Zach Smith: CTO, Product Leader & Applied-AI Engineer
I turn complexity into working software, shaping product direction, building engineering teams, and shipping with AI-augmented velocity. Available for full-time or fractional roles.
With over two decades in SaaS, I bring deep experience in product development, cloud infrastructure, applied AI, and security/compliance. I know how to lead through growth, uncertainty, and change without slowing you down.
How I Help
Hands-on across product, engineering, and applied AI.
- Product & Development
End-to-end product leadership: strategy, UX, specifications, architecture, and hands-on development. I build and ship, from idea to production. - Applied AI
I build AI features and agents and get them into production: deciding where AI belongs and where it doesn't, grounding it in your data, and proving it works with evaluations before it ships. - AI-Driven Delivery
I build with AI tooling every day, moving at the speed of a small team without giving up quality. I also design development processes around what AI now automates, from ideation through shipping and maintenance, with the CI/CD and cloud infrastructure to support it. - Security & Compliance
Security and compliance built in from the start: SOC 2, secure architecture, and DevSecOps. That foundation is what makes it safe to put AI near sensitive data.
Writing & Projects
- 9 Tech Health Questions Every Non-Technical SaaS Founder Should Be Asking
An in-depth checklist to help SaaS founders without a technical background assess how their technology is really doing. Covers code ownership, deployment readiness, security, scalability, and product roadmap alignment. - Quest Mouse
A side project: a conversational AI Dungeon Master for D&D, built with voice AI and modern LLMs. I'm building it in public and writing about the experience on my Substack, covering architecture decisions, where AI tools succeed and fail, and what it's actually like to build software in the AI age.
Background
Deep experience across SaaS, services, and startup ecosystems
- Founder & Principal Consultant – Parforce LLC (2025–present)
Fractional CTO and product leadership for founders and small teams. Hands-on AI-assisted development and delivery, technical advisory, e-commerce and payment-system migrations, and onboarding engineering teams onto AI development tooling and workflows. - Fractional CTO & Product Lead – Written Word Media (2025–2026)
Hands-on product and engineering leadership for a media and marketing platform. Stabilized delivery, redesigned workflows with AI-assisted automation, in some cases reducing manual effort by as much as 95%. - CTO & Co-Founder – Channeltivity (2007–2025)
Built and led product, engineering, and compliance for a leading PRM platform. Grew from zero to millions in ARR, achieved top G2 rankings, and led multiple SOC 2 Type II audits with zero exceptions. - CEO – Analog Method (2001–2012)
Ran and scaled a digital agency, delivering award-winning work for high-profile clients. Sold the company in 2012. - Director of Web Dev – CBI Connect (2000-2002)
Led web application development for B2B clients, owning architecture and delivery. - University of Pennsylvania
BAS Computer Science, cum laude (2003)
Get In Touch
If you're looking for a technical leader who can build, ship, and make good decisions, let's talk.