Blueboard
MVP delivered in 11 weeks, 4,000 users by month three.
Outsourced technical leadership
Fractional CTO
A senior technical director in your leadership team, one to three days a week, without the risk of hiring for a critical role. Here is what it covers, what it costs, and the cases where I will tell you it is not the right answer.
Key facts
- A fractional CTO holds the role inside your company part-time and owns the decisions — not a consultant advising from the outside.
- At Workfutur: €8,800 to €19,200 per month depending on the level of engagement. The full price list is published, with no form to fill in.
- Start within two weeks, against an average six-month search when hiring a technical director.
- All intellectual property produced transfers to you from the first euro invoiced.
- Useful when you need to make calls, hire, or prepare due diligence. Not useful if what you really need is engineering capacity — a fixed-price prototype will cost you less.
What a fractional CTO actually does
The term covers very different realities. The distinction that matters is not the number of days, it is accountability: a consultant hands over recommendations and leaves, a fractional CTO makes the decisions and carries the consequences with you.
In practice that means sitting where the choices are made, holding the technical trajectory of the product, and being reachable when a decision cannot wait for next month's meeting.
- Architecture calls: what to build, what to buy, what to postpone
- Product and technical roadmap aligned with your funding plan
- Hiring the engineering team: role definition, assessment, final decision
- Managing in-house developers and external suppliers
- Preparing the technical side of fundraising and due diligence
- Security, GDPR compliance and technical debt: assessment and reduction plan
- Attendance at board and investor meetings
When it is the right answer — and when it is not
Worth saying plainly: a fractional CTO does not fit every situation, and signing you up in the wrong one would waste both our time.
It is the right answer when the difficulty is a matter of judgement. You have just raised and need to build a team and hold a roadmap in front of your board. Your technical director has left and the search will take months during which engineering cannot drift. You are not technical and you are approving choices you have no way to assess.
It is the wrong answer when what you lack is production capacity. If the real need is to build a product that does not exist yet, a fixed-price prototype engagement will be faster and cheaper. And if your engineering team is already strong and well led, a one-off audit will probably do.
What it costs, no detours
Most sites competing on this query give you market ranges and keep their own prices for the sales call. Here are mine.
The fractional CTO engagement runs from €8,800 to €19,200 per month depending on intensity and scope. Beforehand, a €4,900 audit and scoping engagement establishes whether the need is really there — and sometimes concludes that it is not. For one-off work, the day rate runs from €1,000 to €2,800 depending on the nature of the task.
No setup fee, no imposed minimum term, and the quote goes out within five working days.
How we work
It starts with a two-day scoping workshop, with you and your team. You come out with a written scope, the identified risks, success metrics and a plan. The quote follows within five working days.
The rhythm is then steady rather than intense: fixed days in the week, presence at the meetings where decisions are made, and availability in between for calls that cannot wait.
And one rule I do not negotiate: everything produced belongs to you from the first euro invoiced. Code, architecture diagrams, documentation, infrastructure accounts. If we stop tomorrow, you leave with all of it.
Fractional CTO, hiring or an agency: what actually differs
| Fractional CTO | Hiring a CTO | Agency or consultancy | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to start | Two weeks | Four to eight months of search, plus notice period | Two to six weeks |
| Cost | €8,800 to €19,200 per month, adjustable | A technical director role represents in the order of €150k a year, including employer costs and equity | Billed by the day or fixed price, often with no commitment on the outcome |
| Who decides | The fractional CTO, inside your governance | The employed CTO | You, based on outside recommendations |
| Main risk | Availability shared with other clients | A bad hire in a critical role, hard to correct | Dependence on the supplier and code you do not master |
| Code ownership | Yours from the first euro invoiced | Yours | To be negotiated, often at the point of departure |
| Reversibility | Can stop at any time, with organised handover | A long and costly separation | Varies with the contract |
The Workfutur figures are the ones on the pricing page, with no hidden variant. The orders of magnitude in the other two columns reflect what I observe on the engagements brought to me, not a market study.
What it produced elsewhere
Coddect
Turnaround divided by 14, costs divided by 30, 60 case files analysed per month.
Insights
Over 2,000 job roles indexed in a reference database for HR teams.
Frequently asked questions
What is a fractional CTO?
An experienced technical director who holds the role inside your company part-time, typically one to three days a week. They sit in your leadership meetings, decide the architecture, hire the engineering team and carry accountability for results. That is the difference with a consultant: they do not advise from the outside, they decide from the inside.
How much does a fractional CTO cost?
At Workfutur, €8,800 to €19,200 per month depending on the level of engagement and the scope. A prior audit and scoping engagement costs €4,900 and checks that the need is real. One-off work is billed at €1,000 to €2,800 per day. These figures are published on the pricing page.
Should I use a fractional CTO or hire a full-time one?
Hire if you have the financial visibility, the time for a multi-month search, and a volume of technical decisions that justifies daily presence. Take a fractional CTO if you need to move now, if the decision load does not fill five days a week, or if you want to avoid the risk of a bad hire in the role your product depends on.
How is this different from a software agency?
An agency supplies production capacity: developers executing a defined scope. A fractional CTO defines that scope and owns the trajectory. The two are complementary — I sometimes manage external suppliers in this role — but they answer different questions.
What is the commitment period?
There is no imposed minimum term. In practice a technical leadership engagement shows its effects over six to twelve months: below that, structural decisions have no time to play out. You can stop at any point, with an organised handover.
Who owns the code and the documentation?
You do, from the first euro invoiced. Code, architecture diagrams, technical documentation and infrastructure access transfer to you progressively, not at the end of the engagement. If we stop, you leave with everything.
Do you work outside France?
Workfutur is established in Paris and Singapore, and I work with both French and Singaporean companies. Technical leadership work is largely remote, with physical presence concentrated on the moments that justify it: scoping, board meetings, hiring interviews.
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