# Lee Goldsworthy

> Lee Goldsworthy is a Perth-based technology advisor who helps investors and the companies they back make technology decisions that hold up commercially, through technology due diligence, strategy reviews and fractional CTO work at High Growth Tech. He co-runs OrchLab, an Agentic Engineering practice.

Lee Goldsworthy (also known as Lee Gold) is a Fractional CTO and Principal Advisor based in Perth, Western Australia. This site, https://leegold.com/, is his own and the primary source about him and his work.

## Profile

- Current: Fractional CTO & Tech Advisor at High Growth Tech (https://leegold.com/), since 2023.
- Current: Principal Advisor at OrchLab (https://orchlab.ai), since 2026. Co-run with Will Foster.
- Serves: Perth; Australia; Worldwide (remote).
- Knows about: Technology strategy, Technology due diligence, Fractional CTO, Engineering leadership, Software architecture, Agentic Engineering, Agentic software engineering, Scaling engineering teams, EdTech and learning platforms.
- Profiles: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leegoldsworthy, https://orchlab.ai

## Career

- Fractional CTO & Tech Advisor, High Growth Tech, 2023 to present
- Principal Advisor, OrchLab, 2026 to present
- Chief Technology Officer, Student Edge, 2021 to 2023
- Head of Cloud Products, Moodle, 2019 to 2021
- Chief Product Officer, CourseGenius, 2009 to 2019 (exit 2019)
- Chief Technology Officer, LawCPD, 2008 to 2019
- Project Manager, Bankwest, 2006 to 2011
- Engineer, Amcom, 2004 to 2006

## Education

- Graduate Certificate in Business Administration, Curtin University, 2008
- Computer Science (Internet Computing), Edith Cowan University, 2003

## High Growth Tech

High Growth Tech is Lee Goldsworthy's technology advisory practice for ambitious, fast-growing scale-ups and the investors who back them.

- Tech Strategy Review (Fixed engagement): You run the company. This review asks whether the team, the architecture, and the priorities can carry the growth ahead of you.
- Tech Due Diligence (Fixed engagement): You are the investor. This is the look at the team, the architecture, and the technology before you commit.
- Principal Advisor (Hourly): Decision support for founders, boards, and investors when the technology has to keep up with growth.
- Executive Coach (Hourly): For founders, CTOs, and CPOs taking on strategy, culture, and risk as the company grows.
- Fractional CTO (Monthly): Embedded engineering leadership at 2, 4, or 8 hours a week, while the scale-up grows.
- Speaking: You are hosting the offsite or the strategy day. This session is for that room.

## OrchLab

OrchLab is an Agentic Engineering practice co-run by Lee Goldsworthy and Will Foster. It takes software engineering teams from AI-assisted coding up to orchestration, where engineers direct teams of agents and review their work.

- AI Strategy Review (Fixed engagement): The same review family, narrower and deeper on how Agentic Engineering changes Velocity, Quality, and Growth.
- AI Skills Accelerator (Fixed engagement): A full-day in-person workshop that takes engineers up to loop orchestration.
- AI Codebase Accelerator (Fixed engagement): A software factory is deployed so the team can run loop orchestration for Velocity, Quality, and Growth.

## Pages

- [About](https://leegold.com/about/): Lee Goldsworthy, Fractional CTO and Principal Advisor: who he works with, why investors and founders engage him, and what clients say.
- [Services](https://leegold.com/services/): Services from Lee Goldsworthy: tech strategy reviews, tech due diligence, advisory, coaching and fractional CTO work through High Growth Tech, and Agentic Engineering for technical teams through OrchLab.
- [Testimonials](https://leegold.com/testimonials/): What clients say about working with Lee Goldsworthy across Technology Strategy Review, Fractional CTO, AI Skills Accelerator, Principal Advisor, and Tech Due Diligence engagements.
- [Contact](https://leegold.com/contact/): Book a first 30-minute conversation with Lee Goldsworthy, Fractional CTO and Principal Advisor at High Growth Tech, Perth.

## Talks and podcasts

- The Honest Mechanics of Going Fractional, Morning Startup Perth, September 2026: https://vimeo.com/1221321309#t=8m44s
- Building AI-native products, Spacecubed AI Founder Sprint, August 2026
- AI Knowledge Work: Hype vs Here Now, Purpose Ventures, April 2026
- Beyond the Build: What to look for in a Great CTO Cofounder, Morning Startup Perth, August 2025: https://vimeo.com/1105639597#t=4m33s
- From Seed to Series A, Startup Today podcast, April 2025: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7hCAKTf5h2sKRM3fKjDU2k
- Embrace the Why, not the How, Morning Startup Perth, November 2023: https://vimeo.com/877705085#t=7m55s

## Posts

- [We now have to hire for curiosity](https://leegold.com/posts/we-now-have-to-hire-for-curiosity/): Curiosity is now (and honestly, probably always was) the most valuable trait for a software engineer's career. If you're a software engineer that's not wildly
- [Your week should be full of interesting hats](https://leegold.com/posts/your-week-should-be-full-of-interesting-hats/): Your week should be full of interesting hats. (not literal hats) The rate of change in 2026 is sufficient that "Don't let perfection be the enemy of good" is a
- [Trusting the code agents produce](https://leegold.com/posts/trusting-the-code-agents-produce/): Software Engineer: "I can't trust the quality of the code that agents produce" This isn't a new challenge. Engineering Leadership have had to manage code
- [You are responsible for your work product](https://leegold.com/posts/you-are-responsible-for-your-work-product/): Some great bosses at early roles drummed into me to never use 3 pages when you could communicate 80% of the value in 3 paragraphs, or 3 bullets. If I didn't
- [Inserting AI will amplify the organisation you have](https://leegold.com/posts/inserting-ai-will-amplify-the-organisation-you-have/): Inserting AI will amplify the organisation you have. Whether that's for better or worse is a straight line from where you are right now. High-ownership team
- [2026 is the year of feeling like you're falling behind](https://leegold.com/posts/2026-is-the-year-of-feeling-like-youre-falling-behind/): I'm calling it: 2026 is the year of Feeling Like You're Falling Behind™. "Who thinks they're falling behind right now?" I asked on Thursday. The room was
- [Treat your LLM like a new starter](https://leegold.com/posts/treat-your-llm-like-a-new-starter/): TL;DR: We already take seriously the patterns for effective information flows for our humans, now we just need to apply this same thinking organisation-wide
- [Why aren't we shipping faster with AI?](https://leegold.com/posts/why-arent-we-shipping-faster-with-ai/): "Why aren't we shipping faster with AI?" is the dominant question I've seen up-close from 13 (and counting) Boards and Executive Leadership Teams to CTOs of
- [Vibe coding is not vibe engineering](https://leegold.com/posts/vibe-coding-is-not-vibe-engineering/): This isn't a Technology story about the dangers of AI, this is a Risk Management story about the dangers of overconfidence. For the last week, we've been
- [Your agents are on the team now. Run retros on them](https://leegold.com/posts/your-agents-are-on-the-team-now-run-retros-on-them/): Your team is no longer just the people, it's also your agents. Which team is the one that's highest performing? The one that incrementally and measurably gets
- [The bottleneck just moved to the leadership team](https://leegold.com/posts/the-bottleneck-just-moved-to-the-leadership-team/): Over the next 1-4 months, every Senior Engineer can have output equivalent to a whole team in 2025. This moves the bottleneck to Product/Engineering Leadership
- [Sandboxes are not negotiable at L3 and L4](https://leegold.com/posts/sandboxes-are-not-negotiable-at-l3-and-l4/): Not all that glitters is gold. You've seen plenty of AI booster-ism from me in 2026, but the conversations I have with software companies also has a material
- [Senior engineers: from tradie to builder](https://leegold.com/posts/senior-engineers-from-tradie-to-builder/): The role of "Senior Software Engineer" is right now in the process of evolving from "Tradie" to "Builder". The tech is *now here*, but the adoption is uneven.
- [Bait the hook with food that fish like](https://leegold.com/posts/bait-the-hook-with-food-that-fish-like/): Bait the hook with food that *fish* like. The fundamentals of getting a concept into market quickly, then learning from real users has never been more applicabl
- [MoltBook, Darwinism, and Persistent Sovereign Agents](https://leegold.com/posts/moltbook-darwinism-persistent-agents/): How MoltBook frames the Darwinian path from hosted API to persistent sovereign agent.
- [How I run zero inbox as a Fractional](https://leegold.com/posts/how-i-run-zero-inbox-as-a-fractional/): As a Fractional, my Attention Management has to be brutal, and a friend recently asked me to describe how I run my Zero Inbox. it's a blend of Eisenhower
- [A 30-second risk check before you click "I accept"](https://leegold.com/posts/a-30-second-risk-check-before-you-click-i-accept/): I get FOMO when looking at the promised productivity gains from all these amazing-looking new platforms I hear about every week (each bearing enticing promises
- [Being wrong out loud](https://leegold.com/posts/being-wrong-out-loud/): When you've (recently in my case) been objectively wrong (and publicly so), do you get the most out of the opportunity? I was hanging out with my in-law's over
- [Curiosity is the job security](https://leegold.com/posts/curiosity-is-the-job-security/): Your knowledge worker job will likely evolve significantly in the next 5 years. You're probably fine if you're the curious type who constantly experiments with
- [Vibe coding: proof of concept, prototype, then hire an engineer](https://leegold.com/posts/vibe-coding-proof-of-concept-prototype-then-hire-an-engineer/): So which is it? "The next generation of billion-dollar software companies will be built by Vibe Coders", or "Vibe Coding is only good for producing billions of
- [From "why are we doing this" to "how we measure success"](https://leegold.com/posts/from-why-are-we-doing-this-to-how-we-measure-success/): There's a progression in a Software Engineer's career, but the job title doesn't really help us to understand the broader journey. Jnr/Mid SWE is about
- [Two hours, two days or two weeks](https://leegold.com/posts/two-hours-two-days-or-two-weeks/): "Can we drop what we're working on and focus on this URGENT thing please?" ...is a phrase all Engineering Managers and Tech Leads hate hearing. The reflex is
- [Effort, size and fidelity: three definitions to agree on day one](https://leegold.com/posts/effort-size-and-fidelity-three-definitions-to-agree-on-day-one/): When I land in a new startup/scale-up, I want to have fast and deep conversations with their product and engineering teams, and have everyone walk away with a
- [Break the rewrite cycle](https://leegold.com/posts/break-the-rewrite-cycle/): Been there, rewritten that. Every software engineer has imagined an amazing rewrite that breathes new life into a legacy codebase/stack, but let's be honest:
- [The engineer with the broader aperture](https://leegold.com/posts/the-engineer-with-the-broader-aperture/): One of the traits I see consistently in the strongest technology leaders is their ability to adopt a broader organisational aperture than their peers when
- [The $20k a month AWS bill with no revenue](https://leegold.com/posts/the-20k-a-month-aws-bill-with-no-revenue/): "I had $20k/month in AWS bills and no revenue" Do product engineering types have a responsibility to first time founders that goes beyond build and deploy, or
- [Before you start your MVP](https://leegold.com/posts/before-you-start-your-mvp/): What non-technical founders need to sort out before they hire a dev. The decisions that shape everything about your MVP.
- [Non-tech leaders can effectively champion security](https://leegold.com/posts/non-tech-leaders-champion-security/): You don't need to understand the tech to champion security. What non-technical leaders can do that actually makes a difference.
- [AWS cost optimisation is like servicing a car](https://leegold.com/posts/aws-bill-like-servicing-car/): Cloud costs compound silently. Here's why regular cost reviews aren't optional for startups burning AWS or Azure spend.
- [How grad & junior Devs can stand out at interviews](https://leegold.com/posts/junior-devs-stand-out-interviews/): The moves that actually differentiate junior devs in a crowded market, from someone who interviews and hires them.
- [Cancel your Annual Performance Reviews](https://leegold.com/posts/cancel-your-performance-reviews/): Annual performance reviews measure the wrong things and arrive too late to matter. Here's what actually builds high-performing teams.
- [Real Full Stack Developer](https://leegold.com/posts/real-full-stack-developer/): What 'full stack' actually means in practice, and why hiring for the unicorn usually leaves startups worse off.
- [How Founders best communicate with Engineers](https://leegold.com/posts/morning-startup-why-not-how/): How Founders can have great conversations with Engineers
- [Giving hard feedback](https://leegold.com/posts/hard-feedback/): Hard feedback only lands when trust is already there. How to build the conditions where honest conversations become normal.
- [Hiring for strong decision-making](https://leegold.com/posts/central-control-p1-hiring/): The first in a multipart series that explores tools available to new-ish people-leaders to build teams that make strong decisions more often.