Technical leadership for scale
Fractional CTO for
Growth-Stage Companies
You've raised your Series B. Your product has traction. Now you need to scale the technology — performance, compliance, multi-team coordination, and enterprise readiness — without losing the velocity that got you here.
75+
Products shipped
15+
Years operating experience
$140M+
ARR built
IPO
Guided to public listing
Performance under load
What worked at 1,000 users breaks at 100,000. Database queries that ran in milliseconds now take seconds. Your infrastructure costs are climbing faster than your revenue. You need someone who has scaled systems before — and knows which optimizations actually matter.
Multi-team coordination
With multiple engineering squads shipping simultaneously, you need clear ownership boundaries, API contracts, shared platform services, and release coordination. Without it, teams step on each other and velocity drops despite headcount growth.
Enterprise sales requirements
Enterprise customers demand SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA compliance, SSO, audit logs, and SLAs. Each of these is a multi-month project. A fractional CTO prioritizes them against product roadmap and ensures compliance doesn't become a full-time distraction.
International compliance
Expanding into the EU means GDPR. Into healthcare means HIPAA. Into finance means PCI-DSS. Each jurisdiction brings data residency, privacy, and regulatory requirements that must be baked into your architecture — not bolted on after the fact.
Architecture review and optimization
We audit your current architecture for bottlenecks, single points of failure, and scalability limits. Then we design and lead the migration — whether that's database optimization, service decomposition, caching strategies, or infrastructure automation.
Engineering org design
We structure your engineering organization for scale — team topologies, reporting lines, career ladders, and cross-team processes. We've designed engineering orgs from 15 to 200+ engineers and know which structures work at which sizes.
Technical due diligence for M&A
Whether you're acquiring or being acquired, technical due diligence is high-stakes. We prepare your technology for scrutiny or evaluate acquisition targets — assessing architecture quality, technical debt, team capability, and integration complexity.
Platform reliability (SLAs and incident response)
Enterprise customers expect 99.9%+ uptime and rapid incident response. We establish SRE practices, monitoring and alerting, incident management processes, post-mortems, and SLA frameworks that your sales team can confidently commit to.
Transition planning to full-time CTO
Growth-stage companies eventually need a full-time CTO on the cap table. We define the role, run the search, evaluate candidates, and ensure a smooth transition. Our goal is to make ourselves unnecessary — and leave you in stronger hands.
2-3 days/week
Advisory capacity alongside your existing engineering leadership. We complement your VP of Engineering or Head of Engineering with strategic oversight and board-level representation.
$15K-$25K/mo
Senior technology leadership at a fraction of the full-time cost. Flexible engagement that scales with your needs — from architecture reviews to M&A due diligence to CTO search.
Advisory
Unlike early-stage engagements, growth-stage fractional CTO work is typically advisory — guiding your engineering leaders rather than managing the team directly. We elevate your existing leadership.
50+ engineers
At this scale, engineering leadership is a full-time job. The organizational complexity — hiring, performance management, cross-team coordination, culture — requires someone who is present every day.
Daily strategic decisions needed
When every day brings architecture trade-offs, vendor negotiations, incident escalations, and hiring decisions, you can't wait for your fractional CTO's next scheduled day. You need a full-time technology leader.
Board expects full-time CTO on cap table
At Series C and beyond, your board will expect a named CTO with skin in the game. That means equity, full-time commitment, and accountability that goes beyond an advisory engagement. We help you hire that person.
Ready to scale with confidence?
Book a 30-minute strategy call. We'll discuss your growth challenges, team structure, and technical roadmap — and tell you honestly whether a fractional CTO or full-time hire is the right move.
Book a Free Strategy Call