Engagement 12
Fractional Supply Chain Architect
Senior supply chain judgment by the slice, for teams that cannot hire it.
The situation
The architecture decisions in software supply chain get made once and lived with for years: which registry is authoritative, how identity reaches the build, what signs what, and where policy is enforced. They are expensive to reverse, and most teams make them exactly once.
Hiring that judgment is a twelve-month exercise at a senior salary. Most teams need it a few days a month, at the moments when a decision is actually in front of them.
This is you if
- You need the architecture decision made correctly and have nobody in-house who has made it before.
- You can fund a few days a month and cannot fund a transformation or a hire.
- Your team is capable and would rather be taught than handed a report.
How it runs
- Monthly
In the repositories, not in a document
Design review and decision support where the work is — pull requests, workflow files, policy configuration — rather than in a deck delivered after the decision was already made.
- Monthly
Mentoring alongside it
The engineers who will own this after we leave are in every session. The goal is that the retainer becomes unnecessary.
- Quarterly
Re-run the model
Your estate re-modeled in Gantry each quarter, so progress is something you can see rather than something we assert.
What you are left holding
- Design review and decision support inside your repositories, not in a document
- Mentoring for the engineers who will own it after we leave
- A quarterly Gantry re-run of your estate, so progress is visible rather than asserted
- An opinion with the evidence under it, including when the answer is to do nothing
What we need from you
- A standing slot, because the value depends on being present when decisions happen rather than after.
- Repository access at the level of a senior engineer on the team.
- A named counterpart being developed into the role, which is what ends the engagement well.
A fixed fee that assumes nothing about access is a guess. This is the list that keeps the price the price.
What this is not
- Not staff augmentation. We do not take tickets or own delivery; your team does, with our judgment alongside.
- Not an on-call commitment. The retainer is advisory time, and incident response is a separate conversation.
Why people call about this one
Choosing now locks you in for years
SCA, SAST and posture tools are folding into platforms. The selection made this year sets the architecture for the next several, and most of the advice available is vendor-funded.
We sell no licenses, hold no partner tiers and take no referral fees
The shape of it
- Shape
- Retainer, typically two days a month
- Usually funded by
- CISO · Engineering
- Often leads to
- Enablement & Mentoring