Fractional CTO & Technology Advisory
Senior technology leadership without the full-time hire.
Companies reach a point where the technology decisions carry serious financial weight and there is nobody whose job it is to own them. Hiring a full-time executive is a large commitment to make before you are sure what you need.
I hold that seat. Setting direction, making the calls that are expensive to get wrong, leading the people already on the team, and staying accountable for whether the work actually lands. Fractional CTO, director of IT, or director of data, depending on where the gap actually is.
It can also be a single decision, like software selection or buy vs. build, where you want an outside read before you commit.
The gaps this usually fills.
There is a technology team but nobody senior leading it
The talent is there and the work gets done, but nobody is setting direction, raising the standard, or connecting what the team builds to what the business is trying to do.
Nobody translates between the business and the technical side
Leadership knows the goals. The technical people know the systems. Decisions keep landing badly because the conversation between them never quite happens.
Nobody owns the decisions
Software selection, vendor evaluation, a platform commitment. They keep coming up, and they land on whoever happens to have time that week.
A roadmap nobody keeps current
Someone wrote a plan. A year later the business has moved and nothing in it has been revisited. I build the roadmap and keep it honest as things change.
Projects start well and then stall
An implementation, an integration, or a build loses momentum because nobody internally owns it end to end. Keeping technology projects on track is often the centerpiece of the engagement.
Data has become its own problem
Reporting nobody trusts, no clear ownership, and architecture decisions nobody feels qualified to make. Designing the data side of a complex environment and getting an organization to actually adopt it is different work than running IT, and sometimes it is the role that is actually missing.
What people ask me for most is a conversation.
More often than any of the situations above, a leader brings me something going on. Technical or not, it does not matter much. They describe it, I ask questions until the actual problem is on the table, and most of the time they leave with a clear next step. Usually that answer was already in the room and just needed somebody to pull it out.
Sometimes what surfaces is a process problem and the work just needs a way to move. Sometimes it is expectations that were never set clearly. Occasionally it is the harder conversation about who is in the seat. None of that is legal or HR advice, and I will say so when that is what you need. It is a second set of eyes from someone who has had to make the same calls.
The engagement fits the problem, not a package.
One decision
A single call that needs an outside read. Software selection, buy vs. build, or a platform commitment. I evaluate the options, give you a direct recommendation, and you take it from there.
A defined piece of work
A project with a clear outcome and an end. Leading an implementation, untangling an architecture, or building the roadmap the business will actually run on.
An ongoing seat
A standing role in the business, at whatever depth the situation calls for. Some companies need a voice in the room a few days a month. Others need considerably more, for a long time.
Most of this work is remote. Companies hire for this through networks and referrals rather than proximity, and it rarely matters where anyone sits. I am in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and happy to be in the room when being in the room is worth it.
Part of the job is telling you when the seat should be permanent.
The risk with any fractional arrangement is that the person settles in and stays longer than the business actually needs them. I would rather tell you the answer is a full-time hire, and describe what that hire should look like.
I have done that with a team I helped build. A business needed a marketing function with people capable of moving it forward, so I helped stand that team up. Then I told leadership plainly that I was not the right person to run it long term, and what I thought the seat actually needed instead. A permanent leader was hired. A good HR team did most of that work while I helped refine what the role called for, and I handed it over.
I have held the seat, not just advised on it.
Ten years writing software for small and mid-sized businesses that needed something fitted to how they actually operated. Then eleven inside one growing ecommerce and manufacturing company, where I led the technology, data, and marketing teams.
A large part of that was the data side. Designing the data and reporting architecture for an environment with a lot of moving parts, then leading the rollout of it across the company. Building the thing is one job. Getting an organization to adopt it and rely on it is a different one, and that second one takes most of the effort.
I also created the delivery framework that organization ran on. A lean, sprint-based way of running work that I rolled out and kept iterating on, until teams across the company were using it. That is the kind of thing that turns a group of capable people into a team that ships predictably.
Developer, architect, project lead, and the person in the room when the direction got set. That range matters here, because the job is translating between those levels all day. I can talk architecture with your engineers in the morning and build vs. buy economics with your leadership in the afternoon. I also still do the work. Some engagements are purely direction and leadership. In others I am in the systems myself.
For companies that need the judgment before they need the headcount.
- Companies with a technology or data team but no senior leader, or one the business has outgrown.
- Growing companies where technology decisions have started carrying serious financial weight.
- Founders who have been the technology decision-maker by default and need that off their plate.
- Businesses that need senior technology involvement without carrying a full-time executive salary.
- Companies with technical staff who need mentoring, direction, or someone to raise the standard of the work.
Related work.
Let's talk about what the gap actually is.
A free 30-minute conversation, remote or in person. No pitch. Tell me where the business is and what is not getting owned, and I'll tell you whether I can help.