Fractional CTO

The situation

Your business has grown past the point where the founder can make all the technical decisions. The team is delivering features, but nobody is asking whether the architecture will hold when you double your customer base. Nobody is looking twelve months ahead.

You need CTO-level thinking. You don't need - or can't yet justify - a full-time CTO on the payroll.

That's the gap I fill.

How I work

I typically work two to three days per week. I'm embedded in your business. I attend standups, review pull requests, talk to your developers, and sit in the meetings where technical decisions get made. I also write code, particularly on the hardest problems and the foundational patterns your team will build on.

The difference between this and a senior contractor is perspective. I'm thinking about where your technology needs to be in twelve months, not just what's on this week's sprint board.

During critical periods - a major release, a migration, a security incident - I increase my availability. During quieter stretches, I scale back. The engagement flexes around what the business needs.

What you get

• Technical strategy aligned to business goals, not a wish list of technologies
• Architecture decisions that account for where you are now and where you're heading
• Team mentoring and structure - the right people doing the right work at the right level
• Stakeholder translation - turning technical reality into language founders and investors can act on
• Hands-on code where it makes sense
• Recruitment support - specs that attract the right people, and interviewing candidates who can actually do the job

Where I've done this

I spent over six years as the full-time CTO of a B2B SaaS platform in higher education. Built the team, led a complete platform rewrite, containerised the infrastructure, implemented CI/CD pipelines, and guided the company through a successful acquisition. That included presenting architecture, security posture, and scalability to the acquiring company's due diligence team.

At MedAscend, I provided fractional technical leadership to a healthcare platform. The founders had a working MVP but needed enterprise-level architecture to pursue institutional clients. I re-architected for multi-tenancy, implemented OAuth2-based SSO and RBAC, designed the API layer, and established engineering processes that allowed the team to scale. The work directly enabled them to pursue contracts they couldn't previously reach.

When this makes sense

• The founder can't make all the technical decisions any more
• Your CTO has left and the team needs direction while you hire permanently
• You have developers delivering, but nobody looking at the bigger picture
• You're preparing for investment or acquisition and need credible technical leadership in place
• You need someone who can answer hard questions from investors about your platform

Let's talk

If your business needs senior technical leadership without the overhead of a full-time hire, I'd like to hear about your situation.