A fractional CTO owns the decisions, not the tickets
Senior technology leadership, part time: typically one to three days a month, owning the technical decisions that are expensive to reverse. Architecture and platform, what the engineering spend buys, the hiring bar, security posture, supplier choices, and what does not get built. This is not staff augmentation and it is not a cheaper development team. If what you need is hands on keyboards, we will tell you, and you should hire that instead.
What a fractional CTO actually owns
The title is used loosely enough to be worth defining. Six things, owned rather than advised on.
Technical direction
The architecture, the platform, and which of the decisions in front of you are one-way doors.
Where the engineering money goes
Build versus buy, cloud spend, supplier contracts, and the honest cost of the roadmap as written.
The team and the bar
Structure, seniority, who is missing, who is carrying too much, and what good means at interview.
Security and risk posture
What is acceptable, what is not, and what gets said in writing to a customer or in a security questionnaire.
Delivery accountability
Commitments that are real, and an early warning when they stop being real.
Saying no
The most valuable and least advertised part of the job. A roadmap built from whoever asked most recently is the default state of a company without someone senior enough to decline.
What it is not: writing most of the code, managing your agency's board, attending every stand-up, or lending a title to a pitch deck. We do hands-on work where it genuinely accelerates a decision, and it is never the bulk of the mandate.
When you need one
A founder without a technical co-founder
- Technical decisions are being made by whoever is most confident in the room.
- An agency or a contractor is building the product and nobody on your side can evaluate what comes back.
- You are raising, and the technical section of diligence is about to be someone's problem.
- The first two or three engineers are hired and nobody is leading them.
- A large customer has started asking questions about security, uptime and data that you cannot currently answer.
A company between technology leaders
- The CTO has left and the search will take six months. Someone has to hold the decisions in the meantime, and promoting an engineer into the gap without support usually costs you the engineer.
- A transformation, migration or turnaround needs experienced ownership that the permanent team cannot absorb on top of its own work.
- Post-acquisition, where two engineering organisations have to become one.
- The board has lost confidence in the technical reporting and wants an independent line of sight.
When not to hire one
If you have a capable, empowered head of engineering and a clear roadmap, you do not need one, and a technical review will serve you better. If you need forty hours a week of leadership, hire a full-time CTO, and we will help you define the role and sit on the panel if that is useful. If what is missing is engineers, this is the wrong purchase entirely.
How we work with everyone else
A fractional CTO is only useful if the rest of the organisation can work with them. Six relationships, each handled differently.
Founders and CEOs
A standing weekly conversation, not a monthly report. Direct opinions, including the unwelcome ones, and a translation layer between the business plan and what it demands technically.
Boards and investors
Reporting that distinguishes risk from noise, and a named person accountable for the technical picture. We present to the board where that helps.
Engineering teams
We work with your engineers, not over them. They usually know where the problems are. What has been missing is someone senior and external to say it to. Nobody is being replaced, and we say so on day one.
Product leaders
Sequencing, trade-offs and honest costs against the roadmap, so that how long stops being a negotiation.
Agencies and suppliers
We hold them to the standard your own team would if you had one: architecture review, code ownership in your name, and a handover that actually works. Adversarial only where it needs to be.
Investors and venture studios
Portfolio-level technical support, second opinions before a cheque, and a first ninety days for a company that has just discovered a technical problem.
Operating rhythm
Remote-first, with a fixed cadence rather than availability on demand. A typical month:
- A weekly leadership session, one hour, with an agenda and decisions recorded.
- A standing slot with the engineering team: architecture review, technical design, or whatever is actually blocking.
- Asynchronous availability in your channels through the week, for the decisions that cannot wait.
- A monthly written update for founders and board: what changed, what is at risk, what needs a decision.
- Quarterly, a longer working session on the plan for the next quarter, on site where the dates line up.
We are an engineering studio in Bordeaux, France, and we work with companies across Europe and further afield. On-site sessions are scheduled rather than continuous, and agreed before a mandate starts rather than promised vaguely. For clients in the Gulf, Bordeaux is two to three hours behind Dubai, which means a genuinely shared working day rather than an overnight handover.
What the first 90 days look like
Mandates start with a fixed first ninety days, not an open-ended retainer. Both sides need an exit that is not awkward.
- 1
Days 1 to 30: understand and stabilise
Systems, team, commitments and the immediate risks. One or two things fixed that were obviously broken, so the arrangement earns its place early.
- 2
Days 31 to 60: decide
Architecture and platform direction, the spend, the team shape and the security posture, written down and agreed with you.
- 3
Days 61 to 90: install the rhythm
Delivery cadence, reporting, and the decisions your own people should be making without us.
- 4
At 90 days: a real decision point
Continue at an agreed cadence, step down to a lighter advisory arrangement, or stop because the gap has been filled. All three are normal outcomes and we will recommend one.
Where the situation is unclear at the outset, we usually start with a fixed-scope technical review instead and let its findings define the mandate. It is a cheaper way to find out whether you need one at all. Fixed-scope technical review and risk sprint
What tends to change
Expressed as categories rather than numbers, because outcomes depend on where you start, and any figure quoted here would be someone else's.
Decisions stop stalling
The expensive ones get made, with someone accountable for them.
Spend becomes legible
What the cloud bill and the engineering budget actually buy, and what can be cut without consequence.
Enterprise conversations stop stalling on security
Questionnaires get answered accurately and quickly instead of blocking deals for weeks.
Delivery becomes predictable
Not necessarily faster first. Predictable first, which is what the rest of the business actually needs.
Key-person risk drops
What was in one person's head gets written down and shared.
Hiring improves
A defensible bar, a real role definition, and someone competent in the interview loop.
Who you would be working with
Hugo Matthaey co-founded Side, the French temporary-work platform, and saw it through from early fundraising to its sale. Its whole job was turning staffing paperwork into software that ran itself. He now runs Reflekt Lab, an engineering studio in Bordeaux that builds custom ERPs, CRMs and B2B back-office platforms, and runs its own operations on software the team wrote.
That matters for one specific reason: the same team that advises you can implement the roadmap, and has to live with the advice. Most of our advisory work turns into build work, and when it should not, we say so.
Frequently asked questions
Do you need to be based in our city to do this?
No, for the work itself. The decisions happen in a weekly rhythm, and that runs remotely. In-person time does matter for some mandates: board-facing work, a turnaround, or a team that has lost trust in its technical leadership all go better with someone in the room at the right moments. For those we agree a visit cadence in the contract rather than promising presence in general terms. If your situation genuinely needs someone in the building most weeks, a locally resident fractional CTO is the better answer and we will say so on the call.
How many days a month?
Usually one to three. Below one day a month you have an adviser rather than a leader. Above four or five you are close enough to full-time that you should hire.
What does it cost?
Priced per day against an agreed monthly cadence, confirmed in writing after the first conversation. There is no long tie-in: the first ninety days are fixed, and after that it is month to month. We publish real numbers where the scope is genuinely fixed, which is why the code audit is 2,500 euros flat and our UAE build bands are on the page rather than behind a form.
Can you also build the software?
Yes, and it is a separate agreement with its own scope. We keep the two distinct on purpose, because a fractional CTO who quietly becomes a sales channel for their own build team is no longer giving you independent advice.
What happens when we hire a full-time CTO?
That is a successful ending. We help define the role, sit on the panel if you want, and hand over properly. Several mandates should end this way.
Will our engineers see this as a threat?
Handled badly, yes. We are explicit on day one that nobody is being replaced and that the point is to unblock them. In practice engineers are usually the first to find it useful, because someone senior is finally listening to what they have been saying.
Is this the same as a technical review?
No. A review is a fixed-scope assessment that ends in a roadmap. A fractional mandate is ongoing ownership of the decisions. If you do not yet know which you need, start with the review: it is cheaper and it answers the question.
Do you sign an NDA?
Yes, as standard.
Not sure whether you need one?
Thirty minutes. Describe the situation and we will tell you whether a fractional CTO is the right answer, whether a fixed-scope review would answer the question more cheaply, or whether what you actually need is to hire.
