Board-level technology leadership · Production AI

Fractional CTO — London & UK

A fractional CTO who still ships. Senior technical leadership for founders in the stage where technology decisions start to feel genuinely dangerous — and where "AI strategy" needs to mean working systems in production, not another slide deck. Embedded ownership two days a week, until your internal team is ready to take the role on themselves.

When a Fractional CTO Makes Sense

There is a stage in a company's growth where nobody in the room has the experience to know which technology decisions will age well and which will become expensive mistakes eighteen months later. That is the gap this role fills. We cover the pattern in our guide to hiring a fractional CTO. The signals below are the ones that most often bring founders to us.

• Your dev team has grown from two to eight or twelve people and nobody owns the architecture
• Everyone is telling you to "do something with AI" and you need a leader who can separate the real opportunities from the hype — and then build them
• You are locked into a single agency or vendor and cannot evaluate whether their recommendations serve your interests
• Senior technical hires have failed because nobody in the business can evaluate technical depth
• Technical debt is accumulating faster than your team can pay it down
• Investors or board members are asking questions about technology that nobody internal can answer credibly
• You are about to make a significant platform, architecture, or build-versus-buy decision and cannot afford to get it wrong

What You Actually Get

The distinction that matters is accountability. A consultant is paid for their opinion. A fractional CTO is accountable for outcomes — staying long enough to see decisions play out, adjust course when reality diverges, and build the internal capability the team needs to eventually operate without them. The best fractional CTOs think of themselves as temporary. The difference here is that the strategy comes from someone who can also open the editor and ship the thing.

Typical Engagement Model

Two days per week, minimum six months, outside IR35, multi-client. I take on only one or two fractional engagements at a time so each gets real attention rather than a name on a roster. London on-site presence at least once a week where it is useful — the informal conversation and observation that technical leadership depends on does not happen on video calls. Remote the rest of the time. Direct reporting line to the CEO or founder — burying a fractional CTO under a non-technical manager defeats the purpose of the role.

The first ninety days follow a predictable shape. Month one is assessment — auditing architecture, interviewing the team, understanding the business model. Month two is quick wins and strategic planning — two or three high-impact improvements delivered fast, alongside a longer-term strategy specific enough to act on. Month three is execution — architectural decisions, code review, shipping, mentoring senior engineers, and process improvements that outlast the engagement. The First-90-Days Playbook below is the exact framework.

On pricing — engagements are scoped to what you need rather than rigid packages, and the rate is a conversation rather than a filter. Our Advisory & Strategy tier is the right starting point for most fractional CTO work. For a concrete number, the useful next step is a conversation about the problem.

Not ready to commit to a retainer? Start with the Fractional CTO Diagnostic — a fixed-price, two-week assessment of your technology with a board-ready 90-day plan, credited in full if you go on to an engagement. It is the lowest-risk way to find out whether fractional leadership is the constraint worth solving.

Who You Are Working With

Rogue is led by Jamie Buchanan — a technology leader with eighteen-plus years building and leading engineering teams. Seven of those years were spent as CTO of Vanarama, on the board, helping grow a VC-backed SME from £20M to £200M in value over four years, through two funding rounds and the company's acquisition by Auto Trader plc — scaling the in-house tech and product team from one person to thirty-plus along the way. Today, as founder-CTO of Rogue Digital, the work is shipping production AI systems for mid-market ecommerce and consumer brands. The patterns on this page are not theoretical. They are decisions already made and mistakes already paid for.

The fractional CTO role sits alongside our fractional CFO, digital strategy and legacy modernisation work — many founders pair the person who owns whether the technology is sound with the one who owns whether the numbers are. Whether you need fractional leadership, a full-time hire we help you recruit, or a strategic assessment, the starting point is the same — an honest evaluation of where you are, where you need to be, and what it will take to get there.

Based in London? See our location-specific Fractional CTO London page for the M25 catchment. Investing in or operating a portfolio? Our fractional CTO & technical due diligence for VCs page covers portfolio-company engagements and deal diligence.

Frequently Asked Questions