Michael Quinn

The Engineering Manager at Delphos Labs. Ex-Google. I write about engineering leadership in the age of agents, AI-native development, and the quantitative thinking underneath.

I’m the Engineering Manager at Delphos Labs by day. I also take a small number of engagements with founders and early teams who’d benefit from senior engineering leadership before they can hire it full-time.

I offer four shapes of engagement, depending on what you need.

Technical co-founder

Some conversations are different. If you’re a founder with traction, a clear problem, and the sense that the right technical partner would change the trajectory of the company; let’s talk. I’m not browsing, but I’m having these conversations seriously, and the right one will land.

Best for: founders at the “I need a CTO, not a contractor” inflection point.

Fractional CTO

10-20 hours per week. I work as your engineering leader: engineering process, architecture decisions, hiring, technical strategy, code review and writing code where it matters. Most of my fractional work is with AI-native teams, but the underlying skills transfer.

Best for: seed to Series A teams with 1-5 engineers, no engineering leadership yet, shipping faster than the team can sustainably support.

Technical advisor

Lower-touch. Two to four hours per month, advisory shares (0.1-0.5%). Architecture sounding board, team building, hiring help, AI strategy, periodic deep-dives on specific decisions.

Best for: founders who have engineering leadership but want a second perspective from someone outside the building.

0-to-1 audit

One-week paid sprint, fixed scope. I show up, dig in, and deliver a concrete written recommendation. Three flavors:

  • Engineering velocity. How can you get the most out of your organization? Where are the bottlenecks? What are the new workflows to automate?
  • Architecture review. Is what you’ve built going to survive the next 6 months of growth? What are the three biggest risks?
  • AI capability audit. Where are you over- or under-using LLMs? What’s the highest-leverage AI capability you’re not yet exploiting?
  • Build-vs-buy. A specific decision you’re facing, treated with the seriousness it deserves.

What I won’t do

  • Code-for-hire that doesn’t compound into a relationship. I’m not a contractor.
  • “Strategic” work without enough technical depth to be useful. I’m not a generalist advisor.
  • Anything that conflicts with my work at Delphos. I treat that boundary carefully.

Next step

Send me a note. I’ll ask what you’re working on, what’s actually hard about it, and whether the shape of one of these engagements fits. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, I’ll try to point you at someone better suited.