Core engagement
Fractional Technology Leadership
Senior technical judgment without a full-time executive hire.
- Duration
- Ongoing, monthly
- Format
- Retainer, agreed days per month
- Fee
- Scoped after discovery
This is for you if
- You have engineers but no one senior enough to own architecture and technology strategy.
- You are making decisions — vendor, platform, hire, build-versus-buy — whose consequences outlast the people making them.
- Your board or investors are asking technical questions nobody internally can answer confidently.
This is not for you if
- You need someone full-time and present daily — hire that person; we will help you evaluate candidates.
- You want a figurehead rather than someone who will disagree with you in writing.
The problem it solves
The decisions that determine what software costs over five years are made in the first six months, usually by whoever is available. A company with fifteen engineers and no principal architect is not saving money; it is deferring a cost with interest.
Fractional leadership puts senior judgment on those decisions without the cost or the commitment of an executive hire you may not need yet.
How it runs
What we actually do
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Baseline
Architecture review, delivery-risk review, and an honest read on team capability and structure.
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Cadence
Agreed days per month: architecture reviews, technical decisions, vendor and hiring guidance, mentoring your senior engineers.
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Report
Executive-level reporting your board can actually use — risk, capability, cost trajectory and what is being done about each.
Deliverables
What you receive
Documents you keep, whether or not you continue with us.
- Technology strategy aligned to the business plan, not to fashion
- Architecture reviews and decision records
- Delivery-risk review with mitigations
- Vendor evaluation and negotiation support
- Hiring: role definition, technical interviewing, calibration
- Mentoring for your senior engineers
- Executive and board reporting
What happens afterwards
Many engagements end deliberately: the company hires a full-time CTO, and we help define the role, interview for it and hand over. That is a success, and we will tell you when you have reached it.
Questions we are usually asked
How many days a month is typical?
Commonly two to four. Enough to hold the architecture and the decisions; not so much that your team stops owning anything.
Will you write code?
Sometimes, where it is the fastest way to establish a pattern or unblock something. But you are buying judgment, not throughput.
How does this work alongside our existing lead?
Usually as a force multiplier for them — architecture partner, sounding board and mentor. We agree the boundary explicitly at the start.
Will you help us hire your replacement?
Yes, and we will raise it before you do if we think the time has come.