Senior IT Leadership Without the Six-Figure Salary

The Gap Between IT Support and IT Strategy

Most growing businesses hit a point where their IT works but their technology decisions feel reactive. New tools get adopted without evaluation. Contracts auto-renew without negotiation. The IT budget is whatever last year’s was plus a bit more. Nobody is asking whether the technology stack actually supports where the business is heading.

That is the gap a fractional CTO fills. Not another pair of hands on the helpdesk, but a senior technologist who sits with your leadership team and makes sure technology decisions serve your business goals.

What a Fractional CTO Actually Does

Our vCIO services start with understanding your business. Where are you now? Where are you heading in the next 12-24 months? What does your technology need to look like to get you there?

From that understanding, we build a technology roadmap. This is a practical, budgeted plan that sequences your IT investments over time. It might include a cloud migration in Q2, a security uplift in Q3, and a new CRM deployment in Q4. Each initiative has a business case, a timeline, and a cost estimate.

Between the big projects, your fractional CTO handles the ongoing strategic work that otherwise falls through the cracks. Vendor contracts coming up for renewal get reviewed and renegotiated. New software requests get evaluated against your architecture standards. The IT budget gets a proper annual planning cycle with quarterly reviews.

IT Strategy for Financial Services

For FCA-regulated firms, technology strategy is inseparable from compliance strategy. DORA requirements mean your technology resilience is now directly in scope for regulatory review. Your operational resilience framework needs to account for critical IT services, third-party dependencies, and recovery capabilities.

Our fractional CTOs have deep experience in financial services IT. We understand the regulatory landscape, the vendor ecosystem, and the specific challenges of running technology for hedge funds, PE firms, and wealth managers. We speak both the language of technology and the language of financial regulation.

M&A Technology Due Diligence

If your firm is acquiring or merging with another business, technology due diligence is essential. We assess the target’s infrastructure, contracts, security posture, technical debt, and integration complexity. We have reviewed dozens of acquisitions and know where the hidden costs and risks live — from legacy systems with no documentation to software licences that do not transfer.

The output is a clear report your deal team can use: what the technology is worth, what it will cost to integrate, and what risks you are taking on.

How It Works

Engagements typically start at 2 days per month and adjust based on what your business needs. There is no long-term lock-in. We work alongside your existing IT team or managed service provider, filling the strategic layer that operational IT does not cover.