About

Approach

Good software should feel like magic. Faebriel builds products, not subscriptions - special purpose, built completely, made to be owned rather than renewed.

That's a bet on the right problems and the right craft.

Bio

I'm John Morgan, a software engineer currently living in Chicago. I'm working on building something new here at Faebriel.

Previously, I ran the engineering team at ManageXR where I reported directly to the CEO and helped grow the engineering organization from 3 to 14 people during a period when the business grew 30x. I owned all technical deliverables, hiring, management, budget, architecture, and security, while working closely with Product and GTM on what we built and why.

Before that, I spent four years at Google working on Search and Maps, including large-scale backend systems, machine learning, and search ranking.

My work has always spanned engineering leadership and hands-on technical work: setting strategy and building the organization around it, but also getting into the code when something difficult needs to be solved.

In addition to what I'm working on at Faebriel, I work with founders and small engineering teams on the problems that start appearing as a company grows: architecture, hiring, engineering management, security, technical strategy, enterprise customers, and figuring out what should actually get built.

I'm particularly happy working with small teams where the problems are still messy, the decisions matter, and the person setting technical direction isn't afraid to open the codebase. I’m particularly useful to founder-led software companies with small engineering teams that have started to outgrow informal technical leadership but aren’t ready to hire a full-time CTO or VP Engineering.

Services

Faebriel builds software products. I also work with founders and small engineering teams. Consulting and fractional leadership are ongoing work performed by people, so they’re priced for the time and involvement they require. The goal is the same in both cases: charge in a way that reflects the actual value and cost of what’s being provided, rather than defaulting everything to a subscription. Ways I can help:

• Fractional CTO & Engineering Leadership

  Technical strategy, architecture, engineering management, hiring, product planning, security, and helping founders translate business goals into an engineering plan.

• Senior Engineering & Architecture

  Hands-on implementation for difficult projects where you need someone who can get up to speed quickly, make good technical decisions, and ship.

• Security & Enterprise Readiness

  SOC 2, ISO 27001, security processes, enterprise requirements, technical due diligence, and removing the technical blockers that appear when you start selling to larger companies.

• Engineering Team Development

  Hiring and interviewing, engineering practices, technical leadership, team structure, developer tooling, and helping a growing team operate effectively.

Contact