Senior technical ownership, two days a month.

You probably need one when three of these are true

Almost nobody goes looking for a fractional CTO. They go looking for relief from a specific, recurring problem, and the pattern is consistent enough to list.

• Six-figure technology decisions are being made with nobody senior to pressure-test them
• You are the most technical person in the room and it is not your job
• Vendors contradict each other and you have no way to arbitrate
• Delivery dates keep moving and nobody can explain why in terms you can act on
• An investor or board has started asking technical questions you are answering by forwarding emails
• You have engineers, but no one deciding what they should be building

What I actually own

Fractional does not mean advisory-only. It means part-time and accountable. Inside an engagement I hold four things, and I hold them in writing.

The technology roadmap is mine to maintain and defend: sequenced, costed, and tied to what the business is trying to do this year rather than a wishlist. Architecture sign-off means nothing significant ships without a design that has been reviewed against where the business is going in eighteen months. Vendor and hiring decisions go through me, including saying no to a vendor you already like. And board and investor reporting stops being a translation exercise you do at midnight.

What I do not do is disappear into the code. If your team needs another pair of hands, hiring one is cheaper than hiring me.

What it replaces

A capable full-time CTO in India is a six-to-nine-month search, a heavy salary, and a meaningful equity conversation. At 10 to 150 people, most companies need the judgement roughly two days a month and the headcount not at all.

The comparison that matters is not my rate against a salary. It is my rate against the cost of the decision you are currently making without help: the CRM migration that fails twice, the platform rebuilt three years early, the AI pilot with no baseline that nobody can defend or kill.

And when the honest answer is that you need a full-time CTO, I will say so, help you write the brief, and sit on the interview panel.

How it differs from an agency

An agency is paid to build. I am paid to be right. That difference shows up on the days when the correct recommendation is to buy something off the shelf, extend a tool you already own, or not build the thing at all. That is advice an agency has no commercial reason to give you.

I take no referral fees and no partner commissions, from anyone, ever. That is what makes a vendor recommendation from me worth reading.