Walner Consulting Walner Consulting, LLC Fractional Technology Leadership
Fractional CTO · IT Director · Technical Program Management

Senior technical leadership, without the headcount.

I step into the seat your org chart is missing — owning architecture decisions, driving delivery across teams and vendors, and translating engineering reality into terms the board can act on. Hands on the keyboard when it helps; accountable for outcomes either way.

Engagements

Where I take ownership

Each engagement has a defined mandate, a decision log, and an exit condition. You should always know what I'm accountable for and when it ends.

01

Fractional CTO / IT Director

Own the technology roadmap, architecture standards, budget, and vendor portfolio. I sit in leadership meetings, defend the technical position, and make the calls a full-time director would — a few days a month instead of a salaried hire.

02

Technical Program Management

Multi-team, multi-vendor programs where dependencies are the real risk. Delivery plans, sequencing, risk registers, and status your executives can actually read. I chase the blockers rather than reporting them.

03

Modernization & Migration Programs

Microsoft 365 and Entra ID, cloud migration, network and DNS architecture, identity consolidation, backup and recovery. Scoped, sequenced, and led to completion — including the cutover weekend and the documentation afterward.

04

Governance, Security & Vendor Strategy

Security posture and access governance for organizations without a security team. Licensing and contract review, MSP and vendor evaluation, and the leverage to renegotiate agreements that quietly stopped serving you.

Approach

How I operate

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Assess before recommending. Most engagements open with a short technical and organizational review. You get a written current-state picture, a prioritized risk list, and a roadmap with sequencing — useful on its own, even if you never engage me again.

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Decisions get owners and dates. The failure mode in most technology programs isn't engineering difficulty, it's unresolved decisions sitting in an inbox. I run a decision log and close items rather than escalating them indefinitely.

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Fewer moving parts. Every tool added is a renewal, an integration, and an outage surface. I'd rather consolidate two systems than deploy a third, and I'll argue for the boring architecture that runs unattended.

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You own everything. Accounts, tenancies, licenses, domains, and runbooks stay in your name from day one. Documentation is written so your next hire — or your next consultant — can pick it up cold.

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Plain language upward, precision downward. Boards get trade-offs, cost, and risk without jargon. Engineers get specifics without hand-waving. Translating cleanly between those two rooms is most of the job.

Engagement models

How the work is structured

Advisory retainer

A recurring block of hours each month for roadmap, architecture review, vendor decisions, and escalations. The standing technical voice in the room.

Program engagement

A defined migration or modernization program with scope, milestones, and an end date. Priced to the outcome, not to the hour count.

Assessment

A fixed-scope review of your current environment, risks, and spend. Delivered as a written report and a working session. A common starting point.

Next step

Tell me what you're dealing with

A short description of the situation is enough to start — a stalled program, a migration nobody owns, or a leadership gap you haven't filled. I reply to everything within one business day.