How To Build A Lean, Resilient Tech Team When Budgets Tighten

I can’t imagine I’m the only founder who’s less than excited when my CFO says “I think we should block off four or five hours to look over these spreadsheets.”

I’m busy helping our clients come up with Minimum Viable Sellable Products or making sales calls where I talk on the actual phone!

But I knew he was right and that I needed to be a bit more hands-on with our financial cycles—not just keeping an eye on overhead or cutting obvious costs, but really diving deep into the numbers. 

We started using a system inspired by Profit First (which I highly recommend, by the way—no promo, just good advice). The idea is straightforward: instead of seeing profit as whatever’s left over, you decide upfront what margin you want—10%, 30%, 50%, whatever makes sense for your business—and build your budget around that. Take your profit first.

That one shift gave us a whole new level of visibility. Suddenly, we were questioning every expense.

If you’re a tech founder, COO, or CTO working with a CFO, now’s the time to get strategic about how you build your engineering org. Here are three ways we’ve seen it work.

1. Use Margin-Driven Budgeting to Spot Bloat

Rather than basing budgets on what you spent last year or copying what others are doing, flip the script. Start with your ideal margins and let that guide your decisions.

Budget scrutiny should be tied to outcomes. If your engineering team is shipping features but revenue isn’t moving, maybe it’s not a product problem—it’s a sales problem. Maybe you need fewer engineers and more sales people.

Engineering is often one of the biggest cost centers for startups, but it rarely gets the same level of scrutiny as sales or marketing spend. Using a Profit First mindset helps you zoom in on how much of your revenue is going to engineering, and whether that investment is paying off.

Actionable Step: Partner with your CFO to break your spend into percentage buckets. If sales are not increasing as a direct reflection of engineering output, it’s time to dig in.

We helped one founder swap two full-time roles for one flex role. Instead of having full-time hires (e.g. DevOps, frontend, backend, QA all on staff), Neutech swapped in dedicated experts as needed at each stage of the project. Savings came from aligning talent with project phases—not from reducing headcount without tradeoffs.

Result? Six figures saved annually with strategic, flexible staffing. Grab a spot on my calendar to chat about how we could do something similar for you.

I share 2 more tips for building a lean, resilient tech team here. 

Ultimately, strategic constraint is a competitive advantage. Our CFO reminded me that profit shouldn’t be a leftover; it’s something you plan around. It made us leaner, and honestly, better.

If you’re leading a tech org right now, this is your edge. Volatility isn’t going away. But founders who make smart, flexible, data-informed choices? They’re the ones who win.

Thinking about how to restructure your team or stretch your runway? Let’s talk. It’s what we do every day.