01
Fractional Leadership
A fractional CTO or CPO, embedded in your team.
Embedded product and engineering leadership for companies that need a senior operator in the room — running the org, the architecture and the hiring — without carrying a full-time executive.
Format
Embedded · hours flex to you
Commitment
Month to month
Notice
30 days, both ways
Pricing
Discussed on the call
i
The decision you're actually making
Hire someone, borrow someone, or ask someone.
Nobody arrives here wondering what fractional leadership is. They arrive wondering whether to just hire someone. So — here is the comparison, including where a full-time hire wins.
Option A
Full-time CTO
This page
Fractional
Option C
Advisory
Time to start
3–9 months of searching
About two weeks
This week
Commitment
Permanent hire
Month to month
None
If it doesn't work
Severance, a lost year, team churn
30 days' notice
An hour
Runs your team
Yes
Yes
No — advises it
What it costs
Salary and equity, permanently
Discussed on the call
First call free
Right past Series A
The job becomes more about the organisation than the technology. That wants someone full-time, and I'll help you hire them.
Right at pre-seed to Series A
You need the judgment now, and you need to be wrong cheaply if it isn't a fit.
Right for one decision
You have a team and a leader. You need a second opinion on a call that's expensive to get wrong.
Right at pre-seed to Series A
Fractional
- Time to start
- About two weeks
- Commitment
- Month to month
- If it doesn't work
- 30 days' notice
- Runs your team
- Yes
- What it costs
- Discussed on the call
You need the judgment now, and you need to be wrong cheaply if it isn't a fit.
Right past Series A
Full-time CTO
- Time to start
- 3–9 months of searching
- Commitment
- Permanent hire
- If it doesn't work
- Severance, a lost year, team churn
- Runs your team
- Yes
- What it costs
- Salary and equity, permanently
The job becomes more about the organisation than the technology. That wants someone full-time, and I'll help you hire them.
Right for one decision
Advisory
- Time to start
- This week
- Commitment
- None
- If it doesn't work
- An hour
- Runs your team
- No — advises it
- What it costs
- First call free
You have a team and a leader. You need a second opinion on a call that's expensive to get wrong.
ii
Who this is for
You probably need this if one of these is true.
iii
The first ninety days
Listen. Diagnose. Fix the loop. Then build.
Week 1
Listen
One-to-ones with everyone. The codebase, the backlog, the incident history. I change nothing.
Week 2
Diagnose
A written read of where you actually are — and which problems are engineering problems wearing a costume.
Weeks 3–6
Fix the loop
How work gets from decided to shipped. Most teams that feel slow aren't short of engineers.
Ongoing
Run it
Architecture, roadmap, hiring, the board conversations — while building toward not being needed.
The order is the whole method. Almost every failed technical leadership hire I’ve watched went wrong by reorganising in week one, on a diagnosis they hadn’t earned yet.
iv
Scope
What I own, and what stays yours.
What this is
- Engineering and product leadership, day to day
- Architecture and technical decisions
- Delivery cadence, planning and release process
- Hiring: scorecards, interviewing, leveling and offers
- One-to-ones, performance and team structure
- Board and investor technical conversations
- Vendor and platform selection
- Hiring and handing over to your permanent leader
What this isn’t
- Writing the bulk of the code — you have engineers for that
- A guarantee I'll be your CTO forever. The goal is handover
- Signing off on a plan I think is wrong to keep the peace
- Replacing a functioning leader you're avoiding a conversation with
- Legal, finance or HR ownership outside the engineering org
- Twelve-month lock-ins
v
Questions
The things people ask first.
Running it. I hold the one-to-ones, make the architecture calls, own the delivery commitments and answer for engineering outcomes. If you want someone to opine from outside the org, Advisory is cheaper and more honest about what it is.
At pre-seed and seed, usually yes — and often better than a first-time CTO hire, because the judgment has already been tested. Past Series A the job becomes more about the organisation than the technology, and that wants someone full-time. At that point my job is to help you hire them.
Usually they get better, quickly. Most first-time leads have never had a senior person to think out loud with — that's the gap I fill. If the engagement ends with your lead ready for the job, that's the goal, not a failure.
Set by what the engagement needs rather than a fixed block, with committed hours aligned to your team's day. The first month runs hotter than the sixth. What matters more than a day count is being reachable when a decision can't wait.
Remote from India, working across the US, UK and the UAE — I built and sold a commerce platform serving UAE and MENA, then ran product and engineering across India and North America at Aspire. USD invoicing for international clients, GST-compliant where an Indian entity is required.
Month to month, 30 days' notice both ways. No twelve-month lock-in — if I'm not adding value I'd rather you spent the money elsewhere. Every engagement aims at a defined handover rather than an indefinite retainer.
Currently taking new engagements
Tell me what your engineering org feels like from the inside.
Thirty minutes. I'll tell you honestly whether you need a fractional leader, a full-time hire, or just a better delivery loop.