Digital Solutions Technology

Digital Solutions Technology

Smart Technology.

Practical solutions.

Senior technical leadership for companies that need a CTO’s judgment — without a full-time CTO’s salary. Technical strategy, AI implementation, and engineering leadership for growing businesses.

  • Enterprise scale, startup speed
  • Current, hands-on AI
  • Senior people only
  • Nothing to resell

Sound Familiar?

The decisions that are expensive to get wrong.

The practice is built for companies — typically $2M–$50M in revenue, or investor-backed startups — where technology has become a business problem or a business opportunity, but a full-time executive hire isn’t the right answer yet.

“I don’t know if what our dev team is building is right — I have no way to check.”
“Everyone’s telling us we need an AI strategy and we don’t know where to start.”
“We’re raising funding next year and worried the tech won’t hold up to due diligence.”
“We lost our technical lead and I’m flying blind.”

If any of those sound like you, we should talk.

How We Help

What we do.

Five areas of work. An engagement can start in one and grow into the others as trust builds.

01

Strategic Planning & Design

The work that decides what gets built, before anyone writes code. Solution and system design — how the pieces fit, what to build against what to buy or configure. Product and user experience design — what the thing actually is, and where the line falls between the first version and the next one. Roadmap and operating design — the order the work happens in, and the shape of the team that does it. Most engagements start here, and plenty of them end here, because a good plan is often the whole deliverable.

02

Technical Strategy & Architecture

An experienced second opinion on the decisions that are expensive to get wrong: build vs. buy, platform choices, scaling, and technical debt.

03

AI Strategy & Implementation

Separating what’s real from what’s hype — then implementing the parts that actually pay back. Deep, current, hands-on experience with today’s AI tooling.

04

Engineering Leadership

Assessing, structuring, and mentoring engineering teams — and helping founders hire the right technical people.

05

Exit & Investment Readiness

Investors and acquirers will look hard at your technology. We help you get it documented, organized, and ready for that scrutiny before a funding round, acquisition, or sale.

Dan Kardell, founder of Digital Solutions Technology

Leadership

Dan Kardell

Founder

Dan Kardell has spent 40 years building software — as a developer, as a technical project manager, and as a senior engineering manager inside some of the largest technology organizations in the world. That range is the point: he has seen how a decision that looks reasonable at one scale becomes expensive at another, and how much of what gets sold as strategy is just expensive habit.

His background spans IBM, PepsiCo, ADI Global, and Walmart Global Tech, where he led an in-store mobile application team and spent the past year driving grassroots AI adoption inside the company’s technology organization. He has taken products from zero to market in a matter of months, taught software development classes at the CIA, and delivered contract development work for American Airlines. He holds a BS in Computer Science from Texas A&M University.

You can also connect with Dan on LinkedIn.

How an Engagement Works

It starts with a conversation, not a contract.

Three steps, each one optional until it earns the next.

A Straightforward Conversation

Let’s talk.

The best engagements start with a warm introduction — but the door is open either way.

Start a Conversation