Engineering Leadership On Demand
Fractional Director
of Engineering.
Senior engineering leadership without the full-time overhead. Run by Tom, Director-level operator with 15 years leading teams at NASA JPL, Princeton, and a global risk advisory firm.
Monthly retainer · Paid in advance · 3-month minimum
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Meet Tom
I’ve spent 15 years running engineering teams. Mostly on contract.
Eight years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on the Voyager Interstellar Mission and the Mars 2020 / Perseverance rover, three NASA Honor Awards including the Mars 2020 PIXL Development Team. Director of Engineering at a global risk advisory firm leading a 50-person global team building a financial-crime detection platform under heavy regulation. Director of the Princeton Research Accelerator, ramped from a fractional engagement to running a 20-person team. Fractional Director at Consilient. Former VP of Apache OODT, the open-source data management framework that came out of JPL.
Almost all of it on a contract or fractional basis. That’s not a side gig, it’s the work I’ve chosen. I’ve written about why I think engineering leadership is the real gap AI is exposing right now, and it’s the work I most want to be doing.
“Most engineering teams don’t need a full-time Director, they need someone who’s done the job before to help figure out what good looks like, and how to get there. Fractional work lets me bring that experience to teams who need it for a quarter, a year, or as long as the problem requires, without the overhead and commitment of a full-time hire. If we’re a fit, we’ll know quickly. If we’re not, I’ll tell you who is.”
, Tom Barber
Who it’s for
Engineering leadership that meets you where you are.
Funded startups
You’ve outgrown your founding engineer but aren’t ready for a full-time hire. You need someone to set technical direction, build a team, and ship.
Mid-market companies
Your team is scaling, your tech lead just left, or you’re adopting new practices. You need experienced leadership to steady delivery and level up the org.
Enterprise initiatives
You need a senior engineering leader to run a specific programme, platform migration, new product line, or a regulated-environment build with a hard deadline.
And when it’s the wrong call
Fractional is not the answer as often as the pitch suggests. It is the wrong call when:
- ·You already have a stable senior technical lead. A fractional layer on top is one you do not need.
- ·The work is heads-down building against a clear spec. That is a contract engineer, not a strategist.
- ·You need someone in the seat forty hours a week holding a live crisis. That is an interim or full-time role.
- ·No decision sticks without a full-time owner in the building. Fractional will frustrate everyone.
If that is you, we would rather say so on the first call than take the engagement.
What you get
The full Director of Engineering remit, flexed to what your team actually needs.
Team building & hiring
Define roles, write job specs, run interviews, design onboarding, and build the engineering culture that ships consistently.
Technical strategy
Set technical direction, evaluate build-vs-buy decisions, define engineering standards, and align your stack with your business plan, not the other way round.
Process & delivery
Implement agile practices that fit your context, set up CI/CD, define sprint cadence, establish incident response, the operational rhythm that turns a team into an organisation.
Mentoring & growth
Run effective 1:1s, create growth frameworks, build code review culture, and coach your existing developers, including the engineers who’ll outlast my engagement.
Ready to run this on your team?
Monthly retainer, 3-month minimum, no full-time conversion. First conversation is a 15-minute call.
Further reading
The first-90-days playbook
The four resources we use when standing up an engineering leadership seat, pick a quick win, assess the team, run the comms cadence, work the timeline.
Fractional CTO Cost: How to Think About Pricing and Value
Four factors that drive fractional CTO cost, three engagement models, honest benchmarks for the alternatives, and what is actually in the retainer.
Read the cost guide ComparisonFractional CTO vs CTO Advisory: Which Engagement Do You Need?
Side-by-side comparison of the two most-confused engagement shapes. What each role actually is, the signals that point to one versus the other, and the common mistakes.
Read the comparison PlaybookThe First 90 Days Playbook
The whole first quarter in one place, week-by-week timeline, the six quick-win tests and 20-point scoring rubric, and seven copy-paste communication templates.
Read the playbook DiagnosticCross-Functional Team Assessment
Five capabilities check, autonomy audit, dependency debt score, feature factory red flags, and a 30-60-90 day plan. Are you a product team or a feature factory?
Run the assessmentFractional CTO vs a dev shop
They solve different problems, and founders often shop for one when they need the other.
A dev shop
Builds what you spec
You hand over a spec and they ship against it. The right call when you already know what to build and just need the hands to build it. What you do not get: someone owning the technical strategy, the hiring, or the trade-offs when the spec meets reality.
A fractional CTO
Decides what to build, and how to run engineering
Sets technical direction, makes the build-versus-buy and architecture calls, hires and shapes the team, and answers to the board. The right call when the question is "what should we build, and how should we run engineering," not just "can you build this."
Plenty of teams need both, in sequence: the CTO to make the calls, then a build team to execute them. If you are not sure which you need, that is the first thing we will work out on a call. (Comparing against an advisory relationship instead? See fractional CTO vs CTO advisory.)
Questions you’ll probably ask first
Honest answers to the things that come up before a fit call.
Fractional CTO vs fractional Director of Engineering, which do I need?
A fractional CTO is usually right when you have no senior technical voice on the team and need a strategic head, board-facing, tech-vs-business trade-offs, founder-counsel. A fractional Director of Engineering is right when you already have a CTO or technical founder and need someone who can actually build the team, run delivery, and operate the engineering org. CTO sets direction; DoE runs the shop. Many startups think they want a CTO and actually need a DoE.
How is fractional Director of Engineering priced?
Monthly retainer, paid in advance, use it or lose it. The rate depends on engagement size and hours per month; we'll scope that on the first call.
What's the minimum engagement length?
Three months as standard. Shorter engagements can be arranged if they fit, usually for a specific initiative with a clear end date.
Will you work alongside our existing engineering team?
Yes, or help you build one. Working alongside an existing team or tech lead is the most common shape; building a team from scratch is the second.
Will this convert to a full-time role?
No, fractional is the offering. If you decide you need a full-time Director of Engineering, I'll help you find one and hand the role over cleanly.
Remote, hybrid, or on-site?
Remote with some time on-site, scheduled around your team. We're based in Washington DC; the rhythm depends on the engagement, we'll agree what works on the first call.
How is this different from a contract engineer or interim CTO?
Contract is fine, interim is fine, and when the engagement ends I'll hand everything over to whoever steps into the role. The difference is the shape of the work: a Director sets technical direction, builds the team, and runs delivery; a contract engineer ships against a spec; an interim CTO holds the seat. Sometimes you need one, sometimes the other, we'll figure that out together.
Who owns the code and the IP?
You do, all of it. Everything built during the engagement is yours: the code, the IP, the infrastructure, and the documentation, handed over with no lock-in and no dependency on us to keep it running. That holds for every engagement we take; we are not interested in being the only people who can operate your platform.
When is a fractional CTO the wrong call?
More often than the pitch admits. If you already have a stable senior technical lead, a fractional CTO is a layer you don't need. If the work is heads-down building against a clear spec, hire a contract engineer, not a strategist. If you need someone in the seat forty hours a week holding a live crisis, that is an interim or full-time role. And if no decision sticks without a full-time owner in the building, fractional will frustrate everyone. We would rather tell you that on the first call than take the engagement.
What are the risks of hiring a fractional CTO, and how do you manage them?
The honest ones: split attention, because the person is not full-time; slower context-building than an embedded hire; and decisions stalling between sessions. We manage them by scoping to a defined band of hours with real ownership inside it, keeping delivery moving through your team rather than around it, and being explicit about what a fractional seat does and does not cover. Where a risk can't be managed away, we tell you the role you need is full-time or interim, not fractional.
Every engagement starts with a conversation.
No pitch deck, no sales funnel, just a conversation about what your team needs and whether I can help. Need product leadership alongside the engineering side? We also run combined product and engineering leadership as one embedded team.
Talk to our team15 minutes · Zero obligation · Real engineering talk