/01
Fractional & Advisory CTO
For early-stage founders who need senior technical judgement without a full-time hire — usually one or two days a week, on retainer.
Est. 2017
Ilford, UK · Lahore, PK
CTO · COO · Co-Founder
Khakan
Ali
- 30+
- Engineers, leads & artists led
- 150+
- Bespoke products shipped
- 8+
- Years building AlphaRages
- 10+
- Years in software engineering
/01 — About
A builder, then an operator.
Khakan Ali builds software companies that ship — his own, and other people's. As CTO, COO & Co-Founder of AlphaRages, he runs a 30-person engineering & design team out of Lahore with leadership in Ilford, and has been the technical accountable party on 150+ production systems delivered to founders and operators across the UK, EU and North America since 2019.
Before the firm scaled, he spent five years embedded as the technical owner of the member platform at Membersy — an Austin-based US health organisation serving 100,000+ active members — architecting the Laravel, Python and WordPress services on AWS and DigitalOcean, and writing the on-call runbooks he'd later teach his own team to write. He joined AlphaRages as founding engineer in 2017, co-founded in 2019, and took the COO mandate in early 2026. Every senior role in the firm is one he has previously held.
He works with founders who want senior technical judgement at the table, not a slide deck — fractional CTO retainers, paid discovery sprints that produce real architecture before quotes, and full product builds with a dedicated AlphaRages team. The bias throughout is the same: ship the smallest correct thing, then earn the right to build the next.
Working vocabulary
Laravel
Python
TypeScript
Next.js
Postgres
AWS
Kubernetes
Terraform
LLM · RAG
AI Agents
Observability
Event-Driven
/02 — Services
Five ways founders
work with me.
Four engagement shapes — pick one, or describe your situation and I'll recommend the right shape.
/02
End-to-end product builds
A dedicated AlphaRages team — tech lead, full-stack engineers, designer, QA — taking a product from zero to shipped, with a fixed quote after discovery.
/03
Architecture & system reviews
A short, sharp engagement to audit an existing codebase, infrastructure, or roadmap and surface what is actually putting the business at risk.
/04
Team building & scaling
For SMEs and Series A/B founders growing from five to twenty-plus engineers without losing the plot — hiring loops, structure, and rituals.
/05
AI/ML & cloud-native roadmaps
A pragmatic plan for adopting LLMs, ML services, and cloud-native patterns where they earn their cost — and saying no where they don't.
Unsure which engagement fits? Write a short brief and I'll respond within two business days.
Write to Khakan
/03 — Capabilities
150 + products,
six recurring shapes.
Most AlphaRages work runs under NDA, so capabilities are framed as categories with anonymised outcomes — not logos.
CAT · 01
SaaS MVPs for funded startups
Pre-seed and seed founders with a wedge to validate. We compress design, engineering, and infra into a 12–16 week sprint and hand back a product ready for paying users.
Live MVP with auth, billing, observability
CAT · 02
Internal tooling & workflow automation
For SMEs whose business runs on spreadsheets and a Slack channel. We replace the brittle bits with bespoke tools that fit how the team actually works.
Hours-per-week reclaimed across ops
CAT · 03
E-learning & membership platforms
Course delivery, cohort management, paywalls, certification. Built to handle real concurrency on launch day and to give operators a CMS they can run alone.
Thousand-seat cohorts running stably
CAT · 04
Healthcare & member-services
Member portals, eligibility flows, and provider-side dashboards — informed by five years embedded in a US-based health organisation with 100K+ active members.
100K+ members served on Laravel + AWS
CAT · 05
Marketplace platforms
Two- and three-sided marketplaces with the unglamorous parts done well: payouts, disputes, search relevance, trust signals — each side treated as its own product.
Liquidity reached without manual matchmaking
CAT · 06
WHMCS, DNS & security modules
Infrastructure-side work for hosting and security providers — custom WHMCS modules, DNS management consoles, email-security portals. Invisible when it works.
Production modules used by hosting providers
/05 — Career
Built it. Now operates it.
Founding engineer to co-founder to CTO & COO — the arc of someone who has shipped what he now sells.
Now
2026 — present
Co-Founder · CTO & COO
AlphaRages
Operating mandate added to the CTO role — accountable for engineering, design, delivery and commercial outcomes across a 30-person team.
2019 — 2026
Co-Founder & CTO
AlphaRages
Co-founded the firm in 2019. Set technical direction, built the senior engineering bench, and shipped 150+ production systems for founders and operators across the UK, EU and North America.
Dec 2017 — Apr 2023
Lead Product Engineer · Embedded
Membersy · Austin, US
Five years embedded as the technical owner of the member platform at Membersy — an Austin-headquartered health organisation serving 100,000+ active members. Architected and shipped the Laravel, Python and WordPress services running on AWS and DigitalOcean.
2017 — 2019
Founding Engineer
AlphaRages
First engineering hire. Owned architecture and delivery across the early Laravel, Python and WordPress builds — and the hiring bar that became the firm's senior bench — before co-founding the company in 2019.
/04 — Selected work
Three engagements, by shape.
A representative cross-section. Names redacted under NDA — references available on request after a discovery call.
Case · 01 / Healthcare
US member-services platform for a 100K-member health organisation.
A multi-year build and operate engagement: Laravel + Python services on AWS, WordPress for member-facing content, hardened auth and HIPAA-aligned data handling. Embedded as senior engineer through five years of growth.
- Sector
- Healthcare · US
- Stack
- Laravel · Python · WordPress · AWS
- Term
- 5 years, embedded
- Scale
- 100,000+ active members
Case · 02 / Operations
Workflow automation for a UK-based services SME.
Replaced a manual review process running across spreadsheets and shared inboxes with a queue-driven web application — cut median turnaround from days to under thirty minutes and made volume genuinely auditable for the first time.
- Sector
- Professional services · UK
- Stack
- Laravel · Postgres · React · DigitalOcean
- Term
- 14-week build · ongoing retainer
- Outcome
- ~95% cycle-time reduction
Case · 03 / B2B SaaS
MVP-to-Series-A platform for an EU-based founder.
Discovery, design and build of a multi-tenant B2B SaaS — auth, billing, role-based admin, observability — handed back a production system the in-house team could own. Acted as fractional CTO through funding round.
- Sector
- B2B SaaS · EU
- Stack
- Next.js · Node · Postgres · Stripe · AWS
- Term
- 16-week MVP · 6-month CTO retainer
- Outcome
- Series A closed post-launch
Engagements typically operate under mutual NDA. Detailed reference calls and architectural deep-dives are available after an introductory conversation.
/05 — FAQ
Questions founders actually ask.
If yours isn't here, a paragraph by email is the fastest way to find out.
Q.01 How does an engagement with you start?
Most engagements start with a 30-minute intro call to map the problem and the constraints — budget, timeline, in-house team. From there, I typically propose a one or two week paid discovery sprint that produces an architecture sketch, a build plan, and a fixed quote before any production work begins.
Q.02 Do you work as a fractional CTO or only through AlphaRages?
Both. Fractional and advisory CTO engagements run directly with founders, usually one to two days a week. Full product builds run through AlphaRages with a dedicated team of senior engineers and designers — same hands either way.
Q.03 What's the typical team size and timeline for an MVP?
A typical MVP runs three to four months with a team of three to five — a tech lead, two senior full-stack engineers, a product designer, and shared QA. Larger platforms scale up from there. We staff to scope rather than to a fixed bench.
Q.04 Which industries have you shipped products in?
Across 150+ deliveries: SaaS for funded startups, healthcare and membership platforms, e-learning, marketplaces, internal tooling and workflow automation for SMEs, and infrastructure-side modules for hosting and security providers.
Q.05 Do you take equity, retainer, or fixed-scope?
Retainer and fixed-scope are the default. Equity is considered case-by-case for fractional CTO arrangements with venture-backed founders, and only after the first paid engagement has shown a working fit on both sides.
Q.06 Are you UK or Pakistan based, and how does that affect collaboration?
I'm based in Ilford, United Kingdom; the AlphaRages delivery team is in Lahore, Pakistan. The 30+ person team works UK business hours with a four to five hour overlap with US Eastern, which has supported clients across the UK, EU, and North America for eight years.
Q.07 What technology stacks do you specialise in?
Laravel and Python on the backend, WordPress where it earns its keep, modern JavaScript on the front end, with infrastructure on AWS and DigitalOcean. CI/CD, observability, and cloud-native patterns are part of every engagement, not a separate add-on.
Q.08 Can you take on AI or ML adoption work?
Yes — typically as a roadmap engagement first. I help founders separate genuine ML problems from problems better solved with a well-designed product, then scope the build with an engineering team that has shipped LLM-powered features into production.
Q.09 What is your security posture and compliance footing?
Engagements operate to GDPR-aligned data handling by default — least-privilege access, signed NDAs and DPAs before code or data is shared, encrypted secrets, audit-logged production access, and data residency honoured to the client's jurisdiction. We have shipped HIPAA-aligned workflows for US health clients (Membersy, 100K+ members) and PCI-aware payment flows. Formal SOC 2 attestation is on the firm's 2026 roadmap; in the interim we map controls to SOC 2 / ISO 27001 and provide a written security brief on request.
Q.10 Who owns the code and IP, and how is that handled across UK / Pakistan?
The client owns 100% of the code, designs and IP on delivery — assignment is written into the master agreement, not bolted on later. Repositories are hosted in the client's GitHub / GitLab org from day one (we work as collaborators, never as repo owners). Cross-border concerns are addressed via a UK contracting entity for UK and EU clients, mirrored work-for-hire and IP-assignment clauses with every Pakistan-based engineer, and code escrow available for regulated mandates.