Service 05
A senior in your corner before you sign anything.
A Fractional CTO retainer for founders and GMs running a tech-enabled business without a full-time CTO. Architecture, vendor decisions, code review and hiring help.
What it is
What it is
A senior technical operator on retainer, typically one to two days a week, embedded enough to make real decisions and detached enough to call them honestly. You hire the judgement, not the headcount.
The brief usually arrives at a specific moment. The founder is about to sign a fifty thousand dollar build with an agency they are not sure about. The GM is being sold a SaaS platform that overlaps three things they already pay for. The board wants a technical hire and there is nobody senior internally to interview them properly.
This is the seat next to you for those decisions. Not the agency selling the build, not the vendor selling the SaaS, the person whose only job is making the call that protects the next two years of your operations.
In every engagement
What's included
- Roughly one to two days a week of senior CTO time, scheduled around your operations
- Architecture decisions for in-house builds, vendor selection and integrations
- Build-versus-buy calls before you commit to a SaaS contract or a custom build
- Code review on work done by your existing developers or external vendors
- Hiring help, from job spec through to final-stage technical interview
- Quarterly tech roadmap and budget planning tied to revenue, not features
- Direct access via Slack or email, four-hour response on business days
- Written notes on every significant call, so the reasoning is on record
Who it's for
Who it suits
Four founder and operator profiles where the retainer typically pays for itself in the first quarter.
01
The founder juggling five vendors
You have a developer, a SaaS subscription stack, a designer, an SEO agency and a freelancer doing automations. Nobody is looking at the whole picture. The retainer puts a single senior in charge of the architecture across all of them.
02
The GM stuck between board and build
The board wants a technology answer to a business problem, the developers want a longer timeline, the vendors want a longer contract. You need a senior technical voice in the room who is not selling anything to anyone.
03
The owner about to sign a major contract
A platform vendor or an agency has put a six-figure proposal on the table. You suspect it is the wrong shape, you cannot articulate why, and the salesperson is very good. Two hours of fractional CTO time before signing has saved clients more than the annual retainer in one decision.
04
The operator with a small internal dev team
You have two developers, you do not need a third, you do need somebody senior to keep the architecture honest, review the code, and shape what the team works on next. The retainer covers that without hiring a CTO at full salary.
How we ship it
How the retainer runs
Structured enough to be useful, flexible enough to handle the call you did not see coming on a Tuesday.
01
Onboarding fortnight
First two weeks are a focused read of your stack, your vendors, your team and your roadmap. You get a written one-page summary of the technical state of play, the immediate risks, and the three calls that need making first.
02
Weekly working session
A scheduled video session each week, plus async access between. The session is for the strategic conversations, the async is for the fast calls. Most weeks the async catches more than the session does.
03
Decision documents
Significant calls get written up. Architecture decision, vendor choice, build-versus-buy, hiring recommendation. One page each, on file, so the reasoning is recoverable in twelve months when the question comes back around.
04
Quarterly roadmap and budget
Once a quarter we sit down with the financials and the operational reality and write a ninety-day technology roadmap. What is on, what is off, what is being deferred, what the budget commits to. Tied to revenue outcomes, not feature lists.
Engagement
Engagement and pricing
The Voltari Fractional CTO retainer runs as a fixed monthly with quarterly terms. The headline number lives on the homepage and the contract specifics live in the SOW. For operators who also need hands-on build delivery, the retainer pairs with the Voltari Operator tier so the strategy and the shipping sit under one accountable team.
Common questions
Questions about fractional cto.
- Is this advisory or do you actually code?
- On the Fractional CTO retainer the work is advisory. Architecture, vendor calls, code review, hiring, roadmap. If you need hands-on build delivery as well, the retainer pairs with the Voltari Operator tier and a senior engineer ships against the architecture. Two retainers, one team.
- How quickly do you respond between sessions?
- Four-hour response on business days through Slack or email, twenty-four hours for anything outside business hours. The retainer is structured around the calls that come up between sessions, not just the scheduled meetings. Most weeks you will get more value from the async than the session.
- Will you tell the agency or vendor we already use that they are not good enough?
- If that is what the work shows, yes, in writing, with reasoning. The retainer is useless if it cannot make honest calls about the people already on payroll. Most engagements involve at least one conversation where an existing vendor needs to be replaced or restructured, that is the job.
- Can you help us hire developers?
- Yes. Job spec, screening questions, technical assessment design, final-stage interview, reference checks. Hiring a junior is risky for a non-technical founder, hiring a senior is risky for everyone. The retainer covers the technical side of the process from end to end.
- What if we need to make a call urgently, not in the next session?
- Ping us. The point of the retainer is that you do not wait. Significant decisions, contract reviews, production incidents, urgent vendor conversations, all of these get pulled forward. The weekly session is a rhythm, not a gate.
- How is this different from a tech consultant?
- A consultant writes a deck, delivers it, and leaves. The Fractional CTO is in the seat with you over multiple quarters, accountable for the outcomes, embedded enough to know what your team is actually shipping. The relationship is operator-to-operator, not vendor-to-client.
- What size business is this for?
- Typically AU and UAE businesses between three and thirty million in revenue with a tech-enabled product or a real internal software footprint. Smaller and the spend is hard to justify, larger and you usually want a full-time CTO. The exception is pre-revenue founders making a single high-stakes architectural call, where two months of retainer can pay back for years.
- Can we exit the retainer if it is not working?
- Quarterly terms with thirty days notice at the end of each quarter. The work is meant to be useful from month one, if it is not, the conversation happens early and we either reshape it or wind it down cleanly. No twelve-month lock-in, no exit fee.
Book a written intro, no pitch deck.
Send a short note on the business, the team and the call you are about to make. You will get a written read on whether the retainer is the right fit within three working days.
Other services
Other parts of the Voltari toolkit.
Websites and Apps
Sites and apps you actually own.
Senior-only custom websites and web apps for AU and UAE operators. Modern stack, full handover, no platform lock-in. From marketing sites to customer portals.
AI Solutions
AI that does a job, not a demo.
AI receptionists, workflow agents and integrations built into your real systems. Senior-only delivery for AU and UAE service businesses. Voice over chat.
Hosting and Maintenance
We pick up when your developer has gone quiet.
Managed hosting, monitoring and patching for sites we built and sites you inherited. AU and UAE coverage. One number to call when something breaks.