Fractional CTO
Senior technical leadership for small and mid-sized companies that need strategic oversight without a full-time executive hire. Pick the level of involvement that matches the decisions in front of you.
Advisor tier: $2,400/mo · Working CTO tier: $300/hr, scoped per engagement.
Who it’s for
- Founders at SMBs and small startups making technology decisions with real consequences — vendor choices, first engineering hires, architectural trade-offs — who want a senior voice in the room without a $300K/year hire.
- Engineering leaders who want a peer to pressure-test a roadmap, review an architecture, or help navigate a tough hiring or platform call.
- Boards and operating partners who need an independent technical read on a portfolio company without the cost of a full engagement.
Two tiers
Both tiers bill at the same hourly rate. The difference is how much of that time shows up each month.
Advisor tier
$300/hr × 8 hrs/mo = $2,400/mo.
A strategic sounding board and technical advisor. You get senior judgment on the calls in front of you — roadmap, architecture, hiring, vendor selection — without anyone embedding in day-to-day delivery.
- Standing 60–90 min monthly working session plus async availability between sessions.
- Roadmap input, architecture and technology-choice review, hiring and vendor guidance.
- A short written strategic update once a quarter.
- Best fit when the team is shipping, but a handful of decisions each quarter would benefit from an experienced second opinion.
Working CTO tier
$300/hr, flexible hours, scoped per engagement.
Deeper involvement for companies that need a technology executive in the room while an initiative is live — a platform rebuild, a first engineering hire wave, a post-incident remediation, or a growth-stage re-architecture.
- Typical band: 10–40 hrs/mo depending on the initiative.
- Standups, vendor negotiation, hiring loops, hands-on architecture, and incident review as needed.
- Engagement quote and monthly ceiling defined after a scoping call so there are no surprises.
- Best fit when the team needs an executive-weight voice while a specific thing is being done, for a defined stretch of months.
What you get
- Ongoing access to a technology executive who has shipped systems across healthcare, finance, payments, and entertainment.
- Judgment on the decisions that are hard to redo: architecture, platform choice, hiring plan, vendor lock-in, technical debt strategy.
- Honest questions in front of the team — the kind a founder can’t always ask, and a junior engineer can’t always answer.
- A clear exit. Engagements are month-to-month so you can scale up, scale down, or close cleanly when the need passes.
What it’s not
- Not a full-time CTO at a discount. If you need a hands-on executive 40 hours a week, you need to hire one. We can help you do that.
- Not a staff-augmentation seat. The work is senior technical judgment, not building backlog tickets on a team.
- Not a fixed 2 hours per week. Availability on the Advisor tier is 8 hours over the month, clustered where it matters — not a guaranteed weekly office-hours slot.
What clients say
Testimonial placeholder — to be added as client feedback is gathered. See the implementation plan, Step 13.
Name · Role · Company
Systems Sense Advisory 