Hire · Fractional CTO
The CTO you'd hire if hiring a CTO weren't a six-month story.
Senior engineering leadership, embedded part-time — without the hiring runway or the agency overhead.
When a fractional CTO is the right call
You probably need a fractional CTO if some combination of these is true:
- You’re between seed and Series A.
- The founder used to code, and decisions feel slower since they stopped.
- The architecture is starting to be loud — a thing nobody quite wants to bring up.
- You’re hiring engineers and the loops aren’t yielding the right calibre.
- Vendor decisions ($SaaS-X vs build, this auth provider vs that one) keep getting postponed.
You probably don’t need a fractional CTO if:
- You can already justify a full-time hire — start that search now, I’ll happily help.
- You need a project shipped, not a leadership function — that’s product engineering.
How a fractional CTO engagement runs
- 1–2 days per week, predictable cadence.
- In the work, not above it. Codebase, standup, hiring loop, vendor call.
- Office hours for the team. Async on the rest.
- A 90-day review — explicit, not implied. If we’re not adding what was promised, we end it.