Use-case selection
Score every idea on value and feasibility, kill the weak ones early and fund the two that will pay back. Our AI strategy method, applied continuously.
AI Services · Strategy & leadership
Fractional AI CTO: senior AI leadership without the full-time hire
An experienced AI technical leader on a part-time retainer. They make the architecture, model, vendor and hiring decisions, set up governance, and stay accountable for shipping.
- 2 to 12 days a month
- Fixed 90-day start plan
- Month to month after that
Signs you need one
When AI decisions are being made by whoever shouts loudest
A fractional AI CTO is the right call when the business wants AI outcomes but nobody senior has built LLM systems before. The symptoms are familiar.
- Three or more AI pilots exist and none has an owner, a budget line or a success metric.
- Vendors are pitching platforms directly to the board and your engineers cannot evaluate the claims.
- Your developers have a working prototype but cannot say what it costs per user or how it fails.
- Security has blocked an AI feature and nobody can explain how to make it safe.
- You are hiring a "Head of AI" and the interview panel has never shipped a model into production.
- A customer or regulator has asked about your AI governance and the answer is a shrug.
Two or more of these and the cost of a part-time leader is lower than the cost of another year of drift.
What the role covers
Six responsibilities, one accountable person
Architecture and model policy
Which models for which jobs, where data may travel, how retrieval and tools are wired, and what gets cached. Written down, reviewed, versioned.
Vendor and build-vs-buy decisions
Independent evaluation of platforms, with proof-of-concept criteria you can hold vendors to. We do not resell anything, so the advice has no margin in it.
Team design and hiring
Job descriptions, interview loops and take-home tasks for AI engineers. Coaching for the developers you already have.
Security and governance
An AI policy, a risk register and the controls behind them. Alignment with the EU AI Act and ISO 42001 through our AI governance practice.
Board-level reporting
A one-page monthly report: what shipped, what it costs, what it earned or saved, what is at risk. Numbers, not adjectives.
Engagement tiers
Tier 1
Typical starting point
Tier 3
Three ways to engage
All three tiers start with the same 90-day plan. They differ in how much time the CTO spends inside your organisation and how much delivery they own.
Advisory
For leadership teams that need an expert in the room for the big decisions. Typically two to four days a month.
- Monthly leadership session and written recommendations
- Review of architectures, vendor proposals and budgets
- On-call for urgent technical questions
- Quarterly roadmap refresh
Embedded
For organisations with an engineering team that needs direction. Typically one to two days a week, inside your tools and meetings.
- Everything in Advisory
- Weekly design reviews and backlog shaping with your engineers
- Owns the model policy, eval sets and release gates
- Runs the hiring loop for AI roles
- Represents AI in security, compliance and vendor conversations
Programme lead
For a defined programme with several workstreams and a hard deadline. Typically two to three days a week, with a Teksmobile delivery team behind them.
- Everything in Embedded
- Accountable for programme delivery, budget and risk
- Manages our engineers and your vendors as one team
- Hands over to a permanent hire at the end
Pricing is a monthly retainer agreed per tier after a scoping call. See engagement models for how retainers, fixed scopes and team extensions compare.
The operating cadence
What a month looks like after day 90
Week 1: Review
Production metrics, cost per transaction, eval scores and incidents from the previous month. Decide what changes.
Week 2: Design
Design reviews for the next features, security sign-offs and vendor conversations.
Week 3: Unblock
Pairing time with engineers on the hardest problems: retrieval quality, agent failures, latency.
Week 4: Report
One page to the board or CEO, the risk register updated, next month's priorities agreed.
What goes wrong without this
The common failure is not a bad model choice. It is a pilot that quietly becomes production without an owner, an eval set, a cost line or a security review. Twelve months later it is load-bearing, nobody dares change it, and the vendor bill has tripled. A fractional CTO exists to stop that drift early.
Related
Pair the role with the right services
AI Strategy & Consulting
The time-boxed version: use-case scoring and a roadmap in four to six weeks.
ExploreAI Implementation
The delivery team your fractional CTO can direct.
ExploreAI Readiness Assessment
Free, ten minutes. A useful pre-read before the first conversation.
StartThe AI CTO Playbook
Our 90-day method written up in full, for in-house leaders too.
Read
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What does a fractional AI CTO actually do?
They own the technical AI decisions your business cannot yet make confidently: which use cases to fund, which models and vendors to use, how to architect for security and cost, who to hire, and how to govern it all. They report to your CEO or CTO and work a fixed number of days per month.
How is this different from AI strategy consulting?
AI strategy is a time-boxed project that ends with a roadmap. A fractional AI CTO stays accountable for executing that roadmap, month after month, including the awkward decisions that only appear once building starts.
How many days a month do we get?
Advisory engagements are typically two to four days a month. Embedded engagements run one to two days a week. Programme lead engagements are usually two to three days a week for a defined programme. We confirm the cadence in a written scope before starting.
Will the fractional CTO work with our existing engineers?
Yes, that is the point. They set direction, review designs and unblock decisions while your team, or ours through AI implementation, does the building. The aim is to leave your team more capable, not dependent.
What is the minimum commitment?
Three months. The first 90 days follow a fixed plan: assess, decide, deliver. After that the engagement is month to month with 30 days' notice.
Can the engagement convert into a full-time hire?
Often it should. Part of the role is writing the job description, interviewing candidates and handing over cleanly. We treat that as a successful outcome, not a lost client.