Build fast.
Scale right.
I am Vagmi Mudumbai, a hands-on Advisory CTO and DevOps Architect with over 24 years of experience. I help startups and scale-ups accelerate their time to validation and market without the overhead of a full-time executive.
# Philosophy
Velocity is free now.
Direction is the new scarcity.
The "Adult in the Room"
AI agents have commoditized code generation. But they haven't solved engineering. The bottleneck isn't typing anymore—it's taste, architecture, and decision-making. You don't need a $250k/year full-time executive to manage a small team. You need high-leverage, strategic oversight to ensure security, scalability, and correct vendor selection.
Velocity vs. Quality
AI allows junior developers to output code at senior velocities. Without an Advisory CTO to provide architectural guardrails, this rapidly leads to unmaintainable "big ball of mud" legacy systems. I provide the necessary friction to ensure speed doesn't kill your product's longevity.
Hands-on Leadership
I don't just draw diagrams. I write the foundational scaffolding (Rust/Go), setup the CI/CD pipelines, and establish the "Golden Paths" that allow your team—and their AI agents—to ship safely and fast.
# Capabilities
# Engagement Models
I'm also building Urai, an AI voice and agent platform that keeps me shipping against the hardest problems in AI infrastructure: Firecracker microVM sandboxes, V8-in-Rust runtimes for tool execution, real-time voice over WebRTC. Engagements bring those battle-tested architectures to your stack. Predictable pricing. No equity required. Pause or cancel anytime.
DevOps Architect
Stability, Security, and Scalability for scale-ups with existing PMF but fragile infrastructure.
- ▹ Monthly Infrastructure Audit
- ▹ Terraform/IaC Refactoring
- ▹ K8s Upgrades & Maintenance
- ▹ CI/CD Pipeline Optimization
Advisory CTO
Strategic leadership for early-stage startups. Your veteran technical co-founder, part-time.
- ▹ Technical Roadmap Planning
- ▹ Vendor/Stack Selection
- ▹ Hiring & Vetting (First 5 Engineers)
- ▹ Code Reviews & RFC Validation
- ▹ Weekly Sync + Board Attendance
Pragmatic AI Engineering
A scoped engagement for teams building production AI systems: harnesses, sandboxes, private routing, agentic search.
- ▹ Agent Harness & Guardrail Engineering
- ▹ Secure Sandboxed Code Execution (Firecracker)
- ▹ Private Model Routing & LLM Gateways
- ▹ Agentic Search & Retrieval Systems
- ▹ Platform Integrations & Team Roadmap
Why engage this way?
Immediate Impact
Skip the 3-month hiring process. I integrate with your team and start delivering value from Day 1.
No Equity Cost
Get C-level expertise without diluting your cap table. Perfect for early-stage validation.
Flexible Commitment
Scale up or down as your needs change. Pause or cancel with just a month's notice.
Not sure what you need?
Every startup is different. If you need a custom combination of these services—like a heavy initial audit followed by ongoing advisory—we can tailor a package for you.
Let's discuss your situation# Selected Work
A book and reference implementation on building rootless containers from scratch using Bash. Deep dive into Linux namespaces, cgroups, and overlay filesystems.
Urai Voice
CTO & Co-founder
Building a developer-first voice AI platform for natural, real-time, interruptible conversations. The core voice service is written in Rust, utilizing Stunner for WebRTC and hosted on GKE with CloudNativePG and Barman for resilience.
Thiri
Platform Architecture (Urai)
Built a secure, API-driven Firecracker runtime for AI agents to execute ephemeral Python code. Engineered 'Thiri Linux', a custom Alpine-based distro with a specialized kernel (netfilter/conntrack) to support nested containers.
AICrete
Infrastructure & Platform Engineering
Migrated infrastructure from Heroku to AWS EC2 with Compute Savings Plans. Built a custom Go-based CLI developer platform for log viewing and environment management. Integrated cloud-based Django dispatch system with legacy on-prem Windows systems using Go.
Tunecore
Platform Architecture
Architected the split of a 10-year Rails monolith into microservices. Built high-performance distribution services in Go and AWS Lambda, handling $1bn+ in artist payouts.
Moove
Location Services
Optimized route planning and location tracking for employee mobility. Migrated from Google Maps SDK to OSRM, implementing WebSocket-based real-time tracking.
Ready to accelerate your engineering?
Whether you need a full architectural audit, a DevOps overhaul, or strategic leadership, I'm here to help.
Schedule a Free 30-min Call