Short answer: A fractional CTO is a senior technical person who works with your company for a few hours a month instead of full time. They help you choose tools and suppliers, check quotes, plan what to build and hire developers. It fits companies that keep making technical decisions without anyone technical to make them.
Plenty of small companies make technical decisions with nobody technical in the room. Which platform to build on. Whether the agency's quote is fair. Whether to rebuild the old system or keep patching it. Somebody has to decide, so the founder does, or the operations manager, or whoever seems least afraid of the subject.
Sometimes it works out. When it doesn't, the bill arrives a year later, in the form of a system nobody can change or a contract nobody can leave. A fractional CTO exists to close that gap without a full-time hire.
What is a fractional CTO?
A chief technology officer is the person responsible for a company's technical decisions. "Fractional" means you get a fraction of their time: a set number of hours a month, on a rolling agreement, instead of a salary.
It is different from hiring a consultant for a single report, because the person stays and sees how their advice turns out. It is different from hiring an agency to build something, because a fractional CTO mostly advises and decides and doesn't usually write the code. And it is different from a full-time CTO, who manages a team every day and is part of the company.
What does a fractional CTO actually do?
- Chooses tools and platforms with you. Buy or build. Which of three products fits how you work. What it will cost to leave each one later.
- Reads quotes and proposals. Is the scope complete? Is the estimate plausible? What's missing from the list that will come back as a second invoice?
- Plans the order of work. What to build first, what can wait, and what to stop paying for.
- Helps you hire. Writes the role so it attracts the right people, reviews candidates and sits in on the technical interview, because it's hard to interview a developer if you aren't one.
- Keeps an eye on suppliers. Who has access to what, what the contracts say, and what happens if one of them disappears.
- Asks the dull questions. Are there backups? Has anyone restored one? Who has the admin passwords? Whose name is the domain in?
- Translates. Explains technical trade-offs to the people who run the business, and business priorities to the people who write the code.
- Writes decisions down. What was decided and why, so the next person doesn't have to guess.
If you want a sense of the questions a senior technical person brings, the UK government publishes its Technology Code of Practice, the list its own teams use when they design, build and buy technology. It was written for the public sector, but several of its points apply to a company of any size: define user needs, make things secure, use open standards so systems can work with each other and be upgraded, and define your purchasing strategy. A fractional CTO is, in practice, the person who makes sure somebody has asked those things before the contract is signed.
When does a company need one?
Some signs:
- You're about to spend real money on software and can't judge the proposals in front of you.
- Your developers or your agency tell you things and you have no way of checking them.
- The same technical argument comes back every few months and never gets settled.
- You need to hire your first developer and don't know what to ask.
- One person holds all the technical knowledge, and they've mentioned they might leave.
- A customer or investor has sent you a technical questionnaire and nobody knows how to answer it.
- You depend on a supplier and don't know what you'd do if they stopped answering.
That last one is more common than it should be. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre publishes supply chain security guidance built on twelve principles, aimed at helping organisations gain and keep control and oversight of the suppliers they rely on. In a small company that oversight is usually nobody's job. It can be part of this one.
When don't you need one?
- You already have a senior technical person you trust. A second opinion now and then is cheaper than a standing arrangement.
- You have one decision to make. A one-off review or audit fits better than a monthly agreement.
- You need something built. Advice doesn't ship features. That's a development project.
- You need someone to manage developers every day. That is a full-time engineering lead, and a few hours a month won't cover it.
What should you expect from the first few weeks?
The start is mostly listening and reading. A fractional CTO needs to understand what you sell, how the work flows, what systems you run, who built them and who has the keys. Expect a lot of questions and requests for access, read-only where possible.
Out of that should come a short written picture: what you have, where the risks are and what to deal with first. Often the first findings aren't about technology choices at all. They're about an expired contract, a backup nobody has tested, or an account registered to a former employee's personal email.
After that it settles into a rhythm. You agree the hours, how to reach them and what counts as urgent. Decisions come up and get worked through. Some months are quiet, and a quiet month should be allowed to be quiet.
What a fractional CTO shouldn't do is make themselves permanent. If the company grows to the point where it needs a full-time CTO, a good one tells you, helps you hire that person and hands over the notes.
How do you choose one?
- Ask what they'd look at first. A good answer is about your business and your risks, and a weak one is a list of favourite technologies.
- Ask what they'd recommend against. Someone who never says "you don't need that" is selling something.
- Check for conflicts of interest. If they also build software, will they tell you when another supplier or an off-the-shelf tool is the better fit? Ask directly.
- Ask how decisions are recorded. You should own the notes.
- Look at the exit. Month to month is normal. A long lock-in for advice is a warning.
Sources
- GOV.UK, The Technology Code of Practice, the criteria UK government teams use to design, build and buy technology.
- National Cyber Security Centre, Supply chain security guidance, twelve principles for keeping control and oversight of suppliers.
We offer this as a package: a few hours a month of technical advice from the people who build, two to three weeks to get up to speed, then month to month, with every decision written down. The details are under the Fractional CTO package. If it turns out you need something built, the custom software page covers that. Or book a free call and tell us what you're trying to decide.