Ed Shadi

I help engineering teams become AI-native by removing the bottlenecks between AI output and business impact.

You're not paying for reports, frameworks, or AI workshops — you're paying for results.

I embed with teams, identify bottlenecks, and implement practical changes that increase delivery velocity, engineering leverage, and team effectiveness.

Ed Shadi

The problem I work on

We invested in AI. Why aren't we seeing the impact?
Our engineers are generating more code than ever. Why aren't we shipping more features?
Everyone is using AI. Why does it feel like we're getting more chaotic instead of more productive?

More code was never the goal. Shipping is.

That's where I make an impact.

What I do

Ways we can work together

I take that same playbook into other teams as a fractional CTO and advisor — setting technical direction, re-architecting how the team works around AI, and staying close enough to the code to prove it works. I also speak about building AI-native engineering organizations.

Fractional CTO

Senior technical leadership without the full-time hire. I own technical direction and keep delivery on track.

  • Architecture, infrastructure, and engineering strategy
  • Hiring, team structure, and engineering operations
  • Hands-on where it matters — I still ship code

AI-Native Consulting

Rebuild how your team works around AI so a small team ships like a much larger one.

  • AI development workflows and orchestration systems
  • Testing, automation, and deployment pipelines
  • Pragmatic adoption — velocity, reliability, maintainability

Speaking

Talks and workshops on building AI-native engineering organizations from someone doing it in production.

  • Running lean teams at outsized scale
  • AI orchestration in real production systems
  • What actually changes when you build AI-first

Speaking

Talks for teams making the leap

Ed Shadi is a hands-on CTO with 20+ years building and scaling engineering teams (Typeform, CoLearn) and is now running WOW AI, an AI-native product company where a 5-person team ships at the pace of organizations many times larger. He speaks candidly about what it actually takes to make a team AI-native — beyond the demos.

Going AI-native is a team problem, not a tooling problem

Why dropping Claude Code into an old process fails, and how to redesign the way a team plans, builds, reviews, and ships around AI.

Shipping at outsized scale with a tiny team

How a 5-person engineering org operates at the pace of a much larger one — the workflows, orchestration, and trade-offs that make it real.

Agile vs. meetings vs. AI agents

The rituals that survive the AI shift, the ones that don't, and how to keep humans in the loop without drowning the team in process.

Staying hands-on as a leader in the AI era

Why technical leaders should still ship code — and how AI changes what 'hands-on' even means.

Track record

Where I've built

Two decades building and leading engineering teams — from scaling Director of Engineering at Typeform to founding and running AI-native companies.

Contact

Fractional CTO, consulting, or a talk for your team?

Tell me what you're building and where you're stuck. I reply to every serious inquiry.