- Fractional CTO
- from $10,000/mo
- 3-month minimum
Senior AI technical leadership, without the full-time hire
A fractional CTO is a senior technical leader who owns your architecture, roadmap, and engineering decisions part-time, for a flat monthly fee instead of a full-time executive salary. At Nolly Studio the retainer is AI-specific and hands-on: I set the technical direction for your AI product and stay in the code and the pull requests, not just the meetings.
What you get
4- AI roadmap and architecture ownership: agents, RAG, model selection, cost profile
- Hands-on code and pull request review with your engineers
- Hiring, vendor, and model decisions, made with someone who has shipped this stack
- Weekly leadership sync + async access between syncs
Who it's for
- Founders shipping an AI product without a senior technical leader in the room
- Teams with engineers who need AI architecture direction and review
- Companies between CTOs, or not yet ready for a full-time executive hire
Who it's not for
- Teams that need one defined product shipped (book a Build Sprint instead)
- Staff augmentation or hourly billing
- IT administration, managed hosting, or legacy migrations
How the retainer runs
The first two weeks are an audit: codebase, architecture, roadmap, and team. From there we run a weekly leadership sync, I review architecture and pull requests as they land, and I stay reachable async for the decisions that can't wait. Scope and the monthly fee are fixed before we start.
Fractional CTO FAQ
4Last updated: October 1, 2026
- What is a fractional CTO?
- A senior technical leader who owns architecture, roadmap, and engineering decisions for your company part-time. You get executive-level judgment on a monthly retainer without a full-time hire or an equity grant.
- How much does a fractional CTO cost?
- A Fractional CTO retainer at Nolly Studio starts at $10,000 per month with a 3-month minimum. The monthly fee is flat and agreed before work begins. There is no hourly billing.
- What do I get each month?
- Ownership of the AI roadmap and architecture, hands-on code and pull request review, a clear call on hiring, vendor, and model decisions, a weekly leadership sync, and async access between syncs.
- How is this different from a Build Sprint?
- A Build Sprint ships one defined product or feature at a fixed scope and ends with a handoff. The Fractional CTO retainer is ongoing leadership for a team that is already building: I guide and review the work rather than deliver all of it myself.
One slot for Q4.
If you're building something AI-native and want it shipped by someone who's done it in public, book a scope call. 30 minutes, costs nothing, and I'll tell you if I'm not the fit.