Fractional CTO
Senior technical judgement, without a full-time hire
A CTO's decisions without a CTO's salary: what to build, what to buy, what to leave alone, and whether AI belongs anywhere near it. On a defined cadence, with agreed response windows, so you know when you have us.
- Thirty-minute fit call
- Written scope before any invoice
- Ends at a review point
- Who it is for
- Teams shipping software who need senior judgement more often than another pair of hands
- Commitment
- A monthly retainer with an agreed number of senior hours and a fixed cadence
- Response windows
- Agreed in writing before the engagement starts, not assumed
- Not included
- A development team. We direct the build; we do not staff it
Why teams call
The decisions that stall without someone senior to make them
These are the situations a fractional CTO is actually for. If none of them sound like yours, a call will say so.
Nobody owns the technical call
Engineering can build what is asked for. What is missing is the person who decides what should be asked for, and who can say no to the wrong project before it consumes a quarter.
An AI project that will not land
A demonstration impressed everyone and nothing reached production. The gap is rarely the model; it is data, access, review, and who owns the result when it is wrong.
Buying decisions with no technical read
Vendor claims are hard to evaluate without someone who has built the thing being sold. A wrong platform choice is expensive for years.
A team that has outgrown its architecture
What worked at five customers is bending at fifty. Someone needs to say which parts to fix now and which to leave until they genuinely hurt.
Delivery that keeps slipping
Estimates are optimistic, scope is unbounded, and no one is empowered to cut. Oversight closes that faster than more hours do.
A hire you are not ready to make
A full-time CTO is a significant commitment and the wrong one is hard to undo. Fractional cover buys time to make the permanent decision well.
What you get
Decisions on the record, not advice in a meeting
Everything below is written down and handed over, so the reasoning survives the engagement and whoever comes next does not start from nothing.
- 01
A written technical assessment
What you have, what is at risk, and the order to address it in.
- 02
Decisions with their reasoning
Each significant call recorded with the alternatives and why they lost.
- 03
A prioritised roadmap
Sequenced by dependency and risk, with the assumptions written down.
- 04
Build, buy or wait recommendations
Including the operating-cost assumptions behind each one.
- 05
Delivery oversight
Review of scope, estimates and significant changes before they ship.
- 06
Hiring input
Role definitions, technical interviews, and an honest read on candidates.
Scope
What the retainer covers, and what it does not
Stated here rather than discovered during delivery. If you need something in the right-hand column, it is scoped and priced separately.
Included in the retainer
- An agreed number of senior hours each month
- A fixed meeting cadence with you and with the team
- Agreed response windows for urgent technical questions
- Technical decisions documented with their reasoning
- Architecture and code review at agreed checkpoints
- Vendor and platform evaluation
- Interviewing and technical assessment for engineering hires
Scoped separately
- Writing production code or staffing a development team
- Hands-on implementation of AI workflows
- A full readiness assessment or prototype build
- Twenty-four-hour or on-call incident cover
- Formal regulatory, legal or security certification opinions
- Recruiting as an agency, or employing engineers on your behalf
Anything on this side is scoped and priced on its own, once the shape of it is clear. Book a fit call →
How it runs
A defined cadence, agreed before it starts
The first month is about understanding what you actually have. After that it settles into a rhythm you can plan around.
- 01
Fit call
Thirty minutes on what you are building, who is building it, and what decision is currently stuck. If a fractional CTO is not the right answer, you will hear that here rather than after an invoice.
- 02
Written scope
Hours, cadence, response windows, what is included and what is not, and who on your side owns which decisions. Agreed before any work begins.
- 03
First month – read the system
Architecture, delivery process, team structure, existing commitments and risks. Ends with a written view of what is sound, what is fragile, and what to do about it in what order.
- 04
Ongoing – the standing cadence
Regular sessions with you and the team, technical decisions made and written down, delivery oversight, and review of anything significant before it ships.
- 05
Review and adjust
The engagement is reviewed on an agreed schedule. Scope goes up, down, or ends – without a renewal you have to argue your way out of.
Against the alternatives
An advisor gives opinions. A fractional CTO makes decisions and owns them.
The engagement carries the authority to say no to a project, to set technical direction, and to be accountable for whether delivery works – within a scope agreed in writing, with one senior person on the other end of it.
| A full-time CTO | An advisor or consultant | This engagement | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decisions | Makes them, as an employee | Offers opinions; the decision stays with you | Makes them and owns them, within a scope agreed in writing |
| Commitment | A permanent hire, and the wrong one is hard to undo | Session by session | A monthly retainer with agreed hours, reviewed on a schedule |
| Availability | Full time | When booked | A fixed cadence, with response windows agreed in writing |
| Writes the code | Sometimes | No | No. Directs the build; does not staff it |
| What you keep | Depends on the person | Notes, if any | Decisions with their reasoning, a roadmap and a written assessment |
Evidence
What we can show you, and what we will not claim
There are no published client case studies here, because there are none we can substantiate and attribute properly yet. Past employers' clients are not our clients and will not be presented as though they were. What we can do is talk through how a decision like yours has been approached before, and put Daniel's background in front of you directly on the call so you can judge it yourself. When a client approves a written account of their engagement, it will appear here with their name on it.
Daniel Rondeau
The person on the call, and the person making the decisions.
Daniel on LinkedIn →Ask on the fit call how a decision like yours has been approached before.
What it costs
No price list. A figure attached to a written scope.
How many senior hours a month the work genuinely needs, how tight the response windows are, and how much delivery oversight sits inside the retainer rather than beside it. A fit call produces a written scope with a figure attached to it. We would rather quote a number we can stand behind than publish one that has to be renegotiated.
Before you book
The questions that usually come first
How is this different from an advisor or a consultant?
An advisor gives opinions; a fractional CTO makes decisions and owns them. The engagement includes the authority to say no to a project, to set technical direction, and to be accountable for whether delivery works – within a scope agreed in writing.
How many hours a month does this usually take?
It depends on how many decisions are genuinely in flight and how much delivery oversight you want inside the retainer. The fit call is where that gets sized honestly, and the number goes in the written scope before anything starts.
Do you write the code?
No. The retainer covers direction, review and decisions; it does not staff a development team. Where a build is needed, it is scoped separately – as a prototype sprint or an implementation – so you can see exactly what you are paying for.
What happens if we hire a full-time CTO?
That is a good outcome and the engagement is built for it. We help define the role, interview for it, and hand over the written record of decisions and their reasoning so your new hire does not start from nothing.
Can you cover an existing team without undermining them?
Yes, and it is worth saying plainly on the first call how the team is set up. The job is to make the decisions engineers are being asked to make without enough context – not to review their work over their shoulder.
What if we only need this for a few months?
That is common – covering a gap, a funding round, or one significant build. The engagement is reviewed on an agreed schedule and can end at a review point without an argument.
Not the right engagement? The others
Start with a conversation
Bring the decision that is currently stuck
Thirty minutes on what you are building and what is blocking it. If a fractional CTO is not the right answer, that is a useful result too.
Pick a time that suits you. Or write to daniel@gotai.com