Fractional CTO — strategic tech leadership, on demand.
A pragmatic operating model for founders, scale-ups, and boards that need senior technical judgement without the cost of a full-time hire.
Who it’s for — and how we show up.
Who it’s for
- Founders and CEOs who need a trusted technical counterpart
- Startups scaling from MVP into growth without a full-time CTO yet
- Teams stuck on delivery, architecture, or hiring
- Boards and investors who want a clear technical read
How engagement works
- Typically 1–2 days per week, retained over months
- Part-time, project, or advisory — sized to the problem
- Embedded with leadership and the engineering team, not a slide deck away
- Clear ownership of roadmap, people, and board-facing signal
First 30 and 90 days — what changes.
We start by making the current state legible, then lock in the operating rhythm that keeps shipping honest.
Diagnose and stabilise
- Map stack, team, delivery flow, and the real risks
- Align with founder/CEO on priorities and decision rights
- Stand up a simple reporting cadence leadership can trust
- Unblock the one or two things slowing everyone down
Operate and forward
- Working roadmap with build-vs-buy and sequencing choices made
- Hiring or mentoring plan for the gaps that matter
- Board/investor updates that say what is true, not what sounds nice
- A team that knows how decisions get made when you’re not in the room
What we typically own — and what “done” looks like.
Direction
- Technology vision and pragmatic roadmaps
- Architecture and scaling strategy
- Build vs. buy and vendor selection
People & delivery
- Hiring and mentoring for sustainable delivery
- Tech audits and decision support
- Delivery rhythm the business can rely on
Outputs you can hand to a board
- Technical status and risk in plain language
- Roadmap and capacity you can defend
- Written recommendations with owners and dates
A short picture of the work.
A Series A SaaS company had grown past its founding engineer but not yet to a full-time CTO. Two days a week we rebuilt the roadmap, hired a tech lead, and replaced ad-hoc board updates with a monthly technical narrative. Ninety days later delivery was predictable enough that the founder stopped mediating every engineering decision — and the board stopped guessing.