Fractional CTO Services
Part-time CTO and fractional engineering leadership, without the full-time commitment. For more than 20 years, Coalesce has helped growing companies make better technology decisions, build stronger teams, and ship products that scale.
Since 2006
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$320M+ lifetime client revenue powered by our software
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4+ year avg. client relationship
You need technical leadership, not just another developer. Whether you're a founder without a technical co-founder, a CEO navigating a digital transformation, or a growing company that's outpaced its current tech leadership, we provide the strategic guidance to get you where you need to go.
When you need a CTO but not full-time
Hiring a full-time CTO is expensive, time-consuming, and risky if you're not sure what you need. A fractional engagement gives you senior technical leadership on your terms, with the flexibility to scale up or down as your needs change.
You're making technical decisions without technical expertise.
Build vs. buy. Which framework. When to hire. These decisions have long-term consequences, and getting them wrong is expensive. You need someone who's made these calls before and knows what actually matters.
Your dev team needs direction, not just management.
Good developers want to build the right things the right way. But without technical leadership setting architecture standards, prioritizing technical debt, and making trade-off decisions, teams spin their wheels or build in the wrong direction.
You're talking to investors, partners, or acquirers.
Technical due diligence is coming. You need someone who can speak credibly about your architecture, your roadmap, and your team's capabilities. We've been on both sides of that table.
Most fractional CTOs are solo operators. Ours is backed by a full team.
Solo fractional CTOs and talent marketplaces give you one person's time and one person's blind spots. Ours is backed by a full Engineering Studio, so when a decision needs a second opinion or the work needs more hands, the same team can do it.
Fractional CTO, interim CTO or a development agency
These solve different problems. The right one depends on what is actually missing on your team.
| Option | It fits when | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Fractional CTO | The gap is judgment. You have a product, a team or a vendor, but nobody senior owns the technical decisions. | Direction, reviews of the hard calls, and coaching for the people doing the work, for part of the week and for as long as you need it. |
| Interim CTO | A seat has suddenly emptied. Your CTO left, or the role is open while you search. | Full-time cover for a defined stretch: someone who runs the team day to day and hands over to the permanent hire. |
| Development agency | The gap is capacity. You know what to build and need more hands to build it. | Delivered work. Owning your technical strategy, and telling you when the plan is wrong, is usually outside the scope. |
| Coalesce | You want the fractional seat, with engineers available behind it when the work needs them. | Advisory support a few days a month, or embedded leadership through a build, migration or team scale-up. Because we are also an engineering studio, we can bring in our engineers when the work needs more hands, or help you hire when it doesn't. |
Fractional CTO services
Roadmap development, build vs. buy decisions, and technology selection aligned with your business goals.
Defining roles, writing job descriptions, interviewing candidates, and building a technical culture that retains talent.
Evaluating your current systems, identifying risks and bottlenecks, and planning for scale.
Assessing development agencies, SaaS tools, and technology partners to ensure you're getting what you're paying for.
Preparing for investor or acquirer technical reviews, documenting systems, and addressing red flags before they're found.
Filling the gap while you search for a full-time CTO, or providing ongoing part-time leadership for the long term.
How a fractional CTO engagement works
We review your architecture, codebase, team, and vendors, and tell you plainly what's working and what's at risk. No 200-page audits.
A prioritized roadmap based on your constraints. What's urgent vs. important. What we can ship in weeks vs. what needs architectural work. Clear trade-offs, not hand-wavy estimates.
Hiring plans, code review, and engineering standards, so your team builds in the same direction instead of spinning its wheels.
Sprint planning, architecture decisions, and 1:1s with your developers. A few hours a month of strategic guidance, or 20-30 hours during fundraising, major hires, or architecture decisions.
When you're ready for a full-time CTO, we help you hire one and hand over documented systems and decisions, so they don't start from scratch.
How to vet a fractional CTO
Ask for specific technology decisions they made and what came of them, including the ones that went badly. Someone who has led a team will have a story about a build-vs-buy call, a migration, or a rewrite they talked a client out of.
Find out how they handle your developers, your vendors and the trade-off between speed and quality. Do they sit in sprint planning and code reviews, or hand over a slide deck and leave?
A part-time seat still needs coverage when one person is out, or when the work needs more engineers than one person can supply. Ask who else would step in and how.
Use references to ask about delivery: did the roadmap ship, did the team get stronger, and was the handover cleaner than what they inherited?
Recent Case Studies
SaaS for Election Compliance
Building a scalable platform from scratch for Operative, keeping every election cycle in compliance.
For Operative / Built with Next.js, Supabase, and Vercel
Processed 27M+ transactions
Product Design for Learning
Redesigning a complex learning system for Knopman Marks that helped grow revenue from $5M to $21M.
For Knopman Marks / Built with Yii2, Spring Boot, Customer.io, and AWS
Revenue grew from $5M to $21M over five years
Made by people who care how it turns out.
Behind every brand, product, and line of code we ship is a team you know by name. We use AI where it makes us faster. The judgment, the taste, and the final call stay with people.
Talk to our team
Talk to our team
Coalesce understood what we were looking for and helped translate those goals into technical execution without weighing us down with the minutiae. They were a great fit with our team.
Rob Regan
Operations Manager, Financial Investment News
Fractional CTO FAQ
How is this different from hiring a CTO?
A fractional CTO gives you senior leadership at a fraction of the cost and commitment. You get strategic guidance without the $300K+ salary, equity dilution, and risk of a bad full-time hire. Scale up or down as your needs change.
Is a fractional CTO the same as a part-time CTO?
Mostly, yes. Both mean senior technical leadership for part of the week instead of a full-time executive. 'Fractional' usually means an ongoing seat in leadership decisions; 'part-time' is sometimes used for narrower advisory work. We do both: advisory support a few days a month, or embedded leadership through a build, migration, or team scale-up.
How much does a fractional CTO cost?
A fractional CTO engagement with Coalesce typically runs $12K to $15K per month for strategic and advisory support, roughly a few days a month setting technical direction and reviewing key decisions, or $15K to $25K per month for embedded, hands-on leadership through a build, migration, or team scale-up. What you pay tracks how deep we go: advisory keeps a senior engineer steering; embedded puts one in the room every week. We scope the right tier in a short discovery call before either side commits.
How much time do you typically spend with clients?
It varies. Some clients need 5-10 hours per month for strategic guidance. Others need 20-30 hours during critical periods like fundraising, major hires, or architecture decisions. We flex to what you actually need.
Can you manage our development team?
Yes. We can provide hands-on technical leadership including sprint planning, code reviews, architecture decisions, and 1:1s with your developers. We integrate with your team, not replace them.
Do you write code?
When needed, yes. But the value of a fractional CTO is strategic, not tactical. If you need more hands on keyboards, we can bring in our engineering team or help you hire.
Where is your team located?
We're headquartered in New York City, with partners in Nashville and South Florida. Working as one small senior team means faster turnaround without sacrificing quality or communication.
Ready for technical leadership that scales with you?
We've powered $320M+ in lifetime client revenue with a lean team of senior engineers. Let's talk about what you're building.