Fractional CTO for SMEs and startups

What a fractional CTO does

The job is to make sure technology decisions are taken by someone who understands both the business and the technology, and who answers to you. In practice that covers:

• Technology strategy and roadmap: what to build, buy or leave alone, and in what order.
• Build or buy decisions, including when a SaaS product, a spreadsheet or a low-code tool is the honest answer.
• Choosing and managing suppliers: writing the brief, comparing quotes on the same basis and reviewing delivery against what was promised.
• Architecture and security baseline: hosting, access, backups, data protection and who holds which accounts.
• Hiring support: role descriptions, technical interviews and onboarding for your first engineers.
• Investor and board questions: technical due diligence, risk and the roadmap explained in business terms.
• AI decisions: which uses are worth testing and which tools or providers are acceptable.

Fractional, interim, virtual: the terms

The labels overlap, so agree what you are buying rather than relying on the name. A fractional CTO works for you on an ongoing basis, for an agreed share of time each month. An interim CTO is usually full-time for a limited period, covering a gap or a crisis. Virtual CTO and CTO as a service are used loosely for either arrangement, and sometimes for an advice line with no ownership of decisions.

A part-time CTO for startups and SMEs makes sense when you spend meaningful sums on software but have no senior technical person in-house, when you are about to choose a development supplier, when a project is late and nobody can say why, or when investors start asking technical questions. It is not the answer when you need people writing code every day, which is a development team, or a single independent verdict on an existing system, which is a software code audit.

Fractional CTO, agency or full-time hire

For a sense of the alternative: IT Jobs Watch reports a median advertised salary of £100,000 for permanent CTO roles in the UK, in the six months to 2 November 2026. That is before employer's National Insurance, pension, any equity and recruitment fees. A fractional arrangement is paid for the time agreed, which is why it suits companies that need the judgement more than the headcount.

The conflict of interest, said plainly

We build software for a living, so a fractional CTO from us has an obvious incentive to recommend building, and building with us. Ask that question of anyone who offers both advice and development. What you should expect, from us or from anyone else in this position:

• The incentive is declared in writing at the start, not discovered later.
• Off-the-shelf options are assessed first, and recommended when they do the job.
• You decide who builds. A brief written by your fractional CTO should be one any supplier can quote on.
• Our quotes get no special treatment: the same criteria apply to our proposal and to anyone else's, and you are free to seek an independent second opinion.
• Nobody reviews their own work as if it were independent.

How it would work

A startup preparing its first technical hire could agree a monthly rhythm: a working session on the roadmap, review of supplier progress, and time set aside for interviews and investor questions, adjusted as needs change. Scope and time are agreed in writing, and if a build comes out of it, it runs like any other project: a working demo every two weeks and one fixed price, as explained on how we work.