Fractional CTO
Technical leadership without a full-time hire. Fractional CTO services for Series A–C B2B SaaS teams: a senior operator on architecture, hiring and roadmap, from $15,000/month.
No prep required. Plan within 48 hours.
Embedded 2–3 days a week, async in between, for 3–6 months.
Who it’s for
Ideal for
- Series A–C B2B SaaS startups without a full-time CTO
- Companies preparing for due diligence or acquisition
- Engineering teams needing senior technical guidance
- Founders who need to focus on product/sales
- Organizations scaling their engineering function
Not a fit for
- Very early stage startups (pre-seed) without product-market fit
- Companies looking for hands-on coding (we advise, not implement)
- Organizations needing full-time on-site presence
- Short-term tactical projects (our fixed-scope services, from $8,000, fit better)
Expected outcomes
Measured in past engagements
- 2–3x
Increase in deployment frequency within first quarter
- 50%
Reduction in critical production incidents
- 30%
Improvement in engineering team velocity
Past results, not a guarantee: outcomes depend on baseline maturity, scope and adoption. See case studies
Case study
A Series A startup grew its engineering team from 2 to 12 with repeatable hiring loops and clear technical strategy over 8 months.
Scope
Included
- Weekly 1:1s with engineering leadership and key stakeholders
- Architecture review and technical decision-making
- Engineering roadmap development and prioritization
- Team structure and hiring strategy
- Vendor evaluation and technology selection
- Technical due diligence support
- Board and investor presentation support
- On-call escalation for critical issues
Out of scope
- Day-to-day engineering management
- Hands-on coding or implementation work
- 24/7 on-call coverage
- HR or people management decisions
- Full-time on-site presence
Need something else? We can adjust the scope.
Deliverables
-
Technical Strategy Document
Comprehensive roadmap with prioritized initiatives and success metrics
-
Architecture Decision Records
Documented decisions with context, tradeoffs, and rationale
-
Team Assessment Report
Skills gap analysis and hiring recommendations
-
Monthly Executive Summary
Progress report for leadership and stakeholders
-
Runbooks & Playbooks
Operational documentation for key processes
Timeline
3–6 months (renewable)
- Month 1
Discovery & Assessment
- Stakeholder interviews and context gathering
- Technical stack and architecture review
- Team structure and capability assessment
- Initial roadmap and priority recommendations
- Month 2
Strategy & Foundation
- Technical strategy development
- Quick wins implementation
- Process improvements
- Hiring pipeline activation
- Month 3
Execution & Iteration
- Roadmap execution support
- Architecture governance
- Team coaching and development
- Stakeholder alignment
- Month 4+
Optimization & Transition
- Continuous improvement
- Knowledge transfer
- Transition planning (if hiring full-time CTO)
- Long-term strategic initiatives
What we need from you
-
Access to engineering leadership and key stakeholders
Regular meetings with founders, product, and engineering leads
-
Repository and infrastructure access
Read access to code, architecture docs, and monitoring tools
-
Meeting and communication tool access
Slack/Teams, calendar, project management tools
-
Historical context
Previous decisions, incidents, and organizational history
How we work together
- Model
- Remote with optional on-site visits
- Cadence
- 2–3 days a week embedded, async in between
- Communication
- Slack or email between embedded days; weekly syncs
- Security and access
- Least-privilege access through your SSO/IAM, time-limited and tied to named individuals, with audit logs of everything we do. NDA signed before any access.
Fractional CTO pricing
Pricing varies based on company size and scope. Minimum 3-month commitment.
Your first 14 days with a fractional CTO
Week 1: Immersion
- Kick-off meeting with founders and engineering leadership
- Review of existing architecture, codebase, and documentation
- 1:1s with key engineers and stakeholders
- Assessment of current processes and pain points
Week 2: Initial Recommendations
- Preliminary findings presentation to leadership
- Quick wins identification and prioritization
- Draft technical strategy outline
- First architecture decision record (if applicable)
By the end of the second week, you have a clear picture of your current state and a prioritized list of recommendations. We move fast because we have seen these patterns across 50+ engagements since 2013.
The fractional CTO engagement gave us exactly what we needed: senior technical leadership to guide our architecture decisions without the overhead of a full-time exec.
— Marcus Williams, CEO, FinTech Startup
If the gap is security leadership rather than engineering, see Fractional CISO. If you want a fixed-price baseline first, start with an infrastructure audit: $15,000, 2–4 weeks.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between a fractional CTO and a consultant?
A fractional CTO sits on your leadership team instead of advising from outside: we attend your meetings, own technical decisions and answer for the results, embedded 2–3 days a week instead of full time.
How quickly can you start?
The 20-minute discovery call needs no prep, and you have a plan within 48 hours. The first two weeks are immersion and initial recommendations, as set out above.
What happens if we want to hire a full-time CTO?
We help you define the role, source candidates and run the technical interviews, then hand over through knowledge transfer and a written transition plan.
Do you write code?
No. The fractional CTO owns strategy, architecture and leadership. For the build, our fixed-scope services, such as Migration Delivery or CI/CD Setup & Hardening, or a partner we recommend, do the implementation.
How much does a fractional CTO cost?
Our fractional CTO engagements start at $15,000/month for 3–6 months, renewable, with a 3-month minimum. The final price depends on company size and scope, and you get it in the plan we send within 48 hours of the discovery call.
How do you handle confidentiality?
We work under NDA by default. Production access goes through your SSO/IAM: least-privilege, time-limited, tied to named individuals and audit-logged.
Get started
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No prep required. Plan within 48 hours.
- NDA available on request
- Response within 24 business hours
- Production access only through your SSO, time-limited and logged