Fractional CTO Services
Fractional CTO services for startups and SMEs that need senior technical ownership without a full-time hire: one person who decides, answers for production, and delivers the work. The engagement is La Résidence: a monthly guarantee on your product plus the work, with every request, choice and delivery visible in your portal. Everything stays in your name from the first day.
What a fractional CTO does here
Most fractional CTO services sell advice: a senior person for ten or twenty hours a week, who reviews, recommends and attends meetings while someone else builds. Here the same person owns the result.
- Architecture, build or buy, the next hire: each technical question gets one owner, and the answer comes back with the trade-off spelled out.
- Production is answered for: an incident is taken within two business hours and owned until the fix is live and its cause written down.
- The work gets done: fixes and improvements ship every month, each priced before it starts and checked against criteria you can read.
- Everything is visible in one portal: what is live, what is being built, what waits on your decision, and every choice you made, recorded with its date.
A CTO and the team that builds, under one guarantee
Founders usually end up buying the CTO and the development from different people, with nobody answering for the whole. Here they are one engagement: the person who decides also writes and reviews the code, with AI agents doing the delivery volume inside rules written for your codebase.
An agency that adds a CTO to its team rarely offers that. Here the person who takes the technical decision is the one who ships it, under one guarantee. Keeping the product running afterwards is the same engagement, described for its own buyer on Software Maintenance and Support Services.
How pricing works
Fractional CTO firms price by the day or by a monthly retainer with an hours-a-week cap, and the delivery is billed by someone else. Here the price is La Résidence: a guarantee plus the work, never hours.
That is the answer to the hours-a-week question: a quiet month is not a cheaper month, the product is still watched, patched and improved, and the monthly statement shows what the work bought, line by line. The figures are in the pricing section below. The engagement opens with our code audit services: the verdict is the first thing the CTO at your table answers for.
Who it is for, and who it is not for
For
- A startup after launch, with a product in production and nobody senior answering for it.
- An SME running a business tool it depends on, built by an agency or a freelancer who has moved on.
- A SaaS company whose founders can sell but cannot judge an engineer's day.
Not for
- Staff augmentation: developers placed in your team, or hours sold by the day.
- A full-time or on-site CTO, or someone who attends your meetings and manages your calendar.
- A team that already has senior ownership and wants more hands.
- A product you would rather run with nobody on call, asking agents for each change and paying per change: that is ITzWorking Agents.
Hire, part-time, outsourced, virtual: the names and what they mean
The market uses several names for the same purchase, and the differences are in the fine print.
- To hire a fractional CTO is to hire a person for part of their time; ask who builds what they decide.
- Part-time CTO services and a CTO as a service are usually a retainer of hours a week; ask what happens outside those hours when production is down.
- An outsourced CTO, or a virtual CTO for a small business, is often a consultancy's rotation of people; ask who is accountable by name.
Here the answer is the same whichever name you searched: one named person, production answered for under a written response time, and the work delivered under the same guarantee.
CTO advisory and CTO consulting
CTO advisory services and CTO consulting sell the judgment without the delivery: an architecture review, a vendor choice, a hiring plan, handed over for your team to execute. Here the advice comes with the execution, because the person giving it is the one who answers for production the next morning.
If what you need is one decision rather than an engagement, book a CTO consultation call: one hour on one question.
Questions founders ask
What is a fractional CTO?
A senior technical leader who works for your company part of their time: they take the technical decisions, own the architecture and the roadmap, and answer for production, without being a full-time employee. Here the role also includes the delivery.
How much does a fractional CTO cost?
Most fractional CTO services charge a day rate or a monthly retainer with an hours cap, with development billed separately. Here the price is one monthly guarantee plus the work, metered in credits and priced before each request starts; the figures are in the pricing section on this page.
Fractional CTO or agency? Both.
A fractional CTO or development agency is a false choice once the product is live: the agency builds but nobody answers for it, the CTO answers but builds nothing. One engagement, one person accountable: the alternative to a full-time CTO for a startup that is not ready to hire one.
How many hours a week do you work on my product?
The engagement is not sold in hours. The guarantee fixes the response time; the work is priced per request, and the monthly statement shows what each credit was for.
Is it for non-technical founders?
Yes. When your developer or agency has left and the product is live without anyone answering for it, the page written for that situation is Fractional CTO for Non-Technical Founders.
What La Résidence costs
A guarantee plus the work, never hours.
- The guarantee, €1,200 a month: incidents taken within two business hours, Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 18:00 Paris time. Miss one, and that month's guarantee is free.
- The work: at least 5,000 credits a month, each request priced in credits before it starts.
- From €3,975 a month in total, on a twelve-month engagement billed monthly.
- It starts with the audit: €2,000, the whole codebase read in 48 hours, credited against your first month.
Seats are capped. When they are full, the audit still runs, the verdict is still yours, and the next free seat is offered in order.
What you see every month
- A short digest every Friday: what was caught, what was patched, what went live.
- A guided video tour at the end of every sprint.
- A written monthly statement, itemized line by line, so a quiet month is proven rather than taken on faith.
- Living documentation: how the system works, how to run it, what to do when it breaks, who owns what, kept in step with the code and yours from day one.
- The portal: what is live, what is being built, what waits on your decision.
How we work together
- The audit first: you connect the repository, and the code and the infrastructure are read end to end, with a written verdict and a plan.
- The debrief: one hour on the verdict, the plan on the table, your questions answered.
- Monitoring, backups and access set up in your name, then a monthly rhythm of fixes and improvements.
- Every piece of work priced before it starts, and visible while it runs.
Who answers for it
Julien Casse, founder of ITzWorking. Shipping software since 2010: fintech in Luxembourg, then co-founder and CTO of kodehyve, from sole developer to a team of twenty.
He reads the code himself and makes the calls the model cannot. The client list is short on purpose: one named person answers for your product. Read more about the founder
Fractional CTO Services