The consultancy of Jeff Kloythanomsup, Amsterdam
Fractional cloud architecture for EU startups and small businesses
Cloud architecture and a senior cloud lead on a fixed monthly retainer, long before a full-time cloud team makes sense.
I'm starting to see a lot of startups and scale-ups hit the same wall. They need a cloud lead years before a cloud team makes sense. Someone has to sit in the architecture reviews, say no to the wrong vendor, and answer the enterprise security questionnaire. That person also has to keep delivery honest and hold cloud, delivery, and AI in one picture. A fixed monthly retainer, built around agreed deliverables, usually covers it.
I've done this work from both sides of the table. At an AWS consulting partner I worked alongside customers' architects and delivery managers, and client NPS rose from 8 to 10. Earlier I led a 10-person operations team. As a founder I made the budget and roadmap calls myself, including a pre-seed raise. I bring clarity to the room, and engineers can say what they don't know without it costing them anything.
Reference architecture
How the pieces connect
An illustrative flow, not a diagram of a client environment.
1
System discovery
Architecture, people, and delivery bottlenecks.
2
Risk and priorities
Critical dependencies and near-term decisions.
3
Target architecture
Trade-offs, sequencing, and technical standards.
4
Delivery plan
Ownership, milestones, and measurable outcomes.
5
Team pairing
Design reviews, decisions, and hands-on guidance.
6
Handover
Documentation, runbooks, and independent ownership.
What's included
Architecture and security reviews
I write a review of what you have, ranked by risk, with the fixes in the order I'd do them. An investor or an enterprise buyer can read it as it stands.
Vendor and tooling decisions
I've run most of the options in production. That's what backs my opinion on what to buy, what to build, and what to drop.
Delivery oversight alongside your engineers and product leads
I'm a second set of eyes on scope, estimates, and technical calls. I sit in the room when decisions happen, not in a report afterwards.
Ops leadership: a 10-person team, 2,000+ instances, 100% SLA
I set standards for on-call, incident response, and change management. They come from running a team at that scale. I cut them down to what a team of six actually needs.
A founder's view of budget, runway, and product
I've owned product strategy, go-to-market, and a pre-seed raise. My infrastructure advice comes with runway, hiring plan, and roadmap in mind.
Coaching for the team who will own it
I pair with your engineers and train them, so they run the platform after I step back. I want them to understand it well enough to trust it and feel proud of it.
Where I've done it
Every item here comes from my CV. View CV.
Senior Cloud Engineer, AWS consulting partner, 2021 to 2026
Delivered AWS solutions across a diverse customer base alongside architects and delivery managers, raising client NPS from 8 to 10 on high-net-worth migration engagements.
ThriveUp Care, Founder & CEO, 2025 to 2026
Founded and ran a marketplace end to end: product strategy, go-to-market, pre-seed fundraising, and the code and infrastructure underneath it.
Senior Delivery Engineer, managed cloud provider, 2020 to 2021
Trained five client engineers on Jenkins CI/CD, containerisation, and EKS deployment so a Fortune 500 migration could move at the client's pace.
Earlier roles, 2016 to 2020
Led a 10-member team managing 2,000+ production instances with 100% SLA compliance.
Certifications
AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Professional, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, Professional, Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CNCF), HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate, Claude Certified Architect, Professional (Anthropic), Linux Foundation Certified SysAdmin.
Other services
Cloud migration
I move teams onto AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, or out of a setup they've outgrown. I map every dependency before anything moves.
Read morePlatform engineering
I do cloud engineering on the platform you already run. I make it calmer, cheaper, and understood by more than one person on the team.
Read moreCloud security hardening
I find the gaps in your cloud accounts, identity, network, and data, rank them by what an attacker reaches first, and close them with your team.
Read moreAI-built app security review
I review the app your AI coding agent wrote, from secrets and sign-in to the cloud account behind it, and rank what to fix first. From €500.
Read moreAI integration
I do AI consulting and AI engineering for EU teams. I put language models to work on the problems that matter, and I ship them to production.
Read moreCommon questions
- What is a fractional cloud lead?
- A senior cloud and AI lead on a fixed monthly retainer. That covers architecture and security reviews, vendor decisions, a seat in planning and due diligence, and coaching for the engineers who will own the platform. No full-time salary comes attached.
- How is it priced?
- Per month, not by the hour, in three fixed packages: €2,000, €3,000, or €4,000. Each month has agreed deliverables, such as a review report, a cost report, and decision memos. How much review and advice the team needs, and whether it wants hands-on work too, decide which. €2,000 covers a regular review cadence and advice on call. €4,000 adds hands-on work alongside your team.
- Can you sit in technical due diligence or an enterprise security review?
- Yes. I prepare the written review, ranked by risk, in a form an investor or an enterprise buyer can read. Then I join the conversation.
- Do you work remotely?
- Yes. I work from Amsterdam with teams across the EU, and I show up in person where it helps.
Let's talk.
A 30-minute call, no pitch. We look at your current setup, your stage, and the thing that's bothering you about it. I give a straight opinion on what to change, what to leave alone, and whether the problem is the one it looks like. What's the one thing in your stack you'd fix tomorrow?
Prefer email or phone? hello@netninjas.eu or +31 6 45984313