Scalable multi-carrier shipping platform
- 200+
- customers migrated with zero service disruption
Fractional CTO Services for Growing Companies
A fractional CTO who spots the load-bearing decisions before they cost you six months.
Your company is at the stage where every technical decision has strategic consequences. Which cloud architecture scales to 10x? Should you build or buy the data infrastructure? How do you evaluate a team that's shipping slowly, is it a people problem, a process problem, or a technical debt problem?
These decisions require a CTO-level perspective. If you're not ready to hire a full-time CTO, or you need a second opinion before a major technical investment, we provide fractional CTO services and engineering advisory for growing companies.
Technical strategy, architecture decisions, and build-vs-buy guidance
Engineering team assessment, velocity, quality, and organisational gaps
CTO coverage during hiring gaps or founder-to-CTO transitions
Defined engagement scope, not an open-ended retainer
0-delay insights Voice AI20k+ txns day one AI Automation1,062 users in 4 weeks Loyalty
The problem
Sound familiar?
Making major architectural decisions without a senior technical voice in the room?
Engineering team shipping slowly and you're not sure whether it's talent, process, or codebase?
Short answer
A fractional CTO gives a growing company senior technical leadership without a full-time hire. RaftLabs engagements open with a 2-3 week diagnostic and a fixed-scope findings report, then continue per quarter or hand off to your team. Shipping production software since 2015 across the US, UK, Europe, Canada, and the UAE. No open-ended retainers.
Key takeaways
- Every engagement starts with a 2-3 week diagnostic and a fixed-scope findings report before any ongoing work is agreed.
- Fixed-scope diagnostic pricing runs $8,000-$15,000 depending on codebase size and team complexity.
- No open-ended retainers, scope and price are defined upfront for each engagement quarter.
- RaftLabs has shipped production software since 2015 for clients across the US, UK, Europe, Canada, and the UAE.
Trusted by
The schema that quietly became a six-month project.
A team ships a database schema that keeps the MVP simple. Two years and 10x the traffic later, that same schema is a six-month migration nobody scheduled and nobody has time for.
The choice looked small the day it was made. Every load-bearing technical decision does. A database schema, a monolith chosen to ship fast, a third-party dependency picked for speed, none of them announce themselves as consequential at the time.
The job is to spot which decisions are load-bearing before they are expensive to reverse, not after they have caused the expensive problem.
The decisions that compound
Technical decisions compound. A database schema chosen for MVP simplicity becomes a migration project that costs 6 months of engineering time at scale. A monolithic architecture chosen to ship fast becomes a scaling constraint that adds 3 weeks to every feature. A third-party dependency chosen for speed becomes a vendor lock-in that limits your product options.
These decisions don't announce themselves as consequential. They look like small architectural choices at the time. A fractional CTO's job is to identify which decisions are load-bearing before they're made, not after they've caused the expensive problem.
McKinsey's research on tech debt ("Tech debt: Reclaiming tech equity," 2020) found CIOs estimate technical debt at 20-40% of the value of their entire technology estate. Nearly a third said more than 20% of their new-product budget gets diverted to debt-related issues. For a growing company with no senior technical voice in the room, the earliest architectural choices are where that debt piles up fastest.
RaftLabs has been shipping production software since 2015, across healthcare, fintech, logistics, and SaaS. The client list includes Vodafone, T-Mobile, Aldi, Cisco, and Lockheed Martin. The person who scopes your engagement is the person who runs the assessment. They have shipped the kind of systems you are asking about, and they own the findings rather than editing what a junior wrote up.
The decisions we have owned
We do not advise from the outside. Since 2015 we have shipped the systems whose trade-offs we now pressure-test for other teams. Here is the kind of judgment that comes into the room with us.
The build-vs-buy call under a real deadline. A shipping SaaS came to us as its fifth vendor, after four had failed. We migrated 200-plus existing customers onto a new multi-carrier platform with zero service disruption, then put five carriers behind one API. The wrong architecture there breaks live shipments, so the decision had to hold on day one.
The scaling question answered with tests, not opinions. A civic app asked whether it would survive 200,000 concurrent users during an election. We load-tested to roughly 7,800 concurrent WebSocket connections on a single instance, documented p95 latency at each level, and handed over a costed scale-out path. That is the difference between a senior technical voice and a confident guess.
The tech-debt migration nobody wanted to schedule. Moving a utility loyalty platform off WordPress meant migrating 300,000-plus user records, writing 11 remediation scripts to clean the data first, and shipping a rebuild that ran 60 percent faster. We know what these projects cost because we have carried them, not read about them.
This is what a fractional CTO engagement buys you: decisions we have made and lived with, applied to yours before they are expensive to reverse.
This works when you have a product and a team, but no CTO in the room.
Everything on the left should already be true for your company. Even one thing on the right, and a different engagement is the better fit.
A fit
01
Post-Series A or Series B, with a product and engineering team but no CTO.
02
A technical founder who needs a senior partner to pressure-test major architecture and build-vs-buy decisions.
03
Facing a technical inflection point: a re-architecture, a platform migration, or a scaling challenge that needs senior oversight.
Not a fit
- Pre-product or pre-revenue, with no codebase or engineering team to assess yet.
- You want hands-on-keyboard coding or staff augmentation, not technical leadership.
- You need a full-time CTO embedded daily, not a defined-scope engagement.
What we build
What we advise on
- 01Technology strategy and roadmapTranslating your business model and growth trajectory into a working 12-18 month roadmap your engineering team can execute from and your board can scrutinise, not a slide deck of principles. Each initiative is scored on business impact, reversibility, and technical debt cost, so high-impact, hard-to-reverse decisions come first.
- 02Architecture review and guidanceReviewing major architectural decisions before they're made and before they're expensive to reverse: database and data model design, API contracts, service decomposition, and infrastructure choices. Every reviewed decision produces an Architecture Decision Record documenting the options, trade-offs, and the conditions for revisiting it, each one Git-tracked and paired with a security architecture review.
- 03Engineering team assessmentStructured assessment of your engineering organisation's delivery capability when you suspect a problem but can't diagnose its root cause. Slow delivery usually traces to one of five root causes, and we identify yours with evidence, not intuition, using SonarQube static analysis, Git history metrics, and 1:1s with engineers and leads. The output is a findings report with a prioritised, sequenced remediation plan.
- 04Build vs. buy evaluationObjective evaluation of specific build-vs-buy decisions with a total cost of ownership model that makes the trade-off quantitative, not intuitive. The output is a decision document with the TCO at 12 and 36 months, the key assumptions, the recommendation, and the conditions under which it would flip.
- 05Technical due diligenceTechnical due diligence for investment and acquisition decisions, framed as risk an investor can act on, not code quality scores that need a CTO to interpret. Each issue is classified by severity and remediation cost, with a one-page traffic light summary and the estimated impact on transaction value.
- 06Interim CTO coverageCTO coverage during leadership transitions: between a departing CTO and a permanent hire, during a founder's move to commercial leadership, or while evaluating an internal promotion. The engagement is designed to transfer cleanly, with decision logs, a 12-month roadmap, team assessments, and vendor context handed to the permanent hire.
What technical decision do you need a second opinion on?
Tell us the context. We'll structure the right engagement to give you the answer.
How it works
From diagnostic to decision
Every engagement starts with a fixed scope. You know the cost before any work begins.
- Weeks 1-301
Discovery and diagnostic
We assess your current architecture, engineering processes, team structure, and technical roadmap. You get a structured findings report and a set of prioritised recommendations. No work proceeds without your sign-off on scope and cost.
- Weeks 4-802
Advisory sessions and decision support
Weekly attendance at architecture reviews and key decisions. We produce Architecture Decision Records for every major call so context is preserved for future hires. Every recommendation comes with the trade-off calculation, not just the conclusion.
- Weeks 8-1203
Remediation planning and roadmap
We turn findings into a sequenced plan of work with effort estimates and expected outcome per item. The highest-leverage problems go first. You end this phase with a 12-month technical roadmap your engineering team can execute from.
- Week 12+04
Transition and handover
The engagement is designed to end cleanly. Context documentation, architecture decision logs, vendor contacts, and team assessments transfer to whoever leads next. No perpetual dependency.
Which engagement model fits you
Fractional CTO vs full-time hire vs one-off advisory
| Dimension | Fractional CTO | Full-time CTO hire | One-off advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best when | You need continuous senior technical leadership, not a full-time seat | You are ready to embed a permanent executive every day | You have one specific decision or review to make |
| Time to value | Days: the engagement opens with a 2-3 week diagnostic | 3-6 months to hire, plus ramp-up | 1-3 weeks for a scoped review |
| Cost shape | Fixed-scope diagnostic, then priced per quarter | Salary, equity, benefits, and recruiter fees | Fixed price for the specific engagement |
| Commitment | Defined end state, no perpetual dependency | A permanent role on the leadership team | Ends when the question is answered |
| Risk it removes | Load-bearing decisions made without a senior voice | No senior technical owner at the leadership table | One high-stakes call made blind |
Pitfalls we plan around
A fractional CTO engagement can fail in predictable ways. We design against each one.
The advisor who never leaves. Open-ended retainers build dependency, not capability. Every engagement has a defined end state, with decision logs, a roadmap, and team assessments handed to whoever leads next.
Recommendations with no arithmetic. "Rewrite the monolith" is an opinion until someone models the cost. Every major call ships with the trade-off calculation and an Architecture Decision Record, so your team can revisit the reasoning, not just the verdict.
The report that blames the team. Slow delivery is rarely a talent problem. It usually traces to unclear ownership, missing process, or debt in one part of the codebase. We find the root cause with evidence before anyone concludes the team is not good enough.
The context that walks out the door. A fractional engagement that leaves no trail forces the next hire to relearn everything. We document decisions as we make them, so the handover is a file, not a folk memory.
Proof
Case studies
Where you land depends on scope, not negotiation:
- Fixed-scope diagnostic, $8,000-$15,000
- A 2-3 week assessment of your architecture, engineering processes, team structure, and roadmap, delivered as a structured findings report with prioritised recommendations. Price depends on codebase size and team complexity.
- Ongoing fractional engagement, priced per quarter
- Continuous technical leadership scoped and priced per quarter, not an open-ended retainer. Continue after the diagnostic, or use the findings to hire or promote internally.
What it costs
Diagnostic scoped and priced upfront, starting at $8,000.
Every engagement opens with a 2-3 week diagnostic and a structured findings report. Ongoing work is scoped and priced per quarter, never an open-ended retainer.
Starts at $8,000
The diagnostic runs 2-3 weeks and starts at $8,000. Continue into a quarterly engagement only if the findings call for it.
Start with the diagnostic alone. Move to an ongoing engagement only if you want to, priced fresh each quarter, never a rolling retainer.
No hourly billing
Once we scope the diagnostic, that price is locked in writing. No hourly billing, no surprise invoices if the engagement continues.
Defined end state
Every engagement is designed to transfer cleanly, with decision logs, a 12-month roadmap, team assessments, and vendor context handed over. No perpetual dependency.
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Read moreFrequently asked questions
A fractional CTO provides the technical leadership and strategic input a full-time CTO would provide, for a defined number of days per week or month. This includes technology strategy and roadmap decisions, architecture review and guidance on major technical choices, engineering team assessment and hiring criteria, vendor and technology evaluation, investor and board technical communications, and acting as the senior technical voice in product and business discussions. The scope is defined upfront, it's not an open-ended advisory relationship.
Fractional CTO is most valuable for: post-Series A or Series B companies that have a product and engineering team but no CTO; founder-led technical teams where the technical founder needs a strategic partner to pressure-test decisions; companies in a CTO transition (between CTOs or promoting an engineering manager into the role); and companies facing a major technical inflection point, a re-architecture, a platform migration, or a significant scaling challenge, that needs senior technical oversight.
Engineering advisory is a narrower engagement, typically a specific technical question, an architecture review, or an assessment of an engineering team or codebase. Fractional CTO is an ongoing engagement where we become part of your leadership team for a defined period. Advisory is appropriate when you have a specific decision to make. Fractional CTO is appropriate when you need continuous technical leadership.
We start with a fixed-scope diagnostic, 2-3 weeks assessing your current architecture, engineering processes, team structure, and technical roadmap. You get a structured findings report and a set of prioritised recommendations. From there, you can continue with an ongoing fractional engagement or use the advisory output to hire or promote internally. We design every engagement with a defined end state, not perpetual dependency.
Yes. Engineering team assessments are one of the most common advisory requests. We evaluate team structure, technical skills, engineering processes, code quality, and delivery patterns. The output is a structured report that identifies the root cause of velocity or quality problems, which is rarely simply "the team isn't good enough." It's usually a combination of unclear ownership, missing processes, technical debt in specific areas, or tooling gaps that we can fix.
Engagements are priced based on scope, not a monthly retainer that grows over time. A fixed-scope diagnostic (2-3 weeks, structured findings report) typically runs between $8,000 and $15,000 depending on codebase size and team complexity. Ongoing fractional engagements are scoped and priced per quarter. We quote a fixed price before any work starts. No surprise invoices.
Work with us
Tell us what you need. We'll tell you what it would take.
We scope Fractional CTO and Engineering Advisory in 30 minutes. You walk away with a clear cost, timeline, and approach. No commitment required.
- Scope and cost agreed before work starts. No surprises. No obligation.
- Working prototype within 3 weeks of kickoff.
- Pay by milestone. You see progress before each invoice.
- 60-day post-launch warranty. Bug fixes, UI tweaks, and deployment support. No retainer.
- All conversations are NDA-protected.