
A clear, written assessment of what is working, what is not, and what to address first. Opinionated and specific. We prioritise rather than catalogue.
90-Day Improvement Plan
A focused, sequenced plan of action built around your actual constraints. We work through it with you — hands-on when the situation calls for it, advisory when that is the right fit.
The first call is 30 minutes. No commitment required.
SELECTED WORK & EXPERIENCE
Outcomes, not slide decks.
Work across SaaS, agri-tech, enterprise, and operational systems — built on 20+ years in technology leadership.
Delivery visibility, then velocity
Leadership wanted to move faster but had no data on where time was going. Introduced DORA lead time metrics and sprint health checks to baseline delivery performance. Once the team could measure it, they could improve it — and prove it.
AI adoption across two businesses
Built practical AI adoption frameworks for engineering, support, and product teams across two separate organisations. The goal was structured adoption with quality guardrails — not a proof of concept, but practices teams could own and defend in production.
Security uplift, no friction added
Conducted an application security review across mobile and web, mapped to the real risk tolerance of the business and its customers. Delivered a pragmatic short-term fix alongside a documented medium-term roadmap — improved posture without burdening users with complexity.
AML platform: team, delivery, architecture
Led a team of 5 engineers and QA delivering a core product domain within an AML platform. Held day-to-day delivery, management alignment, and solution architecture in parallel — introducing microservices, AWS infrastructure improvements, and measurably higher deployment frequency.
Design system built for developer speed
We reviewed and redesigned the UX and UI of a warehouse management system. Built a Figma design system on top of MUI components so the engineering team could implement UI changes consistently and quickly — removing design as a bottleneck.
Pre-launch UX, shipped with confidence
We reviewed the UX and UI of a mobile app ahead of launch — tightened the Figma file, created consistency across screens, and smoothed the user flow. The app launched coherent rather than patched together.
CTO from day one, board-level confidence
Stepped in as CTO for a growing agri-tech services business, managing 5 developers. Ran the 90-day plan, balanced customer delivery with internal product work, and established the board and CEO relationship — giving leadership a technical partner they could rely on.
0 → 3 customers, iOS and Web
Codelab is building a stable management SaaS from scratch — product, UX, iOS, and web. Three customers on early access. Every decision from architecture to onboarding is ours, which means we understand founder and early-stage product problems from the inside.
ABOUT US
The people you will work with.
Codelab is a small practice. Depending on what you need, you might work with Tim, Seruni, or both. Either way, you deal with the person actually doing the work.
Tim Brown
Fractional CTO · Technology Leader · Architect
Tim has 20+ years of experience across SaaS, agri-tech, enterprise, and operational systems, in roles spanning CTO, Solutions Architect, and Engineering Lead. He is AWS and Azure certified, and has spent his career moving between technical detail, system design, and the business trade-offs that sit above both. He works hands-on when the engagement needs it, and at the strategic level when that is the right fit. Most clients come to him when their team is busy but not moving fast enough, or architecture decisions have been piling up without anyone qualified to make the call.
Seruni Brown
UX & Product Design
Seruni has over five years of experience designing UX and UI for web and mobile applications. She works across the full design process, from research and wireframing through to polished interfaces ready for build. When an engagement involves both design and technology, she and Tim work together so those decisions inform each other from the start.
You will speak with Tim directly on the intro call.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Straight answers.
A contractor is scoped to deliver specific tasks. They execute what you define. An agency brings a team to a brief. Codelab is different: we work at the leadership and architecture level, help you work out what actually needs doing, and then support delivery where that is the right fit. We are responsible for the thinking, not just the output. Most of our clients have tried contractors or agencies before and found that the gap between the brief and the outcome kept getting expensive. We fix that gap.
Most engagements start with a current state review, a few weeks of conversations, observation, and assessment before we say anything prescriptive. From there we produce a clear findings document and a 90-day improvement plan. What happens after that depends on what the business actually needs. Some clients want ongoing Fractional CTO support on a retainer. Others need focused delivery work for a defined period. We scope it to the problem.
There is no fixed minimum. The intro call is free and carries no obligation. If it makes sense to move forward, we agree on a scope that fits the situation. We do not push long-term retainers on clients who need a short, focused engagement. And we do not scope work in a way that runs out before the problem is solved.
Remote-first by default. Most of our work does not require being in the same room, and that keeps things focused. We are based in Christchurch and in Auckland regularly for client meetings, strategy sessions, or workshops where being in the room genuinely matters. Outside those locations, we work fully remote.
Yes. We work at the strategic and architecture level, and step into hands-on delivery when the situation calls for it: code review, technical design, team coaching, working directly alongside engineers. That is not always what is needed, but it is available. We also cover UX and UI across both strategy and execution. Between us, we cover the full picture.
Seriously. We operate under standard professional confidentiality expectations for all engagements, and we are happy to sign an NDA before initial conversations if that is your preference. We do not name clients on this site, in our work, or in any public-facing materials without explicit permission. The case studies described here are anonymised by design.
Founder-led SaaS companies and SMEs, generally 10 to 200 staff, with a product in market or scaling delivery. Often the founder or CEO is carrying too many technology decisions personally, or the engineering team is under pressure without a senior technical voice above them. We also work with traditional businesses that are becoming more dependent on software and data, where technology leadership matters but the internal capability to provide it is still being built.
The intro call can usually happen within a few days of making contact. From there, if we agree it is the right fit, we aim to have a scoped engagement in place within one to two weeks. There is no long onboarding process. The current state review is how we learn, and it starts producing value early.
Still have questions? Send them through to [email protected]
Get in touch
Ready to talk.
The intro call is 30 minutes — no commitment, no pitch. If you have a specific question first, send it through by email.
30-minute call · No commitment · NZ-based