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Fractional CTO Services

Hire a fractional CTO for 2–3 days a week: own the roadmap, lead architecture, and build your engineering team — without a full-time exec cost. Book a 30-min call.

Key takeaways

  • A fractional CTO works 2–3 days per week embedded in your leadership team — attending leadership meetings, making architecture calls, and representing technology at board level.
  • This engagement covers roadmap ownership, team leadership, vendor management, and board communication — without the full-time overhead.
  • The right trigger: critical technology decisions are on the horizon, but a full-time hire is premature or the right person hasn't been found.
  • Most engagements run 12–24 months. Minimum engagement is 6 months.

A fractional CTO — also called a part-time CTO — gives you senior technology leadership without the full-time salary, equity, and overhead of a permanent hire. The scope matches a full-time CTO; the commitment doesn’t.

What this engagement looks like

I work with your company 2–3 days per week, embedded as a member of the leadership team. Not as an advisor who shows up for quarterly reviews — as the person who owns technical direction day-to-day.

That means: attending your leadership meetings, running engineering all-hands, interviewing senior engineering candidates, making architecture calls, and representing technology credibly at board level.

What I actually do in this role

Technical roadmap and architecture — Define the 12-18 month technical roadmap aligned to business goals. Make the hard architecture tradeoffs. Ensure engineering decisions compound instead of creating debt.

Engineering team — Assess the current team, identify gaps, lead hiring for senior roles, set the standards for engineering craft. Good engineers want to work for strong technical leaders; having credible CTO presence helps retention.

Vendor and partner management — Evaluate technology vendors, negotiate contracts, manage relationships with cloud providers, SaaS tools, and development partners. Most companies overpay here because nobody senior owns it.

Board and stakeholder communication — Translate technical reality to business terms for investors, board members, and non-technical executives. Prevent technology from being misunderstood as either more or less risky than it is.

Hiring a permanent CTO — If the goal is to eventually hire a full-time CTO, I can run that process and ensure you hire the right person for your stage and culture.

Who this is for

Companies that have grown past the point where the technical co-founder or a VP of Engineering can hold everything together, but where a full-time CTO hire is premature, too expensive, or where the right person hasn’t been found yet.

Typically: mid-market companies with 20–150 engineers, at a point where critical technology decisions are on the horizon. If you’re weighing the decision between fractional and full-time, the Fractional CTO vs Full-Time decision framework covers the specific trigger points in detail.

For startups and non-technical founders

Not every engagement is a 100-person org. Early-stage startups and non-technical founders bring me in for a different reason: to get senior technical judgment without gambling on a full-time hire too early.

For a non-technical founder, that means someone who owns the architecture calls, leads engineering hiring, vets the agencies and vendors you’re quoting with, and translates technical trade-offs into business terms — so you’re not overpaying or getting mis-built by a dev shop you can’t evaluate. For a startup, the engagement is scoped tightly to the decisions that actually matter at your stage, including getting the tech story investor-ready ahead of a raise.

Where I work

I run fractional CTO engagements remotely, with clients across India, the US, the UK, and the EU. The model is built for distributed work — most of what a CTO does (architecture decisions, hiring calls, board communication, roadmap ownership) is location-independent, and I structure the working week around meaningful timezone overlap with your team.

What it costs

Retainer-based, priced for your market. The rate reflects days per month and engagement complexity. As a rough starting point, most engagements land in the range of a senior contractor’s monthly cost — a fraction of a full-time CTO’s salary plus equity. Book a call and I’ll give you a straight answer on whether the numbers work for your situation.

Minimum engagement: 6 months. Most engagements run 12–24 months.

Ready to explore this? Book a 30-minute call to talk through your situation.

Frequently asked questions

What does a fractional CTO actually do?
A fractional CTO owns technical direction on a part-time embedded basis — not as a consultant who advises remotely, but as the person attending leadership meetings, making architecture calls, leading engineering hiring, and representing technology at board level. The scope matches a full-time CTO; the commitment doesn't.
How much does a fractional CTO cost?
Fractional CTO engagements are retainer-based and priced for your market. The rate reflects days per month and engagement complexity. Book a call and you'll get a straight answer on whether the numbers work for your situation — most conversations take 20 minutes.
Fractional CTO vs full-time CTO: which is right for my company?
Fractional works when you need senior judgment applied to specific problems — AI transformation, architecture decisions, team scaling — rather than full-time organizational leadership. The trigger for full-time is usually when your engineering team exceeds 8–10 people and the role is primarily people management.
Is a part-time CTO the same as a fractional CTO?
Yes — 'part-time CTO' and 'fractional CTO' describe the same thing: senior technology leadership on an embedded, part-time basis instead of a full-time salary and equity package. I use 'fractional' because it captures the model more precisely — you get a fraction of a CTO's time, but the full scope of the role.
How do I hire a fractional CTO?
Start with the problem, not the résumé. Be clear on what technical decision or transition is coming — an architecture bet, an AI transformation, a scaling phase, a fundraise — then screen for an operator who has done that specific thing, not just held the title. Book a call and I'll tell you honestly whether this is the right engagement for your stage, and what it should look like.
Do you work with startups and non-technical founders?
Yes. Non-technical founders are one of the most common reasons companies bring in a fractional CTO — you get senior technical judgment on hiring, architecture, and vendor decisions, plus someone who can translate engineering trade-offs into business terms and stop you being overcharged or mis-built by a dev shop. For early-stage startups, the engagement is scoped to the decisions that actually matter at your stage.