A fractional CTO
Choose it when
Choose one when you need a part-time technical executive to lead the team and set direction.
How we differ
We work on specific systems, agents and runbooks with you, and you stay the technical lead.
Buyer’s guide
Is this the right fit?
A bad night on call, or the team’s first agent-written pull requests, forces the question of who reviews what and who carries the pager.
Consult: $2,000 for 5 hours. Build: $45,000 minimum over 3 months, from $15,000 a month.
Ask about a Consult block → Prepare your questions Ask about Build
Send a short enquiry, then choose a time to talk or wait for our reply. We agree the scope and price before paid work begins. Sending this form does not book or buy a service.
Who it is for
CTOs, heads of engineering and technical co-founders at small companies who are still the backstop for every system.
Who it is not for
If you need an outsourced operations team for everything you run, or a fractional CTO to lead the department, those are different services. Our shared rotation covers only the systems we build with you.
What a Consult block can work toward
$2,000 $400 an hour · 5-hour blocks
A $2,000 block (five hours) can work toward a written agent policy and review rule, a first runbook from your incident history, or a scope sheet for one agent. We agree the focus first; a block does not take over your on-call.
What to bring
- Your last few incidents and what fixed them
- Your current on-call setup and alerting tools
- The repos and services agents might touch
- Agent-written pull requests you have merged or rejected
- Who approves production changes today
When Build makes sense
$45,000 minimum · $15,000 a month · 3-month term
Build makes sense when triage agents, runbooks, observability and review gates need building and running, and that work is worth more than the $45,000 three-month minimum ($15,000 a month for up to 5 processes).
| Level | Price | At once | Three-month minimum | Adds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Build | $15,000 a month | Up to 5 business processes at once | $45,000 | The base level. |
| Build Plus | $25,000 a month | Up to 10 business processes at once | $75,000 | Adds processes that talk to your customers live or touch health, payment or student records, same-day requests, and 2 of your people trained as champions. |
| Build Program | $50,000 a month | Up to 20 business processes at once, across departments | $150,000 | Adds a named person on call around the clock as your backup, one shared platform piece at a time, and an MSA, a DPA, insurance and a security review. |
Our shared 24/7 rotation covers only the systems we build with you, with response terms in writing. Services touching payment, health or student records are listed in Build Plus ($75,000 minimum). A named person on call around the clock as your backup, an MSA, a DPA, insurance and a security review are listed in Build Program ($150,000 minimum).
New software products and replacing a core system are quoted separately. Our shared 24/7 rotation covers only the systems we build with you, with response terms in writing.
What does the work cost today?
Optional arithmetic on your own numbers, to set beside the commitments above. It runs only in this browser tab: there are no default figures, and nothing is saved or sent.
- Hours over three months
- —
- Cost over three months
- —
- One Consult block
- $2,000
- Build, 3-month minimum
- $45,000
Three months is counted as 13 weeks. This is not an estimate of savings: a system would not remove all of this work, your team’s time during the build counts too, and quality and risk matter as much as hours.
Before choosing Build
Make the price earn its place.
The total cost of today’s work is not the amount a system will save. Count only the time, errors or delays you have a credible plan to remove.
- Start with your baseline.
- How often does the work happen, who does it, and what would count as a better result? Use your own records.
- Include what remains.
- Add the fee, software, your team’s setup time, and the human review and maintenance you will still need.
- Compare the simpler route.
- Could an existing tool, a process change or a hire do the job better? If conservative assumptions do not justify Build, keep the simpler route.
For work judged by quality, service or risk, agree how you will evaluate those outcomes too. A saving or improvement is something to measure, not a promise this page can make.
Taking it to whoever holds the budget
Send your CEO the sample scope sheet, the Consult price ($2,000 for five hours), your incident history in a paragraph, and what the rotation would and would not cover, with the three-month Build minimum.
Other ways to solve this
A managed operations or SRE provider
Choose it when
Choose one when you need people running and watching all of your infrastructure.
How we differ
We build triage, runbooks and review gates your team runs; our rotation covers only what we build with you.
Need to think it through first?
The free Of One exercise helps you map a decision and its open questions. Work through it in your browser, without an email gate or AI. Sending your answers for help is optional.
Try the free decision exercise →Tell us about your work.
Send a short enquiry, then choose a time to talk or wait for our reply. We agree the scope and price before paid work begins. Sending this form does not book or buy a service.