Senior technical judgment, one or two days a week.
From $2,000 a month. Architecture decisions, technical hiring, vendor evaluation, code standards and delivery metrics — for companies that need a CTO's judgment but not a CTO's salary.
You have developers. Nobody is deciding.
- A founder without a technical background making technical decisions on instinct
- A small team shipping steadily but with no architectural direction
- A company about to hire engineers with nobody qualified to interview them
- A business whose software has become important enough that guessing is expensive
What the role covers.
- Architecture and technical direction. What to build, what to buy, what to postpone, and what will hurt in two years.
- Hiring. Writing the role, screening candidates, running technical interviews, and telling you honestly who is good.
- Engineering practice. Code review standards, testing discipline, deployment process, and the delivery metrics that show whether any of it is working.
- Vendor and tooling decisions. Cloud, infrastructure, third-party services, and the contracts attached to them.
- Technical representation. Due diligence, security questionnaires, and conversations with enterprise customers who want to speak to someone technical.
- Accountability. Someone senior who answers for the state of the system when something goes wrong.
Two levels, three-month minimum.
| Commitment | Price |
|---|---|
| One day a week Architecture, standards, hiring support, and a standing weekly session. | $2,000/mo |
| Two days a week Deeper involvement in delivery, hands-on where it helps, and priority availability. | $3,800/mo |
Three months to begin, month to month after that, thirty days' notice.
Before you book.
Is this hands-on or advisory?
Both, weighted toward advisory. Expect architecture, review and direction as the core, with hands-on work where it genuinely unblocks the team faster than explaining would.
What if we hire a full-time CTO later?
That's usually the goal, and the role includes helping you hire them and hand over cleanly. A fractional CTO who makes themselves indispensable is doing the job wrong.
Can you manage our existing developers?
Technically, yes — setting standards, reviewing work, and unblocking them. People management stays with you unless we agree otherwise explicitly.
Why not just hire a consultant hourly?
Because the value is in continuity. Someone who holds the whole picture week to week makes better decisions than someone briefed fresh each time, and the retainer is what makes that possible.
Tell us what you're deciding.
Twenty minutes. Describe where you are and what's unclear, and you'll get a straight read on whether this is the right level of help.