About
Mars (Marcin) Depiński
Product-focused technical leader with 25+ years building end-to-end systems in financial, health, entertainment and online media — and 15+ years leading engineering organizations, from 15-person startups to a 100+ person global engineering organization with a $20M budget.
Background
I've done everything a small company's technology leader has to do: configured servers and networks, planned cooling and power, monitored systems for availability, built software in several languages on many platforms, tuned databases, managed IT budgets, dealt with vendors and outsourcing, looked for funding, and designed processes for backup, testing, deployment, disaster recovery and business continuity. Most recently: leading teams, interviewing and hiring engineers, and running frontier LLM models.
Two careers run in parallel — a hands-on technologist who still ships code and an engineering executive who reports to VPs and the C-suite. A fractional CTO engagement is exactly the point where those careers meet: you get the judgment of the executive and the credibility of the engineer.
Education: M.S. Computer Science (specialization in Multimedia & Creative Technologies) and B.S. Computer Science, University of Southern California. Based in Miami, Florida; work with clients across US time zones, remote-first.
Engagement principles
- Write decisions down. If it isn't documented with its trade-offs and cost, it isn't a decision — it's a vibe.
- Optimize for the successor. Architecture, hiring and process should survive my departure, because the goal is to make me unnecessary.
- Price the risk. Every "no" I recommend is priced; every "yes" has a payback period.
- Own the trade-off. Small companies don't need perfect systems — they need the right ones, explained to a board in one page.
Off the clock
An avid snowboarder, golfer and traveller — which is useful, because scaling a company, a stack and a ski trip are all logistics problems with a budget.
Who should not hire me
- Companies looking for a full-time CTO — I'm fractional by design; interim leadership while you hire right is different work, and I say so.
- Owners who want a rubber stamp — I'm the peer who prices your risks honestly.
- Engagements without a decision-maker in the room.