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Fractional
CTO

Senior technical leadership for as many hours as you actually need. In a world where AI writes most of the code, the scarce resource is someone who knows what to build, how it fails, and who answers for it.

Start a conversation How it works ↓

What you get

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

Technology strategy

Architecture, stack choices and build-versus-buy decisions made by someone who has lived with the consequences of each.

AI adoption, honestly

Where AI genuinely pays off in your business, where it does not yet, and how to work with the tools and platforms your team already uses.

Vendor & agency oversight

An independent owner who reviews what outside teams deliver, keeps the IP and architecture in your hands, and prevents lock-in.

Security posture

Practical security reviews scaled to your size — the handful of things that actually get small and mid-sized companies breached.

Team & process

Hiring, code review culture and an AI-first engineering workflow that keeps a human accountable for every change.

Investor & board communication

Technical roadmaps translated into business language, and a credible answer when due diligence asks hard questions.

How it works

Start with an assessment,
then a steady rhythm.

I

Technical assessment

Architecture, code, infrastructure, security and team — what is solid, what is risky, what to do first.

II

Roadmap

A prioritised plan tied to business goals, with the decisions that need making now.

III

Ongoing leadership

A fixed number of hours a week: reviews, decisions, hiring, vendor management, board updates.

IV

Hand over when ready

When you need a full-time CTO, we help you hire one and hand over cleanly.

Technology leadership

Who you get.

Our fractional CTO work is led by Edgeware's own CTO: more than twenty years of building production systems in e-commerce and marketplaces, adtech and marketing software, healthcare, logistics and mobility, media and streaming, real estate, oil and manufacturing, and B2B SaaS, a previous outsourcing company built and successfully exited, and hands-on work with several AI startups.

Hands-on across PHP, Node.js, Python and Go, high-load systems and microservices, AWS, GCP and Azure, MySQL, PostgreSQL, TiDB and MongoDB, data analytics, custom ML models, fine-tuning and RAG, custom agentic systems built with PydanticAI and other frameworks, and Flutter mobile apps. A Master's in Computer Science, a PhD in progress, and Anthropic's Claude Certified Architect credential.

More about us on the about page.

Common questions

What founders usually ask first.

What does a fractional CTO do?
The same job as a full-time CTO, for the hours you actually need: technology strategy, architecture and build-versus-buy decisions, vendor and team oversight, security posture, and a credible technical voice with investors and the board.
How many hours does it take?
Most engagements are a few hours a week, agreed up front and adjusted as the company changes. Busy periods — a fundraise, a platform migration, a vendor selection — can be scaled up temporarily.
Can a fractional CTO replace a development team?
Not entirely, but the gap has narrowed. With coding agents, an experienced CTO can prototype, review and direct work that used to need several engineers. For many small companies the right shape is a fractional CTO plus one or two senior engineers, not a full team.
We already have an outside agency building our product. Is this still useful?
Often that is exactly when it is most useful. An independent technical owner reviews what the agency delivers, keeps the architecture and the IP in your hands, and makes sure you are not locked into one supplier.
When should we hire a full-time CTO instead?
When technology is the core of the product and you need someone leading a growing engineering team every day. A good fractional CTO will tell you when you have reached that point, and help you hire for it.

Need a technical owner
before a full-time hire?

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