Reuben Firmin

I work primarily with startups and growth-stage companies that need senior technical leadership without adding another full-time executive. I'm unusually hands-on for a CTO. I can work with founders and boards on technology strategy, hiring, budgets, security, and M&A, then sit down with the engineering team and work through an architecture problem or write production code myself. I'm most useful where a company needs to bridge the gap between business objectives and the reality of building and operating software. As CTO of ExecVision, I took the product from an early prototype through scale and acquisition by Mediafly, building and leading a fully remote engineering organization of 25 people while remaining closely involved in architecture and development. I subsequently joined Mediafly as VP Engineering, where I helped integrate the acquired platform and participated in technical M&A diligence. Today I work fractionally across both CTO and CISO responsibilities. On the CTO side, that includes architecture, engineering leadership, recruiting, product strategy, AI adoption, technical due diligence, and helping non-technical founders manage development organizations. On the CISO side, I build pragmatic security and compliance programs, including SOC 2 and ISO 27001 readiness, security architecture, risk management, policies, and engineering practices. I currently serve as fractional CISO for Cadence OneFive. My background spans SaaS, AI, data platforms, healthcare, climate tech, sales technology, and early-stage product development. I'm particularly interested in situations where the technology is complicated, the business is moving quickly, and the company needs someone who can provide executive judgment without losing touch with the code.