About Christopher Grant

I’m not the “ex-Google guy who does consulting.” I’m the engineer who spent 8 years at Google Cloud in the room with companies like Home Depot, Nokia, Sabre, and Panera when they were making their hardest platform decisions — and who now brings those patterns to companies that need the same caliber of technical leadership without the full-time hire.

How I Got Here

I’ve been building technology for 28 years. Started writing code, grew into architecture, and eventually into the leadership roles where you’re responsible for the decisions that compound — the ones that either accelerate your organization or quietly constrain it for years.

At Google Cloud, I spent 8 years working with enterprise engineering teams on their most complex challenges: cloud migrations at retail scale, platform rebuilds for telecom infrastructure, deployment tooling that had to work in the real world. I co-created products like Cloud Deploy by working directly with the customers who would use them, which taught me something consulting never could — what actually works when the pressure is on.

I founded Nebari Consulting because I kept seeing the same pattern: companies at critical inflection points who needed senior technical leadership but couldn’t justify — or couldn’t find — a full-time CTO with this depth of experience. Fractional made sense. One relationship, real accountability, and the pattern recognition that comes from doing this work across 20+ engagements.

What Makes This Different

The value isn’t in frameworks or methodologies — it’s in pattern recognition. After two decades of architecture reviews, leadership offsites, team assessments, and yes, 2am incident responses, I know what works because I’ve done it. I’ve seen what happens when companies defer the hard technical decisions, and I’ve seen what happens when they make them well.

Every engagement starts with honest assessment. I’ll tell you what’s working, what isn’t, and what will hurt you in 18 months if you don’t address it now. Then we build a plan that your team can actually execute — not a slide deck that collects dust.

AI/ML — Not a Buzzword, a Practice

I invested early and deeply in AI/ML strategy because I saw where enterprise technology was heading. The KeyBank engagement — implementing AI-enhanced SDLC in a regulated financial services environment — is a good example of what this looks like in practice. It’s not about adopting AI for its own sake. It’s about understanding which problems AI actually solves for your organization, implementing responsibly, and building the team capabilities to sustain it.

I help CEOs and CTOs cut through the noise: build vs. buy vs. partner, where AI creates real leverage vs. where it’s a distraction, and how to make decisions you won’t regret when the hype cycle moves on.

Certifications

• Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect
• AWS Solutions Architect

Community

I’m an active member of 7CTOs and CTOx peer networks — communities of technology leaders who share the reality of the job, not the LinkedIn version of it.

Let’s Talk

If you’re at an inflection point — scaling your engineering team, navigating a platform migration, figuring out your AI strategy, or just needing someone who’s been where you’re going — I’d like to hear about it.

Schedule a 15-minute conversation →