Some decisions are too consequential to hand to a contractor and too early to justify a permanent executive hire. For those — a greenfield product where the AI and data architecture is the whole bet, or a legacy core that now has to carry agents safely — you can borrow the seat: the custom software and intelligence architecture, the security judgment, the delivery, and the person who stands behind all of it. That person is Reggie Britt.
There's a moment most companies hit where the technology decisions in front of them are bigger than anyone currently on the payroll is positioned to make.
Maybe the data architecture you're about to commit to will shape the next five years. Maybe you're building a new product where the intelligence layer — the part that turns behaviour into an asset — is the whole bet, and it has to be architected right the first time. Maybe you're pointing an AI agent at the system that runs your business and nobody's sure where the guardrails go. Maybe the board is asking a question and the honest answer needs someone who has actually sat in the chair.
Hiring a full-time CTO for this is a nine-month search and a compensation package you can't yet size. Handing it to a dev shop gets you people who execute, but nobody who owns the call.
A fractional CTO fills that gap. Someone holds the seat for as long as the work needs it, makes the decisions, builds the thing, and hands it back when you're ready to run it yourselves — or ready to hire the permanent person the role has finally earned.
These are the areas where forty years of building real systems — and, increasingly, real AI on top of them — shows up in the work. Reggie has carried all four at once, in production, with money on the line, on greenfield AI builds and legacy cores alike. Select one.
The load-bearing choices — how the data is modeled, where the intelligence layer sits, what you buy off the shelf versus what you build custom — are the ones that are painful and expensive to undo later. Buy the commodity; architect the differentiator — the one custom system, built AI-native from the first decision, that encodes how your business actually wins. Reggie has designed these systems and shipped them into production at scale.
So the strategy already knows what the architecture can bear, and the architecture already knows how it ships — one line of accountability, not five handoffs.
Held in one head, in production, with money on the line. But a call nobody ships is a deck — which is why the seat carries two more things beneath it: the build, and the capacity to staff it.
One line of accountability, a gate nothing ships past, agile run where a missed release has consequences. How the build ships →
Specialist depth — data, integration, the intelligence stack — brought in for exactly as long as the work needs it. Reach without the headcount, and no one critical walking out the door when it ends.
The most valuable thing a modern build produces isn't the app — it's the asset underneath it. When the data seam is architected in from the start, everyday behaviour compounds into first-party data, then into an intelligence product you own outright, on a stack that's yours end to end. That through-line — from the surface a user touches to the asset a business is built on — is the same discipline whether the system of record is an IBM i core or a greenfield platform.
The engagement on the bench right now is exactly this shape — a first-party data architecture and the B2B product that sits on top of it, built greenfield, delivered end to end.
Four decades on the IBM midrange, from System/36 to today's IBM i, is part of the record behind this seat — but it is not what this engagement is about unless your business runs on Power. Where that platform is the center of gravity, the dedicated depth lives with a sister practice, not here.
Pegasus4i — IBM i AI-readiness ↗Engagements run hot when there's a build on and quiet down as things stabilize. Here are three common shapes — and it's fine to move between them as the work changes.
Several days a week through a build or a hard stretch — in the standups, owning the architecture, leading the team. The full seat, until you're ready for a permanent one.
A regular cadence of direction and review for a team that can execute but wants a senior head pointing the way and taking the calls that can't wait.
Kept on retainer for the calls that show up without warning — a vendor negotiation, a board question, a fork in the architecture — so the judgment is a phone call away.
Cash, equity, or a mix — we work that out once we both understand the job. Nothing is priced before the problem is.
It starts with a call about the decision you're facing. If it's not a fit, you'll know by the end of it, and so will I.
Not ready for the full seat? You can start with a single workflow — the pilot — proven in weeks, owned by you, and grown into this only if it earns it.
Thirty minutes on what you're building and where it's stuck. No deck to sit through, no invoice for the privilege.
A short, honest read of the problem, the shape of the answer, and how the seat would fit — embedded, steady, or on call.
Direction, build, and a handover that leaves your team able to run it — and, when the time comes, a clean way out.
A streaming business with a real, opted-in audience and no way to prove what it actually knew about them. The content side worked fine. What was missing was the intelligence layer underneath — the part that turns an audience into an asset you can build a business on.
That's the seat here: the first-party data architecture under the platform, and the B2B product that sits on top of it.
Reggie Britt spent a decade as CTO of a billion-dollar consumer-finance business, running a regulated, high-volume core through hyper-growth and scaling the technology organization from three people to more than a hundred and fifty. He's founded three software companies, including a platform practice sold in 2016. Pegasus Source is the fourth.
Behind that: forty years on the IBM midrange and a published body of work on what the agentic era actually demands. When he tells you a decision has consequences, it's because he's lived the ones that did.
A contractor carries out decisions someone else has already made. This seat makes them and stands behind them. You feel the difference the day something has to be turned down, the board wants a straight answer, or a tempting shortcut would cost you dearly two years out.
They get led, and they get better. The seat sets the direction your team builds toward, raises the bar, and shapes the roles you hire next. A good engagement leaves your people more able to run things on their own.
As long as the work needs, and not a month longer. Some run the length of a build; some settle into a steady rhythm for a year; some quiet down to on-call once a system is live. Leaving cleanly is part of the deal.
Often you don't, and I'll say so on the first call. Where it does help, it's usually because the decision carries weight past engineering — a data architecture with regulatory stakes, an agent reaching into your system of record, a board that needs the risk explained.
If it's a fit, we'll both know quickly.