Post-Funding Startups
You've closed your Seed or Series A and need a credible technical voice at the leadership table — without committing to a six-figure salary before the model is proven.
Fractional & Interim CTO Services
Senior Tech Leadership,
Senior Tech Leadership,
Without the Full-Time Hire
I partner with funded startups and growth-stage companies to bring strategic clarity, engineering rigour, and board-level confidence to their technology — on a schedule that fits their stage.
25+ years scaling technology teams Seed to Series A sweet spot Remote-first, available globally
2 engagement slots currently available
Trusted by teams at
Built for Companies at an Inflection Point
You don't need a full-time CTO just yet — but you do need someone who's been there before.
Scale-Ups Hitting Friction
Your engineering team has grown, but delivery is slowing. You need someone to diagnose what's blocking you and install the structure to scale cleanly.
Investor or Acquirer Due Diligence
Preparing for a funding round or exit? A clear architecture narrative and credible technical review can be the difference between a smooth close and a difficult one.
Interim Cover
Your CTO has just left or is on extended leave. You need an experienced leader to keep delivery moving and help hire their replacement.
Strategic and Hands-On, in Equal Measure
A Fractional CTO bridges the gap between your business ambitions and your technology reality — without the overhead of a permanent hire.
Technology Strategy
Defining a clear, commercially grounded technology direction that aligns with your business goals and gives the board genuine confidence in your roadmap.
Architecture & Platform Design
Assessing your current architecture, identifying risk and debt, and mapping an evolutionary path — whether that's moving from monolith to microservices, a cloud migration, or scaling for 10× load.
Engineering Team Leadership
Building, mentoring, and where necessary restructuring your engineering function — instilling the practices, delivery culture, and hiring pipelines that compound over time.
Delivery Pipeline & Cadence
Introducing pragmatic delivery frameworks — sprint discipline, CI/CD pipelines, incident management — that remove friction and help teams ship with genuine confidence.
Technical Audits & Due Diligence
Rigorous, independent assessment of codebases, infrastructure, security posture, and engineering process — delivered in a format that works for founders and investors alike.
Investor & Board Readiness
Translating complex technical realities into clear narratives for the board, investors, and potential acquirers — and making sure the right things are being measured.
A note on cost
A fractional engagement typically costs 40–50% of a full-time hire, with no employer NI, benefits, or long notice periods. Monthly retainers generally range from £3,000 to £7,000 depending on commitment — scaling up during critical sprints or board-facing milestones.
The Right Moment to Act
There's rarely a perfect time. But there are clear signals that tell you it's time to bring in senior technical leadership.
You've just closed a funding round
Investors want credible technical leadership and a coherent product strategy. Build the foundations now, before the pressure builds.
You're approaching or testing product-market fit
Moving fast matters, but technical decisions made at this stage echo for years. A senior voice helps you build for scale without over-engineering too early.
Your engineering team is growing but delivery isn't
More engineers, slower shipping — a classic scaling problem. Process, architecture, and leadership are usually the culprits.
Your platform is buckling under growth
Whether it's performance, reliability, or maintainability, a platform that can't keep pace with the business becomes a commercial liability fast.
A funding round or acquisition is on the horizon
Technical due diligence surfaces issues at the worst possible moment. Getting ahead of it — with clean documentation and a credible narrative — costs far less than firefighting mid-process.
Your CTO seat is temporarily empty
Gaps in technical leadership cost velocity and morale. An experienced interim CTO keeps things moving while a permanent hire is found and onboarded.
Two Modes, One Standard of Delivery
I work in a way that fits your stage, your team, and your goals — with clear deliverables from day one.
1–3 days per week · ongoing retainer
Ongoing strategic and operational engagement embedded with your leadership team. I attend planning sessions and board meetings, and I'm available between sessions for decisions that can't wait.
- 30-day tech audit and initial findings report
- 90-day architecture and delivery roadmap
- Engineering hiring plan and progression framework
- Delivery pipeline and release cadence
- Board and investor reporting templates
Fixed-term · full commitment
A defined, time-boxed engagement — typically 3 to 12 months — where I step in as your acting CTO. I take ownership of the technology function, lead the team day-to-day, and hand over cleanly when the time is right.
- Full technical leadership from day one
- Team stabilisation and performance management
- Platform and security audit
- Recruitment support and permanent CTO handover plan
- Documentation and knowledge transfer
About Nick Tong
A CTO Who's Done the Hard Work Before
Over more than 25 years I've held CTO and senior technology leadership roles across funded startups, scale-ups, and established businesses — with a particular focus on technology for good. I've worked across employee wellbeing, ethics & compliance, fintech, risk management, and e-commerce, navigating the full arc from early-stage product to enterprise scale.
One of the things I do consistently well is build high-performing teams — from scratch when there's nothing in place, or by identifying the one or two strategic hires that change everything. Whether that's a data scientist who opens an entirely new product direction, a product leader who brings discipline to a purely engineering culture, or a senior engineer who lifts everyone around them — I know how to spot what's missing and act on it.
I also bring psychological safety to teams under pressure. Post-raise environments can be brittle; people are cautious, uncertain, and often stretched. I create the conditions for honest conversation and clear thinking — and that changes what teams can achieve together. My approach is direct and data-driven. I give founders and boards an honest picture of their technical position — and then roll up my sleeves to improve it.
What People Say
From the teams and founders I've worked with directly.
"Nick led with empathy, logic, and quiet confidence. He gave the engineering team room to think and took the time to understand the nuances of our work before suggesting changes. He navigated the sometimes tricky dynamics of working within a team where relationships were already established, with real care and professionalism. He tackled difficult conversations head-on — situations most people would sidestep — with clarity and kindness. He brought out the best in people. I left many of our 1:1s feeling genuinely motivated and more capable than when I walked in. Having Nick as a CTO is genuinely transformative for a team."
"Nick played a transformational role in our company. He joined at a critical inflection point and helped us rebuild the technical function — both the team and the culture — from the ground up. His calm, strategic presence and ability to earn trust across the organisation made a lasting difference. I'd work with Nick again without hesitation."
"Nick has an exceptional ability to align technical direction with business goals in a way that's clear, credible, and immediately actionable. He brought real rigour to our technology decisions and gave us the confidence to move fast without cutting corners. He's the kind of CTO-level thinking that most early-stage companies simply can't afford to hire full-time — which is exactly why the fractional model works so well with someone of his calibre."
What Changes When I'm Involved
A sample of outcomes from real engagements — anonymised at client request.
Ethics & Compliance · SaaS
Built the technical foundation for a successful exit
An underperforming engineering function was quietly becoming a strategic liability — slow delivery, mounting technical debt, and a team that had lost confidence in its own direction. By restructuring the team, modernising the platform architecture, and establishing the delivery culture that high-performing engineering teams rely on, technology transformed from the company's biggest risk into one of its most valuable assets. It played a direct role in a successful acquisition.
Employee Wellbeing · SaaS
A single strategic hire opened up a new product direction entirely
A fast-growing wellbeing platform needed a clear path to AI leadership — before competitors caught up. The key was identifying the right person: a data scientist who understood both the product and the opportunity. By making that hire at the right moment, we unlocked conversational AI and bot technology capabilities that the team hadn't been able to reach before. That technical positioning became a genuine competitive differentiator and a meaningful thread in the investment narrative that followed.
E-commerce · Consumer
Freed a year of product investment by reducing the cost to run
Engineering capacity was being consumed by the cost of maintaining an ageing platform, leaving almost nothing for growth. By rearchitecting critical systems, rationalising cloud spend, and improving developer tooling, we significantly reduced operational overhead. The savings unlocked a programme of new product features that had previously been out of reach — and the team shipped more in the following six months than in the previous two years.
Enterprise SaaS · Security
SOC 2 Type II — faster than our auditors had seen before
Enterprise contracts were stalling on security certification requirements. By treating SOC 2 as an engineering problem rather than a compliance checkbox — with clear documentation, explicit ownership, and the right tooling from day one — we achieved certification in a fraction of the typical 12–18 month timeline. The enterprise pipeline it unlocked was immediate.
On-demand Labour · Marketplace
Built an engineering team from nothing — and gave a product the team it needed to ship
A fast-scaling marketplace had technical ambition but no engineering function to execute it. Starting with no team in place, the entire hiring process was designed from scratch — from the interview pipeline to the culture brief. Within months, a cohesive engineering team was delivering product at pace. The right people, in the right shape, with the right leadership — and the platform investment that followed wouldn't have been possible without it.
Three Steps to Engagement
No lengthy procurement. No proposal theatre. Getting started is straightforward.
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30-Minute Discovery Call
We talk through your situation, your goals, and the key technical challenges on your radar. No pitch — just an honest conversation about whether and how I can help.
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Scoping & Proposal
I'll put together a clear, jargon-free proposal covering scope, engagement model, deliverables, and fee structure. Usually ready within 48 hours of our call.
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Start & First 30 Days
Once agreed, I'm up to speed quickly. The first 30 days focus on a thorough tech audit and quick wins — so you see concrete value within the first month.
Common Questions
What's the difference between a Fractional CTO and an Interim CTO?
A Fractional CTO works with you part-time — typically one to three days per week — providing ongoing strategic and operational leadership alongside your existing team. It's a retainer relationship designed to give you senior technical capacity without a full-time headcount cost.
An Interim CTO steps in on a fixed-term, full-time basis — usually to cover a departure, bridge a hiring gap, or lead a defined transformation. The engagement has a clear start, a clear end, and a handover built into it from the outset.
How does the cost compare to hiring a full-time CTO?
A senior CTO in the UK typically commands a salary of £120,000–£180,000, plus equity, employer NI, pension, benefits, and recruitment costs — which can add a further 20–30% on top. A quality hire also takes three to six months to find and onboard.
A fractional engagement removes all of that overhead. You pay a monthly retainer, scale commitment up or down as the business evolves, and can step back without notice periods or redundancy exposure.
What happens in the first 30 days?
The first month is a structured onboarding and diagnostic. I'll review your codebase, infrastructure, and current architecture; assess your engineering team's structure and culture; identify your most pressing technical risks; and talk to key stakeholders — founders, investors, product leads — to build a full picture of the business context.
At the end of 30 days you'll have a written technical audit, a prioritised list of quick wins, and a 90-day roadmap. That document becomes the foundation for everything that follows.
Do you work remotely or on-site?
Primarily remotely, which means geography rarely gets in the way. For the right engagement I'm happy to come on-site for key workshops, planning sessions, or team events — wherever you're based. We'll agree the right balance at the scoping stage.
Can you help us hire a permanent CTO?
Yes — supporting the search and appointment of a permanent CTO is often a natural conclusion to a fractional or interim engagement. I can help you define the role, assess candidates from a technical perspective, and ensure a clean handover when the appointment is made.