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What Is a Fractional CTO? A Complete Guide for Growing Businesses
A fractional CTO is a senior technology leader who works with your business part-time (typically 1–3 days per week) providing strategic direction, architecture decisions, and team mentoring. They cost 50–85% less than a full-time CTO while delivering equivalent strategic value for businesses at the $2M–$20M revenue stage.
The fractional CTO model has exploded in the past three years, and for good reason. Growing businesses need senior technical leadership, but most can't justify (or afford) a $350k–$500k full-time hire when they only need that expertise 1–3 days a week.
A fractional CTO handles the same responsibilities as a full-time CTO — architecture decisions, vendor evaluation, team mentoring, stakeholder communication, technical roadmap — but on a part-time basis. They're not consultants who deliver a report and leave. They're embedded in your team, attending standups, reviewing pull requests, and making decisions alongside your engineers.
The sweet spot for a fractional CTO is a business between $2M and $20M in revenue. Below $2M, you typically need a hands-on technical co-founder. Above $20M, the volume of technical decisions usually justifies a full-time hire. In the middle, a fractional CTO gives you senior leadership without the overhead.
What makes a fractional CTO different from an agency? Agencies deliver projects. A fractional CTO delivers outcomes over time. They build institutional knowledge, develop your team's capability, and make decisions in context. An agency builds what you ask for; a fractional CTO helps you figure out what to ask for.
The engagement model is simple: a fixed number of days per week (or month) at a day rate. No project scope, no change requests, no surprise invoices. The fractional CTO attends key meetings, makes architectural decisions, mentors your senior engineers, handles vendor relationships, and provides the technical judgment that keeps your business moving in the right direction.
Common deliverables include: technical roadmap (quarterly), architecture decision records, vendor evaluations, hiring support (writing JDs, interviewing, evaluating candidates), security posture review, and incident response leadership. The specific mix depends on what your business needs most.
Frequently Asked Questions
Typically 1–3 days per week. The exact amount depends on the complexity of your technology, the size of your engineering team, and whether you're in a stable phase or a critical transition (like a platform migration or new product launch).
Yes, but they manage strategically, not operationally. They set architectural standards, review critical decisions, and mentor senior engineers. Day-to-day sprint management is better handled by a tech lead or engineering manager.
When technical decisions require daily attention, your engineering team exceeds 8–10 people, you're deploying multiple times per day, or your fractional CTO is consistently billing 4+ days per week for 3+ months. These signals indicate the role has grown beyond part-time.
Sources
- Gartner: The CTO Role Is Evolving(accessed 2026-02-01)
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