Small teams. AI leverage. Products that ship.
I'm Brian Pullin — a fractional CTO with thirty years of building SaaS products and the engineering teams behind them. I convert engineering organizations to AI-native development, and I build teams that stay small, tight, and faster than organizations five times their size.
Three ways I help startups build engineering that wins.
Every engagement is hands-on. I don't hand you a deck and leave — I work inside your team until the change sticks.
Engagement 01Fractional CTO
Senior technical leadership without the full-time cost. Product and platform architecture, technology strategy, vendor and build-vs-buy decisions, board and investor communication, and day-to-day engineering leadership — scaled to what your stage actually needs.
Engagement 02AI-native engineering transformation
I convert existing engineering organizations to an AI-based development process — tools, workflow, code review, and culture. I've done this with a production team shipping real software for real customers, and the result was dramatically faster delivery without adding headcount.
Engagement 03Engineering team building
From first technical hire to a functioning organization. I recruit, structure, and coach small, high-performance teams — and keep them small. The goal is output, not headcount, and a team culture that survives growth, pressure, and due diligence.
From early-stage team to acquisition.
Talage is a commercial insurance technology startup. As CTO, I built its engineering organization from the early stage and led it for over five years — through 48 carrier line-of-business integrations, an agency management system integration, SOC 2 compliance, and 99.9%+ platform uptime as the system's chief architect.
Along the way, I converted the team to an AI-based development process and shipped multiple AI-powered solutions into production, including intelligent document processing for commercial insurance submissions. The team stayed small the entire time — and out-delivered organizations many times its size.
In May 2025, Talage was acquired by Mission Underwriters — the outcome a startup engineering team is built for.
A hands-on tech executive, thirty years in.
I've spent my career turning ideas into high-quality products across insurance, banking, energy, and telecommunications — and building the teams that make it happen. I stay close to the code. The best engineering leadership decisions come from people who still build.
Away from work, I'm an avid skier — a passion I share with my wife and two daughters in Tahoe — and you'll often find me walking my dog in the East Bay Regional Parks, a habit that goes back to earning my Eagle Scout.
Education: BS, Electrical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Building a team? Converting to AI? Let's talk.
I take on a small number of fractional CTO and advisory engagements at a time. If you're a founder who needs engineering leadership — or an engineering org that needs to move faster — reach out.
Email brian@pullindev.com