Fractional CTO Services for Startups
Each engagement below is scoped to a problem startups actually arrive with — building the first version, scaling the one that worked, proving it survives diligence, or running the engineering function until a full-time hire makes sense. Every one says what the work involves, what you end up holding, and how it is priced.
FAQs
A Fractional CTO provides the strategic technical leadership of a full-time Chief Technology Officer, but on a part-time, retained basis. I don't just write code; I design scalable architectures, optimize engineering velocity, manage technical debt, and help founders hire and structure their internal engineering teams.
Yes. A full-time, elite CTO in the US or Europe costs upwards of $200k–$300k+ in base salary, plus equity. Most early-stage startups (Pre-Seed to Series A) need that level of architectural expertise to avoid building a fundamentally flawed product, but they don't need it for 40 hours a week. Hiring fractionally gives you enterprise-grade technical leadership at a fraction of the financial burn.
There are three common triggers:
The Launch: You are a non-technical founder who needs to vet an agency or build an MVP without getting ripped off.
The Bottleneck: Your product is live, but your development velocity has stalled, features take forever to ship, and infrastructure costs (like Vercel or AWS) are spiking.
The Scale: You just raised a round and need to scale your engineering team from 2 to 15 developers without breaking your culture or your codebase.
A dev shop's business model relies on selling you more engineering hours. My goal as a Fractional CTO is the exact opposite. I sit on your side of the table. I audit your systems, implement efficient workflows (like Nx monorepos and CI/CD pipelines), and help you build a self-sustaining in-house team so you eventually don't need me anymore.
Rarely. My focus is on architecture, infrastructure setup, codebase reviews, and mentoring your lead engineers. I might jump in to configure a complex CI pipeline, set up a zero-drift monorepo, or refactor a bottlenecked database, but I do not take tickets from your daily Jira sprint.
Yes. One of the highest ROI activities a Fractional CTO can provide for a non-technical founder is translating business requirements into strict technical specs, conducting code reviews, and holding external agencies accountable for code quality and security.
Every engagement begins with a comprehensive Systems Architecture Audit. I spend 1–2 weeks deep-diving into your codebase, infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and team workflows. I deliver a candid report of your bottlenecks and a strict roadmap on how to fix them. From there, the engagement moves into a monthly retainer to execute the roadmap.