Fractional CTO services for founders, startups, and growth-stage teams — senior engineering leadership without the full-time hire. We pick the stack, ship the MVP, hire your engineers, and fix what won't scale, typically $6k–$18k/mo for 8–20 hours a week depending on stage.
+2Trusted by teams shipping production software
We act as your CTO — for a fraction of the cost and time of a full-time hire. We're in the codebase, the architecture decisions, the hiring conversations, and the board update if you need us. Need more hands once the roadmap's set? Our custom software development and AI agent teams plug in directly — same engineers, same standards, no handoff. We build on tools we'd bet on with our own money, including the Anthropic SDK and Vercel AI SDK for anything AI-native — and we've made the build-vs-buy call ourselves on production systems like Agency ERP, so it's not theory when we tell your board the honest number. Most engagements run 8–20 hours/week, and we take only 2–3 at a time so each gets real attention.
Deciding on databases at 2am.
You can't afford a full-time CTO at $250k, so you're making the engineering calls yourself — and you can already feel the technical debt building.
The wrong choices compound.
Auth, hosting, database, framework, hiring — the early picks that feel cheap now get expensive by year two and turn into rewrites by year three.
A contractor isn't on the hook.
A consultant writes a recommendation and leaves. Nobody senior is actually embedded in the decisions, the hiring, or the code you ship.
We scope to your stage. Pre-product founders need different things than a 30-person team — here's the full range we lead on.
- 01
Architecture & stack decisions
Pick the right framework, database, hosting, auth, and tooling for your stage — and avoid the choices that get expensive at scale.
- 02
Hands-on building
We write code. MVP development, critical features, code review on what your team ships. A senior pair of hands when you need it.
- 03
Hiring engineers
Job descriptions, candidate screening, technical interviews, references. We know what senior engineers look like because we are them.
- 04
Engineering culture
Standups, sprint structure, code review process, deployment pipeline, on-call. The boring stuff that turns a chaotic startup into a team that ships.
- 05
Technical due diligence
Investor or acquirer needs a tech audit? We do them — written reports with findings and risk assessment. We've sat on both sides of the table.
- 06
Vendor & build/buy
Should you build it, buy it, or wire two SaaS tools together? We tell you the answer based on your stage and runway, not vendor relationships.
- 07
Security & compliance
SOC 2 prep, basic security hygiene, GDPR, HIPAA-adjacent setups. Get it right early so it isn't a panic at the Series A.
- 08
Board & investor support
We'll join the board call to talk through the tech roadmap, the engineering plan, and the next-12-months hiring plan.
- 09
Handover to a full-time CTO
When you're ready to hire a full-time CTO, we help you find them and brief them. No ego, no transition drag.
No long sales cycle. We figure out whether this is the right shape, then get embedded fast.
Discovery call
30 minutes. Where you are, where you're trying to get, and what's currently breaking. We'll tell you honestly whether a fractional engagement is the right fit.
Audit week
1 week. We review the codebase, infra, team, and roadmap. You get a written findings document at the end — useful even if we don't go further.
Engagement plan
We agree on commitment (hours/week), priorities (the top 3 problems to solve), and engagement length — typically 3–12 months.
Embedded
Weekly cadence with you and your team. Slack access. We're in the standups and the code reviews. We ship alongside your engineers.
Handover or extension
Every quarter we revisit: still useful? Time to hire full-time? Most engagements extend; some bridge to a full-time hire with our help.
“Futur Labs shipped in six weeks what our internal team couldn't in eighteen months.”
Part-Time CTO
For early founders or stable teams. Strategic guidance, hiring help, periodic code review, board support. Not heavy on building.
- 8 hours/week
- Strategy + architecture
- Hiring support
- Code review
- Slack access
Clear answers
for complex builds.
Clear answers on timelines, pricing, ownership, and what shipping actually looks like with a senior engineering team.
It depends on the stage. For early founders: pick the stack, set up the codebase, write the first version, hire the first engineer. For growth-stage teams: review the architecture, fix the things that won't scale, hire senior people, set engineering culture. We do whichever your stage needs.
A tech consultant writes recommendations and leaves. A fractional CTO embeds in your team, makes decisions, hires, sets process, ships code, and is on the hook for outcomes — just part-time instead of full-time. You get the senior person, you just share them.
Yes, this is a common engagement. Pre-product startups need someone to pick the stack, build the MVP, and avoid the classic early mistakes (wrong database, wrong auth, wrong hosting, custom code where no-code would do). We've done this for several founders.
Yes. We're engineers first, leaders second. If your team needs an extra senior pair of hands shipping, we'll write code alongside the strategic work. We don't take fractional CTO engagements where we're just supervising — we have to be in the codebase.
Typical engagement is 8–20 hours/week, depending on stage. Heavier when you're in build mode, lighter when you're stable. We're up-front about availability — we only take 2–3 fractional engagements at a time so each gets real focus.
3–12 months. Some founders bridge to a full-time CTO hire (we help with the search and the handover). Others stay fractional indefinitely because the model works. We don't lock you into long contracts — month-to-month after the first 90 days.
Our engagements run $6k–$18k/mo depending on hours and stage: around 8 hrs/week for lighter, strategy-focused involvement, up to 24 hrs/week when we're effectively running engineering day-to-day. Most teams land around $12k/mo for 16 hrs/week — hands-on code and architecture plus active hiring. Compare that to $250k+ fully loaded for a full-time hire.
A few questions about the project so we come prepared — then we'll set up a short call to dig in.