Palahepitiya Gamage Amila
I’ve sat in the chair you’re sitting in.
Founder, engineer, and CTO across a string of hard problems. I have made these calls under real pressure, and I have seen what the wrong ones cost a year later.
I started writing code sixteen years ago. Since then I have built systems for healthcare, fintech, construction, logistics and more. I led small teams and larger ones, shipped products that worked, and a few that did not.
One thing held true across all of it: the technical decisions made early decide what is possible later. Roadmaps, raises, and hiring plans all inherit those calls.
For eight years I have worked as a CTO and fractional CTO, owning strategy, architecture, product pressure, and the team that has to deliver. Today I help founders who need the seat without a £150k full-time hire. Agents and specialists collect the facts and write drafts. I decide.
I am based in Manchester (Bowdon–Manchester). I work with founders in the UK and further afield when the fit is right. Local search lives on Fractional CTO Manchester. This page is who I am.
Tech Nation Exceptional Talent.
How I think about the work
Three things, together.
Own the decisions
Advice without ownership is cheap. I take the calls that bind the company, and I stay for the consequences.
Agents collect, I decide
Agents and specialists can cover more ground than any one human in a week. They do not know what matters at your stage. I do. They collect and draft. I decide. Anything external waits for your approval.
Tech and product together
I have owned engineering and product pressure in the same chair. Architecture that ignores the revenue story is incomplete. Product ambition that ignores the codebase is a fantasy. I do not assess or lead them as if they were strangers.
Selected engagements
Ferry · US fintech
Fractional CTO. Took the App Store rating from 2 to 4.5 stars in six months and scaled to 40,000+ users and $25M+ in monthly transactions. Led the company through SOC 2, won and supported Fortune-100 accounts like Cheesecake Factory, rolled out AI tooling across engineering, and grew two engineers into team leads.
Amila stays calm under pressure, anticipates the technical roadblocks, and creates practical solutions that resolve company-wide issues. His technical depth, and the questions he asks, set him apart. He owns the hardest, highest-stakes work and sees it through independently, from our SOC 2 to the Cheesecake Factory rollout. Fortune-100-level support, delivered, and the major reason that account has been so happy with us.
Trista Kempa, Founder & COO, Ferry
BORIS · UK construction tech
Fractional CTO. Led an 18-month transformation from 200 single-tenant instances to one multi-tenant SaaS platform, cutting infrastructure cost and setting the path from £1.8M toward £10M ARR.
VoiceIQ · B2B SaaS
Founder CTO, 2018–2022. Owned strategy, architecture and product, built the team, and shipped ML for voice-based vulnerability detection.
- Ferry
- BORIS
- VoiceIQ
- NHS trusts
- Cheesecake Factory