Fractional CTO & embedded AI team
A fractional CTO and an AI team that builds — one engagement.
Senior technology and AI leadership without a full-time hire, and the delivery capacity to act on it. Not advice you then have to find someone to build — a CTO who sets the direction and a team that ships against it, with governance a board or regulator can answer for built in from the start.
Who this is for
Senior technology decisions, and no one senior to make them.
SMEs and professional practices that need technology and AI leadership — and a team to deliver — but are not ready to carry the cost of a full-time hire.
No technical leadership, decisions piling up
Technology and AI choices keep landing on a founder or MD who has no one to hand them to — and each deferred decision compounds.
Mid AI-adoption, no one accountable
Tools are creeping in across the business with no owner, no policy and no one answerable when a board or client asks how it is governed.
Domain experts who need AI applied safely
Practices such as accountancy firms with deep client expertise who want AI used on client work without putting confidentiality or judgement at risk.
Burned by a generalist dev agency
You bought software from a generalist and got exactly that — software, with no governance, no strategy and no one who understood the domain.
Context matters more than code.
An outsourced supplier delivers to a brief and leaves. An embedded CTO works inside your systems and your meetings, learns the domain, and makes decisions with the full picture — the client relationships, the constraints, the things that never make it into a requirements document. The hard part of applying AI to a business is almost never the code; it is knowing what to build, what not to, and what a good outcome even looks like.
And because we work alongside your people, the knowledge transfers. You come out of the engagement understanding your own systems, not more dependent on a supplier who kept the understanding to themselves. Read more on an outsourced AI team versus hiring.
Engagement models
Three ways to work with us.
Start where the need is, and move between them as the work changes. Most clients settle into the embedded model.
Advisory
A few days a month
Roadmap, vendor and build scrutiny, and board-ready reporting. The senior view in the room when a technology or AI decision needs one — without a standing team.
Embedded
The common one, on retainer
A fractional CTO plus AI build capacity, working inside your systems and meetings. Leadership and delivery from the same engagement, so strategy and shipping never drift apart.
Project
Fixed scope, 4–12 weeks
A defined build delivered with CTO oversight — the roadmap, the governance and the code, scoped and priced up front, with a clean handover at the end.
What the market charges, honestly.
So you can plan with real numbers: as a UK market benchmark, fractional CTO day rates run roughly £800 to £2,000, with £1,000 to £1,600 the typical band and London or regulated work at the upper end. Monthly retainers for one to two days a week sit around £2,000 to £8,000, and board-level advisory is often £200 to £500 an hour.
Those are market figures, drawn from published UK pricing guides (fcto.uk, 2026), not a quote from us. Our engagements are scoped to you — the decisions in front of you and the delivery you need — and most begin with a short diagnostic from £3,950 so the commitment is defined before it starts.
The first 90 days
What actually happens once we start.
Not a discovery phase that produces slides. Onboarding, then working software every week or two, with governance standing up alongside it.
Weeks 1–2
Onboarding
We learn the business, the systems and the people. You get an honest read of where technology and AI stand, and the two or three decisions that matter most.
Weeks 3–5
Integration
We work inside your tools and meetings, set the roadmap, and stand up the governance scaffolding — AI policy, a risk register, the beginnings of an audit trail.
Weeks 6–10
Shipping
Working software every one to two weeks against the roadmap, under review. Momentum you can see, not a programme you have to take on trust.
Weeks 11–12
Knowledge transfer
Your team learns how the systems work and how decisions were made. We build so you are never dependent on us to keep the lights on.
A CTO who also answers the board question.
Most fractional CTOs can set a roadmap and ship software. Very few can also stand in front of your board or your regulator and answer for how the AI is governed. We do both: AI policy, a risk register and audit trails come with the code, not as a separate project you commission later when someone finally asks the hard question.
That is the difference between technology leadership and governed technology leadership — and for a professional practice putting AI anywhere near client work, it is the whole point. See how we run as an AI-native firm and what we build under custom software and products. If an earlier build has already stalled, there is also AI project rescue.
Borrow a CTO for fifteen minutes.
Tell us the technology and AI decisions stacking up, and what you are trying to reach. You will leave with a straight view of what senior leadership would do first — whether or not you work with us.
No obligation · no pitch.