Fractional, Not Part-Time
Most companies don't need a full-time CTO most of the time, but every company needs senior technical judgement at specific moments, the kind where a wrong call is expensive to reverse. Fractional technical leadership is the shape that fits when those moments arrive faster than a full-time hire can.
For audit and rescue work, the buyer is hiring judgement and the credentials are part of the deliverable. The same logic applies here. When you bring in a fractional CTO to defend a remediation plan to your board, to sit opposite an investor's diligence team, or to be the senior voice while a search runs, the résumé and the perspective are doing the work alongside the hours.
When This Is the Right Shape
You just inherited a struggling team or system
You took the CTO or VP Engineering seat 0–6 months ago. The codebase is more tangled than you were told, the team is stretched, and you're being asked to commit to a roadmap before you can defend the engineering you'll need to ship it. Most engagements of this shape start with a codebase audit so the recommendations are evidence-backed, then continue as fractional cover through the first 6–12 months: defending the remediation plan to the board, sitting alongside on hard decisions, and sharing the load while the team rebuilds confidence in the system.
The deliverable is different from the audit alone: you're not buying a report, you're buying senior cover while a hard period gets executed.
Between full-time CTOs
Your CTO has left, the search will take six months, and the engineering organisation can't simply pause. A fractional CTO holds the seat: keeping the org functional, owning the calls that can't wait, supporting the recruiter on the search, and de-risking the eventual handoff. We engage explicitly as seat-warming, not as competition for the permanent hire.
Heading into a funding round or acquisition
Series B+, late-stage, or acquisition talks. Investors and acquirers will run technical due diligence on you whether you're ready or not, and the founder/CEO needs a credentialed technical voice in the room. Fractional engagements often start with a pre-diligence audit 8–16 weeks ahead of the window, then continue through diligence, term sheet, and close.
Non-technical founder, no senior technical voice
You're building a software business but your background is in the domain, not the technology. The original devs were contractors, the new devs are good but young, and there's no one on your side of the table when big technical calls come up. A fractional CTO sanity-checks engineering estimates, translates between you and the team, and spots the failure modes you wouldn't see coming, particularly around production stability, vendor risk, and the architecture decisions that are easy to make and expensive to undo.
What the Engagement Actually Covers
The day-to-day shape varies, but most fractional engagements include some mix of:
- Technical strategy and roadmap. Turning business goals into a coherent engineering plan, and pushing back when the plan and the goals don't match.
- Architecture and major decisions. The build-vs-buy calls, stack choices, data model decisions, and integration questions that are expensive to reverse later.
- Engineering hiring and team design. Writing job specs, sitting on interview panels, structuring the team you're building toward, and being a credible technical voice in offer conversations.
- Vendor, contractor, and dependency oversight. Managing outsourced development teams, evaluating SaaS tooling, and protecting the company from bad technical contracts.
- Investor, board, and acquirer communication. Translating engineering reality into language a non-technical audience can act on, and being the technical voice during fundraising or acquisition diligence.
- Production and incident oversight. Being the senior pair of eyes on outages, on-call rotations, and the operational posture that determines how often the team is firefighting versus building.
About Dan Rumney, founder. Software engineer with 20+ years across the stack: assembler and firmware on one end, modern cloud platforms on the other. Has held the CTO, VP of Software Engineering, and Director of Product Engineering seats at companies ranging from healthcare startups to IBM. Physics degree from the University of Oxford. More on the about section.
How Engagements Run
Engagements are calibrated to what's going on, not sold as a fixed-hours retainer. Time burns from a prepaid block at the standard $250/hr base rate, in 15-minute increments. Blocks of 8, 20, or 40 hours are available at increasing discounts and never expire, which is what lets the relationship flex with reality: quiet weeks burn quietly, and the diligence weeks burn at the rate the diligence actually demands.
Most engagements settle around 4–20 hours per week. Steady-state advisory weeks land at the low end; hiring pushes, fundraising due diligence, and major architecture work push higher. We agree on an initial scope for the first month or two, then settle into a cadence that fits the actual workload.
Fractional engagements pair naturally with our audit and rescue work. Many clients arrive through an audit and stay for the fractional cover that follows: the audit produces the evidence-backed assessment and the remediation plan; fractional leadership rides alongside as the plan gets executed. Both halves bill from the same prepaid block.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a fractional CTO?
A fractional CTO is a senior technology executive who works with your company part-time, providing strategic technical leadership, architecture decisions, and engineering oversight without the cost of a full-time hire. We engage on a calibrated-to-the-work basis rather than a fixed-hours retainer, so the load follows what's actually going on at your company.
I just inherited a CTO or VP Engineering role and the team is struggling. Can a fractional CTO help?
Yes. This is one of the most common engagements we take on. We typically start with a codebase audit so the recommendations are evidence-backed, then ride alongside through the first 6–12 months as you defend a remediation plan to the board and execute it with the team. The deliverable is senior cover, not a report.
Can a fractional CTO help us prepare for a funding round or acquisition?
Yes. Pre-diligence audits often expand into fractional engagements: a credentialed technical voice in the room while investors run technical due diligence, while the engineering story is being written, and through the closing window. Engagements can start eight to sixteen weeks ahead of the diligence date and continue through close.
How many hours per week does a fractional engagement typically take?
Most engagements run 4–20 hours per week, but we don't sell fixed-hour retainers. Hours flex with what's actually going on. Steady-state advisory weeks tend toward the low end; hiring pushes, due diligence, and major architecture work push it higher. Time burns from a prepaid block at the standard $250/hr base rate.
How does a fractional engagement relate to your audit and rescue work?
Many fractional engagements start with an audit or rescue. The audit produces an evidence-backed assessment and remediation plan; fractional leadership is the natural follow-on, riding alongside as the plan gets executed. Both halves are billed from the same prepaid block.
How long does a typical engagement last?
Anywhere from a few months (covering a leadership gap or supporting a fundraise) to multi-year retainers where the fractional CTO functions as a long-term part of the leadership team. We start with a defined initial scope and evolve from there.