Fractional CTO services for the person who has to sign

Fractional CTO services give you a senior technical read on decisions as they arrive, without hiring a full-time executive to get it. In my case that is a retainer: I am not on your payroll and not on your org chart, and I am reachable in the week you need an answer rather than the quarter after.

The work is judgment, not delivery. I don’t write the code — implementation stays with your team or your vendor. What I do is read what has been put in front of you — a proposal, a quote, an architecture, a roadmap — and tell you what it will actually cost you, in money and in the things you will not be able to change later.

What a fractional CTO does day to day

Most weeks it is unglamorous. Reading a statement of work closely enough to find the clause that moves the risk onto you. Checking whether a quoted number survives contact with your real volumes. Saying which of three proposals is the one to sign, and why the other two are not. The longer version is written up at what a fractional CTO actually does.

The retainer is deliberately small and specific. A senior technical read on decisions as they arrive: a standing review of vendor work, a working session every fortnight, and someone to call before you sign.

1. 1

   A standing review of vendor work. Whatever your agency or vendor ships — invoices, sprint reports, architecture decisions, change requests — I read it and tell you whether you are getting what you are paying for.

2. 2

   A working session every fortnight. One hour, in the calendar, whether or not something is on fire. Decisions get made in it. It is not a status update, and if it turns into one I will say so.

3. 3

   Someone to call before you sign. Most of the value here is concentrated in the ten minutes before a contract goes back signed. That is the part you cannot buy afterwards.

CTO as a service, and what the phrase usually hides

“CTO as a service” is normally sold by a firm that also builds software. That works well enough until the first decision about whether to keep building — at which point the person advising you is the person who gets paid if the answer is yes. I don’t resell, implement or take a fee on any tool I recommend. That is what makes it possible for me to give you the answer that ends the work.

Three kinds of buyer, and one thing in common. Founders without a technical co-founder, who sign for work they cannot check. Owners who depend on an agency that writes the proposal, prices it, and then marks its own homework. Leaders under pressure to do something with AI. In all three cases every quote reads as reasonable, and nobody in the room is paid to say which one isn’t.

Fractional CTO services for startups and small companies

It fits a startup with engineers but nobody senior enough to overrule them, and a twenty-person company whose entire technology function is one agency and one contract. It fits less well the earlier you are. If you have not settled what you are building, a fractional CTO is not the missing piece — a decision is, and a retainer would be an expensive way to postpone making it.

What this is not

Not for day-to-day engineering management. I don’t run hiring, sprints or performance reviews. I don’t write strategy decks; every engagement ends in a decision you can act on. I don’t take work where I would end up judging something I built myself. If what you need is another pair of hands, this is the wrong service, and you will hear that on the call rather than in month three.

If the decisions on your desk are mostly AI ones rather than software ones in general, the same retainer under a more accurate name is the fractional Chief AI Officer engagement.

How to hire a fractional CTO here

It starts with a conversation, not a contract: a free technical fit call, or an email if you would rather write. You describe what’s on your desk; I tell you which engagement fits — or that none does, which is a real answer and costs you nothing.

There are three, and they differ in scope, not in kind. A Decision Review runs 2 WEEKS and judges one live decision. A Technical Assessment runs 3–4 WEEKS and reads your stack, your vendors and your roadmap end to end. The Fractional CTO Retainer runs on a 3-MONTH MINIMUM, because oversight that stops after four weeks was never oversight.

The fee is fixed before the work starts and invoiced 50/50 — half to begin, half on delivery. No day rates, no meter running, no scope that quietly grows. Everything paid for a Decision Review is credited in full against an Assessment within 90 days, so starting small costs nothing extra. Availability is ONE NEW ENGAGEMENT PER MONTH; the next start is SEPTEMBER.

Every engagement ends the same way: a written memo you can act on after I’m gone, and one working session to walk it through. The full sequence, first email to delivered memo, is set out on how engagements work.