Sashi Dahal
Based in Netherlands · 29+ years experience
Summary
I turn complex technology into products that ship. Cloud / AI infrastructure architect. 29+ years building secure clouds, confidential AI and data-center networks.
About
I am a fractional CTO and Cloud / Product / AI infrastructure architect with 29+ years of hands-on experience building, running and securing mission-critical cloud and AI platforms. Companies bring me in when the path forward is complex or unclear, and they need one senior person who can set the technical direction and I am always up for getting my hands dirty in the setup and coding.
As a fractional CTO, I help founders and leadership teams:
• Set technology strategy, roadmaps and build versus buy decisions
• Design secure, scalable cloud and AI architecture
• Cut infrastructure cost through right cloud or on-perm decisions.
• Hire, mentor and lead engineering teams, and manage vendors and contracts
• Take products from customer problems to PRDs, features and delivery
What I bring:
• Confidential AI: at an AI infrastructure company I built a zero-trust AI inference fleet on Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP with NVIDIA B200 and Blackwell GPUs, remote attestation, vLLM and SGLang, and GitOps-driven model fleets.
• Product leadership: as Product Architect for a national-scale cloud provider I owned the OpenStack IaaS and PaaS roadmap, wrote PRDs and designs, and aligned hundreds of engineers and architects.
• Infrastructure ownership: at a privacy-focused search engine I ran multiple datacenters across the Netherlands and the US, BGP, CDN and DDoS mitigation, anti-bot defences, vendor contracts and budget, and migrations to AWS and other cloud providers. I also owned a product end to end, delivered with multi-agent AI workflows.
• Cloud at scale: AWS professional services, 14+ years with OpenStack and Ceph, contributor to the Newton and Queens releases, public clouds with 10,000+ tenants, and air-gapped, defence-grade platforms.
• Leadership: I have owned teams, budgets and SLAs, reported to a C level, and handled hiring and team development.
• Security first: access control, hardening, incident response, multi-tenant isolation and securing AI agent pipelines with human review gates.
Who I help:
AI startups scaling their inference, SaaS companies with a growing cloud bill, hosting and cloud providers, and organizations that need sovereign, GDPR-ready infrastructure they fully control.
How I work:
I start from your business goals and constraints, make clear decisions, and stay accountable for the outcome. Engagements are flexible, from a few days a month as your fractional CTO to hands-on delivery of a critical project. I am based in The Hague, Netherlands. I work remotely worldwide and on site in Europe.
Skills
Software Architecture, Cloud & Infrastructure, M&A / Due Diligence, Platform Modernisation, Cybersecurity, Engineering Leadership, Vendor Management, DevOps, Governance & Risk, Data & AI
Regions covered
Singapore, Israel, France, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Brazil, Asia-Pacific, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Australia, Netherlands, United States, Europe, North America, Africa, South America, Japan, Middle East, Ireland, India, Germany, Canada
Industry experience
Not-for-profit, Government, Fintech, Professional Services, Manufacturing, Retail, SaaS, Education, Healthcare
At a glance
Sashi brings hands-on experience across Software Architecture, Cloud & Infrastructure, M&A / Due Diligence, Platform Modernisation, Cybersecurity, Engineering Leadership and 4 other areas. Available for engagements across Singapore, Israel, France, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Brazil, Asia-Pacific, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Australia, Netherlands, United States, Europe, North America, Africa, South America, Japan, Middle East, Ireland, India, Germany, Canada. Industry experience includes Not-for-profit, Government, Fintech, Professional Services, Manufacturing and 4 more.
How fractional CTO engagements with Sashi work
Sashi works on a fractional basis — typically one to three days a week for an agreed engagement length — so you get senior technical leadership without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire. Engagements commonly include technical due diligence, board reporting, engineering team leadership, technology strategy, architecture reviews, hiring support, and stepping in as interim CTO during a transition.