Hiring a Fractional CTO

Most Common Situations Or Problems That Warrant a Fractional CTO

1. Offshore resources not delivering: Many companies want to offshore engineering to save big on costs. That being said, this comes with risks in quality, timeline, communication, time zones, etc.
2. Starting from scratch: When you’re building a new product from scratch, or a challenging featureset within an existing product, and are concerned about getting it right the first time
3. Architecture complexity: The system is getting harder to change, reliability is a concern, and scaling is starting to expose weak spots.
4. Security concerns: You need security and compliance practices that are “real,” not aspirational, especially as customers and partners ask more questions.

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How a Fractional CTO Helps Solve Those Problems

1. Technical roadmap: They set an engineering strategy that balances near-term delivery with longer-term system health, then keep the team executing against it.
2. Architecture & infrastructure: They design or refactor toward scalable, secure, resilient systems, and reduce reliability risk as usage grows.
3. Team leadership: They hire, mentor, and create accountability so output becomes more consistent and less founder-dependent. This is especially useful for managing the quality and velocity of offshore dev shops
4. Security & compliance: They put in place practical security controls and compliance readiness so you can pass customer diligence and reduce risk.
5. Investor & board confidence: They translate the technical plan into a clear narrative, support technical diligence, and reduce uncertainty for stakeholders.

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Fractional Senior Engineer or a More Senior Fractional CTO?

If you already have clear technical direction and you mainly need output (shipping features, closing tickets, implementing a known plan), a strong Fractional Senior Engineer can be enough. If the hard part is making the calls (what to build next, what to simplify, what to rebuild, how to hire, how to scale safely) you want a more senior Fractional CTO who can set direction and be accountable for outcomes.

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Under-Rated Use Case: Beyond Code - People & Process

Read our interview with Chris Bee to see how a seasoned Fractional CTO thinks about creating impact in early-stage companies. His fractional “one-liner” is working with seed to Series A startups and helping primarily with people, process, and product, exactly the areas that tend to break first when teams start scaling.

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Fractional CTO Case Study

LeaseUp (proptech) had great engineering firepower, but was lacking high-level technical strategy and a sense for what was most important to build. To improve the quality of their engineering team’s output, they decided to bring on a seasoned proptech-focused Fractional CTO on 10 hours per week, with the help of Fractional Jobs. The relationship was so successful that as they grew, the Fractional CTO became their full-time CTO.

LeaseUp’s CEO said: "Fractional Jobs was an easy process, we quickly got connected with multiple tech leaders of such high caliber and ended up finding a great fit for our company."

Fractional Jobs also helped:

1. Big Leap Health (healthtech) hire a Fractional CTO for 10 hours per week.
2. Concouse (B2B marketplace) hire a Fractional CTO for 10 hours per week.
3. Autograph (HR-tech) hire a Fractional Staff Engineer for 20 hours per week.

All with similar results.

Get help hiring a Fractional CTO for your startup or SMB, learn more here.

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