“We need senior technical leadership, not a full-time CTO yet.”

Early technical decisions compound. A fractional CTO gives you senior judgment on architecture, security, and hiring now, with exit criteria agreed up front and a plan to hand the role to a full-time leader when you are ready.

Talk to usSee how we solve it

What it looks like

Architecture, security, and first-hire decisions made in year one are the most expensive ones to undo in year three.

  • The prototype became the product

    Code written to win a demo is now carrying customers, and nobody has decided what to keep and what to rebuild.

  • Hiring without a hiring manager

    Founders interview engineers with no way to assess them, and no architecture for them to join.

  • Security as an afterthought

    The first enterprise or public-sector customer sends a security questionnaire, and there are no answers ready.

If any of that sounds familiar, here is how we take it apart.

How we solve it

A fractional CTO who sets the architecture, runs the roadmap, and hires the team that eventually replaces them.

  1. Assess what you have

    Review the codebase, infrastructure, and roadmap, and say plainly what to keep, fix, and rebuild.

  2. Set the architecture

    An architecture sized for the next eighteen months, not the next five years, with a roadmap tied to your funding milestones.

  3. Build the team

    Define roles, run technical interviews, and onboard the first engineers into clear practices.

  4. Hand over

    Hire or grow your full-time technical leader, then step back with the role and its decisions documented.

Data governance in this work

Investors and customers will ask. It is cheaper to be ready than to retrofit.

  • Data classification and access control from day one, so a security review or SOC 2 later is work, not a rewrite.
  • Architecture decisions recorded, so the next CTO inherits reasons rather than guesses.
  • If you build on AI: model choices, evaluation results, and data use documented for due diligence.

What you get

  • A technical assessment with a keep, fix, or rebuild plan
  • An architecture and eighteen-month roadmap
  • A hiring plan and technical interview process
  • A security and data-handling baseline
  • A documented handover to a full-time leader

Knowing the approach is half of it. Here is how it gets into production.

Phase by phase, with a gate at each one

Each gate is agreed before its phase begins, so nothing moves forward on optimism.

  1. Assess

    Codebase, infrastructure, team, and roadmap reviewed.

    Gate: Keep, fix, rebuild agreed

  2. Stabilise

    Architecture set, security baseline in place, roadmap tied to milestones.

    Gate: Roadmap signed off by founders

  3. Build

    First engineers hired and a delivery cadence running.

    Gate: Team shipping on its own cadence

  4. Hand over

    Full-time leader hired or grown, with the role documented.

    Gate: Full-time leader in place

How it runs

A defined share of a senior leader’s time with a weekly, monthly, and quarterly rhythm. Scoped with objectives, time commitment, and exit criteria before it starts.

Tell us the technical decision you are least sure about.

Architecture, a first hire, or a security questionnaire due Friday. We will give you a straight view of it.

Talk to us

Other problems we solve