Robert Mejlerö

Consultant Profile in Tech Leadership, Strategy and Developer-Centric Execution

Robert Mejlerö is a senior technology leader with over two decades of experience in building and scaling development teams, driving digital strategy, and aligning tech execution with business outcomes. His professional path reflects a pragmatic, hands-on approach to leadership, formed through years of delivering real results in high-pressure environments across Europe and the United States.

With deep operational experience as a CTO, project manager, agile coach and product strategist, Robert combines executive-level thinking with ground-level action. Whether leading in-house teams or acting as a fractional CTO, his work is marked by structure, transparency and execution focus. He does not rely on hype or inflated frameworks. Instead, he prioritizes clarity, simplicity and responsibility across every layer of the tech organization.

Career Overview

Over the past 22 years, Robert has operated in a wide range of companies, from startups and mid-sized SaaS businesses to large multinationals and regulated enterprises. His focus has consistently been to bring technology in direct alignment with product and business objectives.

Snapshot:

• 22+ years in technology leadership
• 7 years in full CTO roles
• 70+ developers hired
• 50+ developer teams led
• MBA from FHNW Basel and Edinburgh Business School
• 3 Agile and project management certifications (PMP, CSM, CSP)
• Hands-on coding skills in PHP, Python and Java
• Cloud experience across AWS, GCP, Azure
• Certified in ITIL and DevOps practices
• Languages: English, German, Swedish (+Norwegian and Danish)
• Based in Engelberg, Switzerland

Robert has operated as CTO across several businesses including Annanow AG, Hotelcard AG, NU Technology AG, Lanterna Education, and Zmags. He is also founder and principal consultant at The Mejlerö Company GmbH, offering fractional CTO services to growing tech companies across Europe and the US .

A Pragmatic Approach to CTO Leadership

Robert’s leadership is defined by precision, not posturing. His approach is rooted in three areas:

1. Tech as a Business Driver
2. He rejects the idea of tech for tech’s sake. Every initiative he leads must be connected to a tangible business outcome, whether that is product velocity, customer experience, cost reduction or operational clarity.
3. Developers at the Center
4. As outlined in his book The CTO Playbook, Robert sees developer productivity and team structure as the most important variables in any tech-led business. He helps teams build self-organizing, focused working models that reduce noise and increase ownership.
5. Agile Without Theatre
6. While deeply versed in agile methodologies like Kanban and Scrum, Robert is openly critical of “fake agile” and bloated frameworks that slow teams down. His version of agile is lean, visual, and measurable. It moves the company forward, not sideways.

Key Capabilities

Strategic Technology Execution

• Roadmap definition and backlog ownership
• SaaS and platform architecture design
• Buy vs build evaluation
• Tech due diligence and audits
  

Developer Team Leadership

• Full-cycle hiring, onboarding, and offboarding
• Remote and distributed team management
• Coaching junior leads into senior CTO-level roles
• Team scaling across Europe, India and the U.S.
  

Agile Product Delivery

• Introduction and facilitation of Kanban-based flows
• Feature prioritization linked to business value
• Collaboration between developers and business stakeholders
• MVP structuring and launch cycles
  

Cloud and Infrastructure

• Full setup and optimization of DevOps flows
• Infrastructure scaling and cost control
• CI/CD across AWS, Azure, GCP and DigitalOcean
• Security, monitoring and incident management frameworks

Notable Experience

• At EF Education, Robert led global development teams across Lucerne, Boston and Bangalore, overseeing multi-region delivery and establishing agile collaboration in a highly distributed setup .
• At Maersk, he served as an agile coach for 22 nationalities in product, UX, engineering and AI teams. He introduced agile mindsets and ways of working while navigating the realities of large-scale digital transformation .
• At Hotelcard AG, he drove platform growth for Switzerland’s leading hotel subscription service, leading development on payment systems, partner integrations and internal operations tooling .
• At NU Technology and Lanterna, he led cross-functional teams building modern edtech platforms focused on adaptive learning and global tutoring services, both featuring real-time analytics and complex scheduling infrastructure.

His Philosophy, In Practice

Robert’s book, The CTO Playbook, outlines a realistic and often blunt guide for anyone working in, or leading, software development teams. Rather than following a consultant-style framework, the playbook lays out his accumulated knowledge on five essential dimensions: People, Work, Tech, Leadership and Communication.

Some key beliefs extracted from the playbook:

• Hiring is not about credentials, it’s about curiosity and collaborative drive.
• Onboarding is where trust is built or broken.
• Outsourcing is fine, as long as you control the architecture and handover.
• Agile is a mindset, not a process document.
• Business comes first, always. If you’re not shipping, you’re wasting money.
• Teams that don’t own what they build are destined to underperform.
• Leadership is not about managing tasks, it’s about unlocking people.

He also emphasizes offboarding as a cultural ritual. It’s not just about removing access. It’s about framing the exit properly, maintaining morale, and respecting the human side of transition.

What Drives Him

Robert is driven by outcomes. That means getting things live, not endlessly debating the roadmap. His background in both product and engineering gives him the ability to interpret business needs with technical clarity. His style is direct, structured and respectful — with a preference for clarity over consensus.

In conversations and meetings, he doesn’t talk over engineers or underplay business risk. He bridges. He clarifies. He pushes for momentum.

He leads with one question: What is going to drive real value this quarter?

Personal Context

Robert lives in Engelberg, Switzerland with his wife and youngest son. When he’s not scaling tech teams or rebuilding platforms, he sails. The structure, rhythm and unpredictability of sailing often reflects how he thinks about software: you’re always adjusting course, responding to conditions, but staying aligned to your destination.

He holds a Swiss C-permit and works fluently in English, Swedish and German. He is available for on-site or remote work depending on the engagement and client needs .

Summary

If you need a CTO who will quietly reorganize your product development into something that actually ships, Robert Mejlerö is a strong fit. If you need someone to coach your junior leaders, define your architecture strategy, or reset your developer hiring approach, he’s already done it — repeatedly, across industries and cultures.

He won’t waste time on theatre. He’ll spend it building the conditions where good developers thrive and products go live.

For leadership guidance, CTO advisory, or fractional engagement, contact Robert Mejlerö at [email protected] or visit ctotmc.com.

Explore his approach in The CTO Playbook, available on Kindle and iBooks, or connect via LinkedIn to view his full background.

Book a call and start rebuilding your tech strategy from the inside out.