Part-time technical lead
Fractional CTO for a business with no engineering team
A fractional CTO is a senior technical lead who works with your business on a regular cadence. They own the stack, the vendors, the systems and the builds, so technology stops being decided by whoever pitched last. Robby Prochnow leads the role.
- Shape
- A regular leadership cadence, sized to the work
- Owns
- Stack, vendors, systems and builds
- Fits
- Owner-led businesses with no engineering team
- Led by
- Robby Prochnow, about 20 years in technology
Signs you need a technical lead
You do not need one because you run software. You need one when technology decisions keep landing on you and nobody on your side can check them.
- Your systems were bought one at a time, by whoever needed them, and nobody can say how they connect. When one breaks, you find out what else depended on it.
- You pay for software that few people use, and you cannot say which of it you could drop. The renewals keep coming anyway.
- A developer or an agency built something and left. No one on your side can say what it does or how to change it. Every change since has been a guess.
- Vendors tell you what you need, and you have no one to check it against. Each pitch sounds reasonable on its own.
- You are about to spend real money on a system and cannot judge the proposal. You are not sure what to ask or what a good answer looks like.
- Your staff move data between systems by hand every week. The work is dull, and every copied cell is a place for errors.
What does a fractional CTO do?
The job is decisions, in order, written down. It is not a help desk and it is not a developer on retainer. These are the six things the role covers.
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Map the stack
Lists what you run, what each system does, who has access, what it costs and how the pieces connect. You get a document you can read, and it is kept current as things change. A roadmap sits beside it: what to renew, replace or leave alone over the next year, with a name beside each system.
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Decide on vendors
Joins vendor calls, reads proposals and contracts, and tells you to buy, skip, switch or renegotiate. The reasons go in writing, so you can see later why a choice was made.
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Scope and oversee builds
Writes the brief for anything that needs building and sets what done means. Where the build is a workflow, an agent or a custom application, Zen Aegis can build it. Either way, the result is checked against the brief before you accept it.
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Cover access, security and risk
Keeps a short risk list in plain words. Checks who has admin rights, whether backups work, whether multifactor sign-in is on and what happens when someone leaves. CISA's guidance for small businesses covers the same ground.
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Fix the handoffs between systems
Finds the places where people re-type or export data, then decides which handoffs to automate and which to leave alone. Not every manual step is worth replacing, and the CTO says which ones are not.
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Vet technical hires and contractors
Writes the role, joins the interviews and reviews a developer's first work. You are not left judging code you cannot read, and a weak hire is caught in the first weeks instead of the first year.
How the engagement runs
It runs through the same four stages as every Zen Aegis engagement, set out on how it works. Here is what each one means for this role.
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1. Scope and design
The first weeks go to an inventory: the systems, the contracts, the people who use them and the decisions already waiting. Anyone with a login to a system that matters is asked what it does for them, and what breaks around it. We agree an order, and which calls the CTO makes alone and which come to you. Writing down who owns which decision before anything is built is the idea behind starting with the org chart.
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2. Build
Where something needs building, the CTO writes the brief and the acceptance criteria with you. Zen Aegis builds it, or the CTO oversees another builder. The brief names what the system does, what it must not do, and what you will check on the day it is handed over, including where the system acts and where a person decides. Doing the work and checking it stay separate steps: the build is measured against the brief, not against the builder's word.
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3. Warranty
A build counts as accepted when it works in actual use against the criteria named with you, not when the code passes its tests. Problems found after acceptance go through the Warranty stage, and we stay accountable for what we build through warranty and support. The CTO tracks each problem until it closes, so you do not chase the builder yourself.
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4. Support and continuous improvement
This is the standing part. We right-size our involvement as the work changes. When no build is underway, there is still roadmap, vendor and risk work: the stack map stays current, renewals and vendor changes get handled, and what was built keeps improving as your business changes. When a system you depend on changes underneath you, this is where it gets handled.
Fractional CTO vs full-time CTO vs dev agency
The three options answer different questions, and the right one depends on how much technical work you have and who should decide it. This table compares what each one is, not what each one costs.
Experience and build work behind the role
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Insurance
One system in place of 17 carrier portals.
Commercial quoting intelligence
A research application that assembles the underwriting picture, finds the comparable risks, and feeds the custom quote. It is built around their book of business, not a generic one.
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Twenty hours a week, back into the mission.
Faith Bone Head of Operations, Amanda Hope Rainbow Angels -
I didn’t understand the difference until I saw it running.
Jesse Fowler CEO, Lief
When to hire a fractional CTO instead of a full-time CTO or an agency
A full-time CTO makes sense when technology is what you sell, or when you have several engineers to lead. A fractional CTO for a small business fits the other case: a few systems, a few vendors and one or two builds a year. The cadence follows the decisions, not a fixed number of days.
An agency builds well and is paid to build. Someone on your side of the table should decide whether to build at all, and write down what finished means. That is the part our fractional CTO services cover. If you already work with an agency, the CTO gives it a clear brief, which also makes its quote comparable to the next one.
Robby Prochnow leads the role. His experience spans roughly 20 years, including 12.5 years across Insight, GoDaddy, TD SYNNEX and Avnet, plus the systems he has built through Zen Aegis. The work is technology strategy, architecture, vendor decisions and delivery, across enterprise technology and owner-led businesses.
He can lead the technical decisions and the build. What stays separate is doing the work and checking it. The brief says what done means, and the result is checked against it before you accept it.
At any point you hold the stack map, the written vendor decisions and the brief for anything that was built. If you hire a full-time CTO later, or change builders, those documents go with you. The new person starts from what was decided and why.
The Fractional AI Officer owns the AI roadmap and the decisions on it. The fractional CTO owns the stack, vendors, systems and builds underneath. Some businesses need one, some need both. In the language of our four capability areas, both are ways into Advisory, and both can steer builds in Intelligent Workflows, AI Agents and Custom Applications.
What a fractional CTO will not do
- Recommend a build when buying software, or doing nothing, is the better answer.
- Pick a tool because Zen Aegis builds with it. Vendor choices go in writing with the reasons.
- Run your help desk. Password resets and printers stay with whoever handles IT support today.
- Stay on after the work is done. If the stack is sound and nothing is being built, you can stop.
- Pretend to be a whole engineering department. If the work grows into a team, we say so and help you hire one.
Questions
What does a fractional CTO do for a small business?
A fractional CTO owns the technical decisions: which systems you run, which vendors you keep, what gets built and who builds it. They write the decisions down, so the next person can read them. Most of the work is judgment and oversight, not code. The written record is the part you keep seeing.
How much time does a fractional CTO put in?
A regular leadership cadence, with the time sized to the decisions and delivery work in front of you. It runs heavier during a build or a vendor decision and lighter when things are stable. We right-size our involvement as the work changes. There can still be roadmap, vendor and risk work when no build is underway.
How is a part-time CTO priced?
Ongoing leadership is a scoped retainer. Defined assessments or projects, such as a stack review or a vendor selection, are priced separately. Rates and time commitments are set in your proposal.
When should I hire a full-time CTO instead?
Hire full-time when technology is what you sell, or when you have several engineers who need a leader every day. A fractional CTO can hand over to that hire and help you choose them. The stack map and the decision log go with you, so the new hire starts from facts instead of guesses about what past choices were meant to do.
Does a fractional CTO write code?
Not as the main job. The CTO leads the technical decisions and can lead the build. When the build is a workflow, an agent or a custom application, Zen Aegis does it. What we keep separate is doing the work and checking it, so the brief and the reasons are written down where you can read them.
Who would be my fractional CTO?
Robby Prochnow. He has roughly 20 years in technology, including 12.5 years across Fortune 500 technology businesses, plus the systems he has built through Zen Aegis. He has led technology strategy, architecture, vendor decisions and delivery for enterprise teams and for owner-led businesses.
Start with the system that worries you most
Tell us which system, vendor or build you cannot judge today. It can be a contract coming up for renewal, a proposal on your desk or something built years ago that nobody owns. We will talk through how it fits together and what a technical lead on a regular cadence would take off your plate. Use the form below, or reach us on the contact page.
- What we’d design The process, the people in it, and where a person decides.
- What we’d build The system, and how we would prove it in actual use.
- What we wouldn’t Said plainly on the call, including when the answer is no.
