Fractional CTO
Senior technical responsibilities, at an agreed cadence.
Some teams need scoped senior technical support rather than a full-time CTO. They need someone accountable for architecture, security posture and the decisions that set the next two years — working inside the team, in writing, at a cadence you can afford.
- Analysis to architecture
- 25 yrs
- In-house development showcases
- 9
- Cadence and availability
- Agreed
- Scope and availability
- Written scope
Analysis to architecture
In-house development showcases
Cadence and availability
Scope and availability
What is a fractional CTO
A part-time executive who owns the technical decisions, not just advises on them.
An advisor comments. A fractional CTO decides, documents, and is answerable for the result. In this practice that means the architecture is written down, the trade-offs are named with their costs, and your team knows which call was made and why.
Target architecture
One documented picture of where the system is going, the sequence to get there, and the decisions that are expensive to reverse.
Delivery standards
Branching, review, environments, migrations, release. Enough process that quality survives new hires, not so much that shipping stops.
Security posture
Access model, tenancy boundaries, secret handling and audit trails, prepared for the questionnaire your first enterprise buyer will send.
Engineering hiring
Which roles, in what order, at what level — plus technical interviews run with you until your first senior hire can run them.
When to hire one
Five signals that the decision is already overdue.
- You are about to rebuild something you shipped less than two years ago.
- An enterprise prospect has sent a security questionnaire you cannot answer.
- AI features work in a demo and misbehave in production.
- Your strongest engineer is also, by default, the architect, the hiring manager and the on-call.
- Investors are asking about technical risk and nobody owns the answer.
If these needs are not established, discuss an architecture review before deciding on ongoing advisory scope. Deliverables and commercial terms require agreement.
Brief
Tell us the system and the decision in front of it.
A response can discuss cadence, responsibilities, and what your team keeps. If a retainer is the wrong shape for you, we will say that instead.
What each person receives
Process owner
Named workflow decision owner
Needs: Define scope, permitted work and acceptance.
Doubt: Responsibility becoming unclear between people.
Proposed deliverables · agreed in scope
- • Proposed acceptance, approval and handover responsibilities as agreed
User
Founder
Needs: Know what to keep, what to rebuild and in what order.
Doubt: Being told to rewrite everything.
Proposed deliverables · agreed in scope
- • A written architecture teardown
- • A prioritised fix list
Approver
First enterprise buyer
Needs: Security and data answers that hold.
Doubt: The product is a demo.
Proposed deliverables · agreed in scope
- • A security and data-model summary the founder can share
Access we ask for — and how you take it back
- • Read-only repo access
- • Read-only view of the environment config
No production changes during the teardown.
Initial inquiry: non-sensitive summary only. Later assessment: authorised redacted samples or read-only access. Sandbox and production write access require separate approval, minimisation, access expiry and retention agreement.
Agree repository access, revocation and permitted notes or retention before any review.
Related
Not sure whether you need a retainer or a build?
Compare service families and delivery options; responsibilities and commercial terms require confirmation.