Fractional
CTO
Senior technology leadership without the full-time salary.
You need someone who can own your technology strategy, manage your vendors, evaluate your team, and translate business goals into a real technical roadmap. We give you 23 years of enterprise IT consulting experience on a fractional basis, so you get the leadership without the $300K+ commitment.
Companies we've worked with
We have operated inside Fortune 500 environments like Southern California Edison, Accenture, and Vancouver Airport. We know what works at scale because we have built it at scale.
Technology leadership is people leadership. We know how to build a team, evaluate technical talent, and set up the accountability structures that keep delivery on track.
We cover systems architecture, data and analytics, automation, integrations, operations, and change management. You get one person who sees the whole picture, not a narrow specialist.
The Problems That Brought You Here
You are spending money on dev teams, contractors, or agencies, but you cannot clearly connect that spend to business results. Deadlines keep slipping. Your internal team says everything is fine, but the numbers tell a different story.
Maybe you are the CEO making technology decisions you know you are not qualified to make. Or you have a CTO or dev lead and you honestly cannot tell if they are performing well. Technical debt is piling up, but nobody can put a dollar amount on what it is costing you.
You might be heading into a fundraise, a product launch, a pivot, or M&A due diligence, and you need someone who can answer the hard technical questions your board or investors are asking. We have been through all of these situations across multiple industries, and we bring that experience directly to your leadership team.
You might recognize this
Your vendors and agencies are running the show instead of being managed. Nobody internal has the technical depth to hold them accountable or evaluate their work.
You might recognize this
You have multiple disconnected systems creating data silos and manual workarounds. Your team spends more time moving information between tools than doing actual work.
This is where we come in
We sit on your leadership team and own the technology decisions. That means vendor management, architecture reviews, team evaluations, and translating your business goals into a credible technical roadmap.
This is where we come in
We build KPI frameworks using OKRs and Balanced Scorecard methods so progress is measurable. You stop guessing whether your engineering team is productive and start seeing real numbers.
The Right Fit
Not every business needs a Fractional CTO. Here is how to know if yours does.
Scaling Without a Tech Leader
You are growing and making technology decisions without dedicated leadership. Every choice you make now will either speed up or slow down your next phase of growth.
Tech Spend with No Clear ROI
You are paying for software, vendors, and tools, but you cannot clearly tie that spend to business outcomes. Someone needs to own the return on those investments.
Vendors Running the Show
Developers, agencies, SaaS providers. Every technical relationship needs oversight. When that oversight falls to a founder or non-technical leader, the wrong person is doing the wrong job.
Navigating a Major Inflection Point
Fundraise, product launch, pivot, or M&A due diligence. You need someone with enterprise experience making the technical calls when the stakes are highest.
Modernizing Legacy Systems
You are migrating to cloud, replacing legacy infrastructure, or managing a platform modernization. We have guided these transitions across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud environments.
Security and Compliance Gaps
You know there are gaps in areas like SOC 2, HIPAA, or PCI DSS compliance but you keep putting them off. We help you address these before they become expensive problems.
What We Own
We define the scope at the start of every engagement and adjust as your business evolves. These are the areas we typically take ownership of.
Technology Strategy and Roadmap
We define your technology vision and build a sequenced roadmap tied to business outcomes. Every recommendation is grounded in frameworks like TOGAF and the AWS Well-Architected Framework, not vendor preferences.
Vendor Selection and Management
We evaluate, negotiate with, and hold accountable every technical vendor you work with. Dev agencies, SaaS providers, infrastructure partners. We manage them so you do not have to.
Architecture Review and Decisions
We make the structural calls that are expensive to get wrong. Build vs. buy decisions, data flow design, integration planning, and sequencing it all using patterns like microservices, event-driven architecture, or API-first where they fit.
Team Evaluation and Hiring
We evaluate your current engineering talent, build hiring processes for technical roles, and make sure the right people are in the right seats. Over 100 hires across our career means we know what to look for.
Security, Compliance, and Governance
We assess your posture against standards like SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. We identify gaps and build a plan to close them before they become audit failures or breaches.
KPIs and Engineering Accountability
We set up measurable engineering KPIs so you can objectively track output, delivery speed, and ROI. No more guessing whether your team is productive. You get real data using tools like Jira, Datadog, and GitHub.
What Makes This Different
Most fractional CTOs are strong in one area. We cover the full spectrum of business technology leadership.
We speak both boardroom and server room
We translate technical reality into business outcomes. When your board or investors ask hard technical questions, we give you the answers and the confidence to deliver them.
We find profit leaks others miss
Our Ground-Up Profit Discovery methodology maps your entire operation and puts dollar amounts on every inefficiency. Most fractional CTOs focus on the tech stack. We focus on where the money is going.
We are independent from vendors
We have no affiliations with AWS, Microsoft, Google, or any other vendor. Our recommendations are based on what is right for your business, not what earns us a referral fee.
We stay through execution
We do not hand you a strategy document and walk away. We stay engaged through implementation using Agile, Scrum, and DevOps practices. Accountability is built into every engagement.
We scale with you
Your needs change as you grow. We offer flexible engagement that scales up or down. You are not locked into a rigid retainer that does not match your stage.
"You should not have to choose between a $300K executive and no technical leadership at all. We give you the experience of someone who has built and managed technology at the enterprise level, on terms that make sense for where your business is right now."
Michael Balle Hansen, Founder
How Most Clients Get Here
The Fractional CTO engagement is usually the second or third conversation, not the first.
Discovery Assessment
The Ground-Up Profit Discovery maps your operation and finds where the money is going. This is where most engagements start.
Implementation
The roadmap from the assessment gets built out. Systems deployed, integrations connected, automation implemented. The opportunities we found become real results.
Fractional CTO
Once the foundation is in place, ongoing technology leadership keeps it running, evolving, and aligned with your growth. We scale up or down as your needs change.
23 Years. Real Clients. Real Stakes.
One Conversation to See If We Are the Right Fit
We take on a small number of fractional engagements at any time. The first step is a direct conversation. No sales process, no pitch deck. If it is the right fit, we will both know quickly.