About rojoroboto
Deeply technical. Intensely creative.
I'm Nathan Toups and I founded rojoroboto in 2010. I'm a former CTO, Staff+ Platform Engineer, and Chief Cloud Architect with an unusual combination of education: an MS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and a BA in Theatre. Deeply technical and intensely creative.
In 2020, I put rojoroboto on hiatus. I wanted to solve these problems from the inside, not just as a consultant. SRE. Staff Platform Engineer. Chief Cloud Architect. Software Architect. CTO. I've been in your seat, making the same hard calls you're making now.
Most consultants are either engineers who struggle with organizational dynamics or organizational consultants who lack technical depth. My path avoided both traps, and then I spent 2020-2025 doing the actual work.
I have more than 15 years of experience. Before 2020, I'd consulted with more than 100 companies and built rojoroboto's reputation. But I wanted to do the work, not just advise on it. So I spent five years solving the juicy problems from the inside. I've reduced CI/CD Pipelines from 2 hours to 10 minutes. Reduced Cycletime by 23% in an engineering org of more than 150 ICs. Shipped SOC 2 Type 2 in record time. Built FDA-Approved Cloud Architecture. I've even helped ship impossible projects like migrating an acquisition from VMs to Kubernetes, AWS to GCP, in under three months with a team of three.
In 2024, I launched Book Overflow with my co-host Carter Morgan, interviewing more than 20 authors of the frameworks that shape modern engineering organizations, including Kent Beck on Tidy First, Martin Fowler on refactoring, Manuel Pais on Team Topologies, Brian Kernighan on the practice of programming, and John Ousterhout on A Philosophy of Software Design. These conversations directly inform how I help clients: applying proven patterns, not inventing new ones.
In 2025, I've brought that experience back to consulting. This combination of deep technical expertise and continuous learning from industry leaders shapes how I work. My proudest achievements aren't just the systems I've built; they're the teams I've transformed, where developers ship fearlessly, on-call doesn't mean burnout, and senior engineers stay because they love the work.
If your engineering team doubled and velocity died, I've lived this pattern before, and I know how to untangle it.
Nathan Toups
The Problem
The Pattern I See Time and Again
Your engineering team doubles. You hire senior talent. You invest in better tooling. And somehow, everything slows down.
I've seen this time and again, and the symptoms are remarkably consistent. Teams become scared to deploy, afraid to change code because they don't trust what will break. So they add guardrails: more approvals, more reviews, more process. Now things come to a crawl, but at least it feels safer (right?).
The infrastructure tech debt grows until no one can reason about the system anymore. Observability is so bad that when something breaks, the team is debugging in the dark, hopping through tools, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Features ship despite violating error budgets because the pressure to deliver overwhelms the discipline to maintain quality.
Meanwhile, ruinous empathy destroys the team. No one wants to have the difficult conversation about the code that needs to be rewritten or the person who's not carrying their weight. Busy-ness theatre. Endless meetings. Low-value status reports. It destroys any chance of deep work.
Deployments that took hours now take days. Developers wait on infrastructure, approvals, or other teams. Your best engineers update their LinkedIn. Leadership asks, “Why are we moving so slowly?” And when you try to fix it by hiring more people, you make it worse.
As your engineering team grows, organizational friction starts overwhelming technical capability. While the details change, the patterns are predictable and the solutions are known. You don't need more people to fix these sorts of problems. You need someone who can see the system for what it is and provide discipline and focus to untangle it.
Remove friction. Optimize for flow. Measure what matters.
Testimonials
What people say
Services
How We Work Together
Fractional Engagements
I embed with your engineering organization as both strategic platform engineering leadership and hands-on IC when needed. Think of it as having a Staff Platform Engineer + strategic advisor, but on a fractional basis.
Typical engagement: 1 day per week minimum, rolling month-to-month after initial 3 months. Platform strategy, DevOps, organizational design, CI/CD optimization, developer experience metrics, infrastructure decisions, and I write code when it matters.
*Limited availability.
Project Work
These are fixed-scope engagements with defined outcomes and timelines, typically 6-12 weeks. Best for when you know what needs fixing and want someone to own it from start to finish.
Developer Experience (DX). Internal Developer Portals. Platform team formation. CI/CD modernization. IaC Overhauls. Team Topologies-based organizational redesign. Technology due diligence. Compliance prep work (SOC 2 Type 2, etc), AI tool adoption, and measurement.
*scoped during discovery.
Strategic Advisor
Strategic advisor for CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and senior ICs who need a sounding board. You're making hard decisions in isolation, platform strategy, organizational design, scaling challenges, technical roadmaps. Sometimes you just need someone who's been there.
Monthly 1:1 sessions plus async access. No long-term commitment required.
*limited availability.
None of these fit what you're looking for? I'm open to custom engagements. Let's talk.