Home Consulting & Fractional CTO

CTO-level leadership, without the full-time hire.

A fractional CTO and independent AI advisor in one: a principal engineer who still builds. We set technical direction, make the hard calls on architecture, vendors and AI, and make sure what you ship holds up.

Get in touch → See engagements

Fractional CTOtechnology leadership on a part-time basis
Independentno reseller deals with vendors
Hands-onadvice from someone who still builds

Problems we solve

If this sounds familiar, we should talk.

We are growing fast and have no technical leader.

A fractional CTO who owns the roadmap, architecture and hiring until you are ready for a full-time one.

Our board wants an AI strategy by next quarter.

A ranked roadmap tied to business outcomes, with value, effort and risk for each use case.

Every vendor says their product is the answer.

Independent build-vs-buy analysis against your data, budget and risk appetite.

Our AI prototype works in demos and fails with customers.

An eval-first review that shows where it fails and fixes the highest-impact problems first.

Engagements

Defined scope. Clear outcome.

Most clients start with one engagement and continue only when the value is proven.

Ongoing partnership

Fractional CTO

Best for: Founders and leadership teams without a technical leader.

Ownership of the technology and AI roadmap
Architecture, vendor and build-vs-buy decisions
Hiring plans, interviews and team setup
Oversight of in-house and agency engineering
Technical input for board and investor conversations

OutcomeCTO-level leadership without a full-time hire.

Most clients start here

AI Opportunity Sprint

Best for: Leadership teams starting or resetting their AI agenda.

Stakeholder interviews and process mapping
Data and systems readiness review
10–20 use cases scored on value, feasibility and risk
Prioritised roadmap and reference architecture for the top two
Executive readout and Q&A

OutcomeA prioritised AI plan you can fund with confidence.

Focused engagement

Production Readiness Review

Best for: Teams with an AI feature in, or close to, production.

Eval set built from real usage
Failure analysis and root causes
Guardrail and observability design
Cost and latency profile
Prioritised fix plan, with optional implementation

OutcomeKnow exactly why it fails, and what to fix first.

What you get

What we bring, and what you keep.

Everything lives in your accounts and repositories, documented for your team.

Leadership

Technology roadmaps
Hiring and team design
Engineering process and delivery
Board and investor support

AI strategy

Opportunity mapping
ROI and business cases
AI policy and governance
Change and adoption planning

Architecture

System and platform design
Build-vs-buy and vendor selection
Retrieval, agents and tool use
Security and scalability reviews

Quality and cost

Eval design and test sets
Guardrails and observability
Model selection and routing
Cloud and model cost control

You keep

Technology and AI roadmapPriorities with effort, value and risk
Doc
Architecture assessmentCurrent state, risks and target design
Doc
Hiring planRoles, sequencing and interview loops
Doc
AI use-case portfolio and ROI modelAssumptions you can challenge and update
Sheet
Eval set and harnessLabelled examples and automated tests for AI features
Code

Typical stack

Frontier and open-weight LLMs
Cloud architecture (AWS, GCP)
Retrieval and agents
Eval harnesses
Observability
Engineering process

Questions

Before you get in touch.

What does a fractional CTO do for us?

Everything a CTO would, for a set amount of time each month: owning the technology roadmap, making architecture and vendor decisions, hiring and guiding engineers, and representing technology to your board and investors. When you are ready for a full-time CTO, we help you hire one and hand over.

We have no AI yet. Is it too early?

No. The AI Opportunity Sprint is designed for exactly this point. It shows where AI pays off, where it does not, and what data work comes first.

Which models and vendors do you use?

Whichever fit the task, cost and data requirements, including frontier APIs and open-weight models you can host yourself. We have no reseller arrangements, so recommendations stay independent.