Services
Fractional CTO
A fractional CTO is a senior technology executive who works with your company on a part-time or contract basis, providing the same strategic leadership as a full-time CTO at 60-80% lower cost. If you have a product vision and early traction but no technical co-founder, we step into the CTO role - making architecture decisions, conducting technology due diligence, evaluating vendors, planning your product roadmap, and hiring your first engineers. From system design to engineering org structure, we cover the full CTO remit.
Overview
What is fractional cto?
A fractional CTO is a senior technology executive embedded in your business on a part-time or retainer basis. You get the same strategic thinking, hands-on guidance, and accountability as a full-time CTO - without the full-time executive salary and equity package that comes with it. Engagements typically run from one day per week up to three days, depending on what your business needs.
In practice, this means sitting in your leadership meetings, making architecture calls, reviewing your engineering team's work, and being available when critical decisions need a senior technical voice. It is not a consultancy report dropped on your desk - it is an ongoing working relationship where we are accountable for outcomes, not just recommendations.
Most engagements start with a 90-day discovery and stabilisation phase where we get to know your systems, team, and goals. After that, the scope adjusts to match what the business actually needs - whether that is product roadmap planning, hiring, system redesign, or something else entirely.
Why it matters
When you need this
No technical co-founder
Building a product without a technical co-founder means every architecture decision falls on someone who is guessing. The wrong choices compound quickly - technical debt that costs ten times as much to unpick in year three.
Between CTOs
Losing your CTO creates a vacuum. Roadmap decisions stall, engineers lose direction, and vendors take advantage of the gap. A fractional CTO maintains continuity while you run a proper search.
Outgrowing your setup
What got you to your first 10,000 users will not get you to 100,000. Scaling a product built to MVP standards requires a different kind of thinking - someone who has done it before and knows where the bodies are buried.
High-stakes decisions
Choosing your cloud provider, deciding whether to rebuild your monolith, evaluating a vendor proposal - these are permanent decisions with expensive consequences. Get them right the first time.
Who it's for
Common scenarios
Illustrative scenarios - composites, not real clients - showing where this service makes the most impact.
SaaS Founder
Series A with no technical co-founder and a junior dev team
A founder with a growing B2B SaaS product has raised Series A but never brought in a senior technical leader. The engineering team is capable but lacks direction, and the platform keeps hitting reliability issues as enterprise customers come on board. We step in as fractional CTO: stabilise the infrastructure, restructure the team, and build a 12-month roadmap the board can take to investors. A year on, they're raising a Series B - with a full-time CTO in place who we helped them hire.
Operations Director
CTO departed suddenly, engineering team in limbo
A 60-person business loses its CTO to a competitor on two weeks' notice. Three engineers are mid-way through a critical platform migration; the rest are unsure what to prioritise. We step in within the week - assess the situation, communicate clearly with the team, and keep the migration on track. Over the next four months we run the engineering function, complete the transition, and hand over to an internal candidate who's ready to step up.
Scale-up CEO
Five-year-old platform hitting performance and reliability limits
A fintech company with strong revenue is running a platform built for an earlier version of the business. Downtime is climbing, the dev team spends most of its time firefighting incidents, and new features take months to ship. We join as fractional CTO: diagnose the core architectural problems, introduce an incident management process, and design a migration path to a more scalable architecture. Within a couple of quarters, incidents are a fraction of what they were and features ship on a predictable cadence again.
How it works
A typical engagement
Discovery
Understand your business, team, and technology landscape
Assessment
Audit current architecture, processes, and team structure
Strategy
Define technology roadmap aligned with business goals
Embedded
Join your team as fractional CTO, typically 2-3 days/week
Transition
Hand off to permanent hire or scale engagement as needed
Outcomes
What you get
Clear technology roadmap aligned with business goals
Architecture that scales with your growth
Confident technical decision-making without a full-time hire
Engineering team structure and hiring strategy
Related
Start with an audit
Not sure where you stand? An audit gives you clarity before committing to a full engagement.
FAQ
Common questions
A fractional CTO provides the same strategic and technical leadership as a full-time CTO, but on a part-time basis. That means owning architecture decisions, setting technical direction, managing engineering teams, evaluating vendors, and ensuring the technology roadmap supports the business goals. The specific scope depends on what your business needs.
A consultant typically delivers a recommendation and moves on. A fractional CTO is accountable for outcomes over an ongoing engagement - we are in your leadership team, in your planning meetings, and responsible for what happens next. The relationship is collaborative and ongoing, not transactional.
Engagements typically start at one to two days per week. Some businesses need more during a critical phase and less during stable periods. We agree a baseline and adjust as the business needs change - most retainers include a mechanism to flex up or down.
Most engagements run for six to eighteen months. The first 90 days are a discovery and stabilisation phase. After that, we review whether to continue, adjust scope, or transition to a different working arrangement - including helping you hire a full-time CTO if that is the right next step.
Yes, and it is one of our most common engagements. We are used to translating between technical realities and business priorities, and making technical decisions legible without requiring a computer science degree. You do not need to understand the technology - you need to trust the person making the decisions.
Yes. We step into the CTO role properly, which means line management, performance conversations, hiring, and culture. We are not an advisor watching from the sidelines - we are accountable for the team's output.
Ready to discuss fractional cto?
Every engagement starts with understanding your situation. Let's talk about what you need.