§ OFFER 03 — FRACTIONAL DELIVERY · 3-MONTH MINIMUM

Fractional CTO Services

Embedded technical leadership on a monthly retainer. Hands-on with process, code review, hiring, and roadmap. Weekly written update and monthly executive review.

Who
Led by the founder, hands-on for the duration.
Timeline
3-month minimum, monthly thereafter
Request a call What you get

What you're seeing

The technical leadership seat is empty and the roadmap conversation now happens without anyone who can cost it.
Usually means Estimates are being produced by people who will not be held to them. The gap usually shows up first as a date the board believes and the team does not.
Two senior engineers disagree about an architectural direction and the disagreement has been open for weeks.
Usually means Nobody in the room has the authority to end it. This is the most expensive symptom of a vacant seat, because the team keeps building on both answers while it waits.
Offers are being declined, or accepted by engineers who do not work out.
Usually means The interview loop is measuring the wrong thing, or the person selling the role cannot answer a senior engineer's technical questions. Both are leadership problems rather than recruiting ones.
Delivery is slower than it was two quarters ago with the same headcount.
Usually means Something structural is taking the time — review latency, environment fragility, unplanned work. It is measurable from the repository, and nobody currently owns measuring it.
You have a permanent search running and it has been open for four months.
Usually means A senior technical leader takes two to three quarters to hire well. The question is not whether to keep searching; it is who holds the seat while you do.

What you get

Fixed scope. Everything below is in the engagement, not an upsell.

Deliverable What it means
Foundation Tier Light-touch retainer for early Series A or focused work.
Growth Tier Scaling retainer for two pains in parallel (e.g. velocity + hiring).
Interim Tier Full VP Eng substitute role until permanent hire.
Weekly Written Update Written every Friday. Monthly executive review with founder + technical leadership.
Cadence Standup · weekly working session · written update · monthly executive review.
Response SLA 24h on Slack · faster on technical emergencies.

The capabilities behind it Team Topology & Org Design · Hiring Pipeline Design · Board Delivery Reporting · Process Rebuild

The seat, not the hours

A fractional CTO is a technical leader who holds the role part-time, on a retainer, with the authority that comes with it. The distinction that matters is not the number of hours. It is whether the person can decide.

An advisor produces judgement on request and leaves the decision with you. A contractor executes a scope somebody else wrote. Both are useful and neither fills an empty seat, and an empty seat is what most of the companies that call us actually have — a founder making architecture calls between investor meetings, or two senior engineers holding a disagreement nobody is authorised to end.

We work fifteen to twenty-five hours a week inside your team. Standups, code review, architecture decisions, hiring loops, the delivery conversation with the board. The output is what shipped, not a document describing what should.

What we sign, what we recommend, what we do not touch

Every fractional engagement runs into the same question around week three, usually in the middle of an argument about a database. So it gets settled in week one instead, in writing.

Ours to decide. Architecture and technology choices. Delivery process and release cadence. The interview loop and who passes it. What ships and when. These are the calls the role exists to make, and requiring permission for each one costs more than occasionally getting one wrong.

Ours to recommend. Headcount budget, compensation bands, vendor and infrastructure spend — anything that ends in a signature.

Not ours at all. Product priority, commercial terms, board composition. A technical leader who starts arbitrating what the product should do next has become a founder substitute, and that is not what you bought.

If that split is wrong for your company, we change it before the first invoice rather than discovering it in a retro.

Where the model breaks

Three situations where a retainer is the wrong instrument. We will say so on the first call rather than after the first quarter.

The work is genuinely full-time. Past roughly twenty-five engineers with a constant delivery load, fifteen hours a week is a bottleneck wearing a title. The interim arrangement covers the gap while you search. It is not meant to be permanent.

Nothing is in production yet. Pre-seed teams need someone building. Process installed over an empty repository is theatre, and it will be rewritten the first time the product changes direction.

No senior engineer stays behind. The retainer works because the things we install keep running without us — the review playbook, the calibrated loop, the delivery metrics. With nobody to hand them to, they leave when we do and you have rented a quarter of momentum.

Where it stacks

Two combinations come up often enough to name.

Over a delivery rebuild. We hold the leadership seat while Delivery Implementation runs the operations rebuild underneath it — process, observability, on-call, platform. Both of the engagements where a team was built from zero took this shape: the principal held the engineering lead role and the delivery team executed under it.

Alongside a hiring rebuild. Engineering Hiring fixes the pipeline, the loop and the first ninety days as a defined scope. The retainer supplies the person who runs that loop until your own interviewers are calibrated to run it without help.

How it runs

  1. Onboarding

    • Workshop with founder + technical leadership
    • Baseline metrics: velocity, hiring funnel, compliance status
    • 30/60/90-day plan signed

  2. Process Install

    • Rituals (standup, retro, demo)
    • PR-review playbook with senior engineers
    • Hiring pipeline reset (job descriptions, interview loop)

  3. First Month Review

    • Metrics check vs. baseline
    • Adjustments to plan
    • Executive review with founder

  4. Quarterly Review + Renewal

    • Outcomes vs. 90-day plan
    • Renew, scope-change, or hand off
    • Reference call available for next prospect

Total duration

3-month minimum, monthly thereafter

Phases

4

Deliverables

6 items

Engagement

primary

How this is priced

Model

Monthly retainer

A monthly retainer against one of three tiers, three-month minimum, billed a month ahead. The tier sets how much of the week we carry — the way the work is run does not change between them.

Fixed The cadence and the reporting, at every tier: a standup, a weekly working session, a written update every Friday, and a monthly executive review. Slack inside a working day, faster on a technical emergency.

What moves it

  • The tier: light-touch retainer, embedded operator, or full substitute for a vacant seat
  • Whether one problem is in scope or two run in parallel — velocity and hiring together, for example
  • Whether the engagement includes on-site days each month
  • Whether the seat is board-facing, which the interim arrangement usually is

Next step

Describe the situation and we'll tell you whether this is the right shape.

Request a call

How we decide

  • One retainer client at a time

    Costs It caps what we can take on, and it means a start date is sometimes a month out.

    A fractional who carries four to six clients can attend, advise and write. They cannot sit in a code review at the moment it matters, and that moment is not on a calendar. The cap is what makes the work hands-on rather than advisory.

  • Decision rights are written down before the first invoice

    Costs It is an uncomfortable first-week conversation, and it occasionally ends the engagement before it starts.

    Every fractional arrangement runs into the same question in week three, usually mid-argument about a database. Settling it under pressure produces a worse answer than settling it cold, and an engagement where the founder and the operator disagree about who decides will fail on that regardless of the work.

  • We install with your engineers, not around them

    Costs It is slower in the first month than doing the work ourselves would be.

    The review playbook, the interview loop and the metrics have to keep running after we leave. Anything we operate alone leaves when we do, and you have rented a quarter of momentum instead of buying a capability.

  • The written update goes out whether the week went well or not

    Costs It puts bad news in writing, in front of the board, in our own words.

    A retainer with no artefact is impossible to evaluate, so it renews on vibes and ends on them too. A weekly written record makes the engagement auditable, and it is the reason a renewal conversation takes ten minutes.

Fractional, interim, advisor, permanent

Four ways to fill a technical leadership seat. The names get used interchangeably in the market and they are not the same arrangement.

Arrangement Time on it Decision rights Ends when
Fractional CTO 15–25 hours a week, embedded in the team Architecture, delivery process and the hiring loop are ours to decide The problem is closed, or a permanent leader starts
Interim CTO 25–35 hours a week, full substitute The whole seat, board-facing work included The permanent hire starts
Advisor or board seat A few hours a month, scheduled None — advice, and someone else decides Open-ended, and usually nobody notices
Full-time CTO The whole week, permanently The whole seat, permanently It does not — this is the destination

The row that catches people out is the third one. An advisor is cheap and produces judgement on demand, which is genuinely useful once someone is already holding the seat. It does not fill an empty one.

Is this you?

  • Companies whose technical leadership seat is empty
  • Teams that need a hands-on operator embedded for a quarter or more
  • Founders who want concrete process and hires, not strategy decks

How we run it

One Retainer Client at a Time

Most fractionals juggle 4–6 clients. We take one. That gives each engagement enough oxygen to actually ship — not just produce written recommendations.

What Our Clients Say

"They came in when our technical leadership seat was empty. In a quarter we had restored delivery, hired three seniors, and shipped what was on the roadmap. We closed our next round on schedule."

Founder

CEO at Series A B2B SaaS · name available after NDA

Frequently Asked Questions

A technical leader who holds the role part-time, on a retainer, with the decision rights that come with it. The part that separates it from consulting is authority: a fractional CTO settles architecture, delivery process and hiring rather than recommending what someone else should settle. The part that separates it from a full-time hire is that the seat is filled for a defined period, at a defined share of the week.
It is shorthand for fractional CTO — the same arrangement. You will also see virtual CTO, part-time CTO, CTO-as-a-service and outsourced CTO used for roughly the same thing. The labels differ more than the work does; what actually varies between providers is how many hours, how hands-on, and whether the person can decide anything.
Start from the problem rather than the title. Write down what has to be true in ninety days, then ask each candidate which of those they would own outright and which they would only advise on. The answers separate operators from advisors faster than a CV does. Ask for the written artefact from their last engagement, and take the reference call with the founder rather than the board.
It is a monthly retainer rather than an hourly rate, and the tier drives it. We quote after a discovery call, because the honest number depends on whether one problem is in scope or two, and on whether the seat is board-facing. We have written up how the market prices this on the blog.
For most Series A teams, yes — because the hours go into installing things your engineers keep running. Process, review standards, a calibrated interview loop, documentation. We are a force multiplier rather than a bottleneck. If the team is past roughly twenty-five engineers and the delivery load is constant, it is not enough, and the interim arrangement or a permanent hire is the right answer.
Architecture and technology choices, delivery process and release cadence, the interview loop and who passes it, and what ships when. Headcount budget, compensation bands and anything carrying a signature are recommendations. Product priority, commercial terms and board composition are yours and stay yours. The split is written down in the first week and it can be changed — before the engagement starts, not during an argument.
When the seat is genuinely full — a team past roughly twenty-five engineers, a constant delivery load, or a company where the technical leader has to be in commercial and board rooms every week. Also when the role is a co-founder-shaped one, carrying equity and a decade of intent. A retainer is the wrong instrument for that, and we will say so.
The named operator is the engagement — there is no bench to swap in, and pretending otherwise is how this model usually disappoints. What protects you is that the work is installed rather than held: the process, the loop and the metrics run without us by design, and the weekly written record means the next person inherits a documented state rather than a rumour. If we had to end an engagement early, we would run the handover ourselves.
Because the moments that matter are not on a calendar. Being available for the code review that decides an architecture, or the offer conversation that closes a senior hire, requires the room to drop what we are doing. A calendar carrying four to six clients cannot do that, whatever it promises.
Yes, and that is what the interim arrangement is for. We run the search alongside the seat: the role definition, the loop, the technical assessment and the reference calls, then a handover to the person who starts.

Sources

Page reviewed