Luis Saffie
I own execution for growth-stage companies — engineering delivery first, then product and go-to-market. Solo, or embedded with your team.
Same problems everywhere: tech debt crushing velocity, a roadmap nobody trusts, an AI pilot nobody uses, launches sales can't sell. I don't hand you a plan and leave. I sit with your team and own the problem until it's fixed. I've done it at Amazon, Wealthsimple, HomeStars, AutoTrader, and companies I've built and sold.
Every engagement starts with a free Lite assessment: a short questionnaire, a one-page readout, and a 30-minute readout call. Engagements from $10,000 CAD/month. What it costs →
Why Founders Choose Me
I Own It Until It's Fixed
No report and no handoff. I take the problem, do the work with your team, and stay accountable until the numbers move.
Tech, Product, and Go-to-Market
Engineering delivery is where I start. When the real blocker is the roadmap or a launch that stalls in sales, I own that too.
Solo or Embedded
One or two days a week. I sit in your standups and planning, or I build it myself when there's no team to sit with.
Sound Familiar?
These are the patterns I see in every scaling organization.
Everything Takes Too Long
Simple features take months. Your competitors ship faster with smaller teams. Tech debt is crushing velocity.
Constant Production Fires
Weekend outages. Manual, fragile deploys. Customer escalations. No time to fix root causes.
AI Is Passing You By
Your competitors are shipping faster with AI-assisted workflows. Your team is still "exploring." The gap widens every month.
Talent Exodus
Good engineers won't join. Your best people are burned out and leaving. Can't compete for senior talent.
No Clear Roadmap
50 feature requests, zero prioritization. Everything's urgent. No data on what drives business outcomes.
Engineering vs. Everyone Else
Engineering says 6 months. Sales promised 2 weeks. Product doesn't know what's possible. Nobody's aligned.
Launches That Don't Land
The feature shipped. Sales doesn't know how to sell it, marketing heard about it last week, and nobody owns the number.
How It Works
Four stages, in order: measure first, stop the fires, grow the team, then add AI. AI speeds up a healthy system. It also speeds up a broken one.
See
Measure first. Know where the team is.
Stabilize
Stop the fires. Protect the product.
Scale
Grow the team without breaking it.
Accelerate
Add AI to stable parts of the system.
The First 30 Days
Free Lite assessment. You answer a short questionnaire and I send a one-page readout. We go through it on a 30-minute call. The scores are self-reported: they show where to look, not proof.
Days 1 to 10. I sit with your team, interview key people, and pull the data. I measure where you are and pick the two problems that hold you back most. By Day 14 the first fix ships.
Day 30. We compare the numbers with your baseline. You decide to continue or stop.
After Day 30
From Day 31 I run both fixes at full depth and hand the work to your own owners, step by step.
By Day 90 each owner runs the work without me. Where the base is stable, I add AI.
Day 30 and Day 60 each end with a written checkpoint report against your baseline.
Then You Decide
The only guarantee: the Day-30 exit. You can stop after Day 30 and pay for Month 1 only. Nothing else is promised. Everything else is a measured change from your own baseline.
Three Results
Every engagement connects to one of these. We baseline your own numbers first and measure the change from there.
Business value
More of the roadmap ships. Revenue features reach customers sooner. Cloud cost goes down.
Measured by: % of roadmap delivered, cycle time, cost per customer
Team stability
Clear roles and owners. Less firefighting. Fewer people leave.
Measured by: KTLO %, regretted attrition, survey scores
Product stability
Fewer incidents and bugs. Faster recovery.
Measured by: Incidents per month, time to recover, bugs found by customers
Mini Case Study
Biiibo: From daily outages to predictable delivery
Worked alongside the team, stabilized production, introduced delivery rituals, and rebuilt the roadmap around revenue impact. Outages dropped, delivery timelines tightened, and leadership regained trust in engineering.
Track Record
Where I've done this work before.
Owned the workforce tools deployed across all global warehouses. Reduced operational costs while improving productivity at scale.
Led infrastructure modernization with infrastructure-as-code and security practices that scaled through hypergrowth.
CTO through acquisition. Repositioned the product, rebuilt the technology platform, and aligned the company around it.
Contract VP of Engineering for the AutoSync software business. Reorganized engineering around clear ownership, introduced estimation and roadmapping practices that unblocked a stalled e-commerce platform initiative, and led adoption of AI-assisted engineering workflows.
Eliminated daily production outages, built real-time revenue tracking, cut delivery delays. Turned operational chaos into predictable execution.
I also co-founded Heirly and Dentara.
Let's Talk
Book a time and tell me what's broken. I'll tell you if I can help. Every engagement starts with a free Lite assessment: a short questionnaire, a one-page readout, and a 30-minute readout call.
Or reach me directly:
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a Technology & Operating Executive do?
I own execution. Engineering delivery comes first: shipping speed, tech debt, reliability, and AI adoption. When the real blocker is the roadmap or a launch that stalls before it reaches revenue, I own that too. I work one or two days a week, embedded with your team, or solo when there's no team to sit with. I own the problem until it's fixed.
What does owning it look like day to day?
I sit with your team. I attend your standups and planning, review the pull requests, sit in the pipeline review, and make the changes myself. There's no report and no handoff. I baseline the numbers first, we agree on a target for each by Day 14, and I'm accountable for moving them.
What's the typical engagement length?
A 90-day engagement, one or two days a week. It starts with a free Lite assessment. In the first 10 days I measure where the team is. By Day 14 the first fix ships and we agree on targets. At Day 30 we check the numbers against the baseline, and you decide to continue or stop. From Day 31 I run the work at full depth and hand it to your own owners by Day 90. The only guarantee: the Day-30 exit. You can stop after Day 30 and pay for Month 1 only.
What size companies do you work with?
I work with growth-stage companies, typically $5M–$50M in revenue with 10–200 people. If your team is busy but not shipping, tech debt is crushing velocity, or what gets built isn't what sales can sell — that's exactly when I step in.
Can you get AI actually working in our engineering org?
That's the work I'm doing most of right now. Most teams have licences and a pilot nobody uses. Getting real throughput means changing how code is reviewed, tested, and shipped — not buying a tool. I led AI-assisted engineering adoption across AutoTrader's AutoSync business, and I run an AI-native company of my own, so I don't put anything in your stack I haven't shipped myself. These run as their own program, quoted on scope.
How much does it cost?
I don't bill hourly. We agree on scope and outcomes upfront, so you know the cost before we start.
- 90-day engagement — two days a week
- $17,000 CAD/month ($14,500 USD/month)
- Focused 90 days — one day a week
- $10,000 CAD/month
- Second 90 days — two days a week
- $17,000 CAD/month
- Operating partner — one day a week
- $10,000 CAD/month
- Interim — two days a week
- $20,000 CAD/month
- Pre-LOI review
- $9,000 CAD
- Due diligence
- from $30,000 CAD
- AI engineering programs, fixed-scope projects
- quoted on scope
Rates are in Canadian dollars unless a USD figure is given.
The only guarantee: the Day-30 exit. You can stop after Day 30 and pay for Month 1 only.
Compare it to the alternative, not to a salary. Hiring a full-time technology executive means a recruiting fee, an equity grant, a severance obligation, and a three-month ramp before anyone knows if it worked — a two-year bet made on a two-hour interview. I start in week one, and you can end it after Day 30.