Fractional CTO
A fractional CTO who ships the roadmap, not just the slide deck
Simatech gives founders and product leaders a hands-on, AI-native fractional CTO — one senior operator who owns architecture, hiring, delivery cadence and vendor decisions two to four days a week, without the £250k London salary.
EU-domiciled · Overlapping business hours with London, Amsterdam, Berlin & Zürich
When a fractional CTO is the right call
Pre-Series A, post-MVP
You have a product and paying users, but tech decisions still sit with a founder who needs to sell, not architect.
Between full-time CTOs
Your CTO left, you need continuity for six months, and you don't want a panic hire that lasts three years.
Vendor and squad oversight
You outsource delivery but no one on your side owns architecture, code quality or vendor accountability.
AI transformation
You've been told to "do AI" and need someone senior to separate hype from a shipping plan your team can actually run.
What we own
Architecture & tech strategy
One coherent architecture that fits your stage — not a résumé-driven microservice sprawl. Written ADRs, reviewed with your board.
Delivery cadence
Scrum or Kanban, sprint goals, release trains, on-call. Your team ships every two weeks with visible burn-ups, not vibes.
Hiring & team design
Job specs, interview loops, technical scorecards, offer benchmarking. We hire your permanent CTO with you, then hand over.
Vendor & AI decisions
Cloud, LLM providers, observability, security tooling. Written recommendations, negotiated pricing, no kickbacks.
How the engagement runs
- 2–4
- Days per week, retained monthly
- 30d
- Notice period after month two
- ≤ 1wk
- From signature to first working day
- 100%
- Written artefacts you keep (ADRs, roadmap, hiring plan)
Fractional CTO vs full-time CTO vs advisor
The honest comparison. A fractional CTO is not always the answer — here is when it is.
| Advisor | Fractional CTO | Full-time CTO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | €2k–€4k / month | €6k–€22k / month | €180k–€250k / year + equity |
| Time on your business | 2–4 hours / month | 1–4 days / week | Full time |
| Owns delivery | No | Yes | Yes |
| Writes code & reviews PRs | No | Yes | Rarely after month six |
| Time to start | Days | ≤ 1 week | 3–6 months to hire |
| Exit cost | None | 30 days notice | Severance + rehire cycle |
The first 90 days
A fractional CTO engagement should be legible from week one. This is the standard plan; we adapt it to what you already have.
01
Days 1–14 — Technical audit
Codebase, architecture, cloud spend, security posture, delivery metrics and team interviews. Output: a written audit with a ranked risk register.
02
Days 15–30 — Roadmap and cadence
Target architecture and ADRs, a 2-quarter technical roadmap tied to commercial outcomes, and a working sprint cadence with visible burn-ups.
03
Days 31–60 — Ship and fix
We land the first high-leverage changes — CI, environments, observability, the one architectural bottleneck — while the team keeps shipping features.
04
Days 61–90 — Hiring and handover plan
Team design, job specs and interview loops for the roles you actually need, plus a written handover path to your permanent CTO.
Fractional CTO packages
Fixed monthly retainer. One senior operator, one invoice, cancel with 30 days notice after month two.
Advisory
from €6k / month
One day per week. Weekly leadership meeting, architecture reviews, hiring input, board readouts. Best for a stable team that needs a senior sounding board.
Fractional CTO
from €12k / month
Two days per week. Owns architecture, delivery cadence and hiring. Attends your standups, reviews PRs, signs off on releases. Best between full-time CTOs or pre-Series A.
Embedded CTO
from €22k / month
Four days per week. De-facto CTO for a quarter or two — team lead, board-facing, on the hook for delivery. Best for turnarounds and AI transformations.
Frequently asked
+Who does the work — you personally, or a bench?
You get a named senior operator, not a rotating pool. Farhaad Meeajaun (LinkedIn on request) leads every fractional CTO engagement personally, backed by the Simatech delivery squad when a build is needed.
+Can you code, or is this pure strategy?
Both. Every fractional CTO engagement includes hands-on architecture, PR reviews and — when useful — pairing with your engineers. Strategy without shipping is theatre.
+Do you work with our existing team and vendors?
Yes. We slot into your Jira / Linear / GitHub, review your existing vendor contracts and make our recommendations in writing. We do not require you to switch to Simatech for delivery.
+How does this end?
We plan for handover from day one — either to your permanent CTO (whom we help hire) or to your existing engineering lead. Every artefact (ADRs, roadmap, hiring plan) stays with you.
+Do you sign a UK / EU MSA and NDA?
Yes. We contract from Sima Tech Ltd (Сима Тек ООД), UIC 206762842, VAT BG206762842. We sign your MSA and NDA, or provide ours.
+How fast can you start?
Typically inside one working week of signature for advisory; two weeks for embedded, so we can properly onboard before we own decisions.
+How much does a fractional CTO cost?
Simatech fractional CTO retainers run from €6k per month for one day a week of advisory to €22k per month for an embedded, four-day-a-week CTO. That compares to €180k–€250k plus equity for a full-time CTO in London or Amsterdam.
+How many days a week do you actually work with us?
One day for advisory, two for a standard fractional CTO, four for embedded. Days are fixed and calendared so your team knows when they get you, and we are reachable on Slack in between.
+What do we get in writing?
A technical audit with a ranked risk register, architecture decision records, a two-quarter technical roadmap, a hiring plan with scorecards, and a handover document. All of it stays yours.
Need a senior technical operator by next week?
Book a 30-minute discovery call. If it's a fit, we can start inside seven working days.