Nate Bourgoin
Fractional CTO
Technical leadership for startups outgrowing their first version.
I'm Nate Bourgoin, a fractional CTO. Former Amazon (Audible) director and seven-time CTO, I help founders get products built quickly, often with AI tools, ready to scale.
No engineering team yet? Let's find your first engineer
7
companies as CTO
30
engineers led at Amazon (Audible)
100s
of interviews as a Bar Raiser
1
acquisition, The Cru by Luminary
Fast-built products break in predictable places.
Security
Secrets and customer data exposed in ways that are easy to miss.
Reliability
No backups, staging, or monitoring, so customers find the problems first.
Cost
Cloud and AI bills that grow faster than revenue.
Visibility
No clear view of what's being built or how the business is doing.
Technical leadership
Start with an assessment or a strategy call. Either one is credited toward what comes next.
Advisor
$2,000
a month
A senior technical partner, about eight hours a month: a call every other week and messages in between. Month to month, and you can list me as a technical advisor on your pitch deck.
Start with a strategy call$250, credited toward your first month
Code assessment
$2,500
fixed
A prioritized review of one product's code, hosting, data, and third-party services, written up and walked through with your team.
Book an assessmentFractional CTO
$5,000
a month
About a day a week: the technical roadmap, engineering hiring, contractors and vendors, and your investors' technical due diligence. You can name me as your fractional CTO in your pitch deck.
Start with a strategy call$250, credited toward your first month
Also available
from $3,500
One board and a planning rhythm the whole company uses, sized to your team. Starts with a strategy call, credited toward the reset.
Fixed prices cover the scope described; anything more is quoted before I start. Time beyond the monthly hours is $250 an hour. Technical due diligence for acquisitions and fundraising is priced per project.
No engineering team yet?
Let's find your first engineer.
I assess what you've built, define the role you need, write the job description and interview plan, and run the final interviews for up to three candidates, the way I did as an Amazon Bar Raiser.
$4,500 fixed
I ran the Bar Raiser program at Audible. Big Room Technologies brought me in to fix their hiring, then offered me the job; I spent three years there as Director of Software Engineering.
Selected experience
Currently fractional CTO to four companies, alongside building my own products. Prior roles, listed by relevance:
Amazon (Audible)
Software Developer to Director, Software Development
About 7 years
- Directed 30 engineers and 3 managers responsible for pricing and purchasing on Amazon.com and fraud detection across Audible. Administered Audible's Bar Raiser hiring program.
The Cru
Chief Technology Officer
About 1½ years
- Stabilized engineering planning, expanded the team, and led the shift from consumer to B2B. Supported a multi-million dollar fundraise and the company's acquisition by Luminary.
Alakazam
Chief Technology Officer
About 1 year
- Led the transition from immersive web agency to SaaS provider, including the platform architecture and GDPR-aligned data protection.
Big Room Technologies
Director of Software Engineering
3 years
- Engaged as a consultant to rebuild engineering hiring and job descriptions, then hired full time to lead engineering, product, and UX across the 15-person company.
CLYNK
Director of Software Development
About 1 year
- Architected the next-generation bottle redemption platform, moved legacy .NET services to microservices, and shipped new iOS and Android apps.
Microsoft
Software Developer in Test
About 3 years
- Built test reporting infrastructure and automated test suites for enterprise server deployments.
What I've built along the way
- Android, iOS, Kindle, and Fire TV apps
- Pricing and purchasing on Amazon.com
- Fraud detection
- Audiobook and ebook sync
- Data pipelines
- SaaS platforms and customer portals
- Microservice migrations
- Heroku to AWS migration
- Analytics and BI dashboards
- GDPR data protection
- Test automation and quality reporting
- Hiring programs and interviewer training
Products I've built
I build and run my own products. Each one tests something my clients need, so I work through the hard parts in my own code first.
Technical hiring where recruiters search anonymous candidate profiles by skill.
Why I built it
To take an AI-assisted product from first commit to production on a managed cloud platform.
Not Yet Written
Coming soonChoose-your-own-adventure fiction, generated as you read.
Why I built it
To build an app that uses AI for its users, not just one written with AI's help.
Frame
Coming soonPhoto frames that stay in sync, so the grandparents see the new baby on the mantel instead of in a group text.
Why I built it
To deliver hardware and software as one product, with a possible Kickstarter launch.
LoneWoof
Coming soonTraining programs for dogs with separation anxiety.
Why I built it
We spent a year training our own anxious dog. I want to make that treatment easier to start.
Open source
- meshthingsServices for an off-grid Meshtastic radio mesh: live weather, tornado alerts, and service discovery, with no internet involved.
- requiredenvA dependency-free npm package that reads your .env.example at startup and names every required variable that isn't set.
Start a conversation.
Hiring work, technical due diligence, or something not listed here? Tell me about your company, what you need, and your timeline. I generally respond within one business day.