Fractional Data and AI CTO

We sit with your team one to three days a week as your acting Chief Data or AI Officer. Roadmap, vendor calls, hiring loops, the architecture decisions that set your bill for the next three years.

For: Series B and later companies whose data volume has grown past the founding team's capacity, legacy migration executives at Oracle or DB2 shops, and PE-owned companies where the thesis depends on the data platform surviving the next growth phase.
Engagement shape: Embedded leadership, three-month minimum, quarterly extensions. One to three days per week, 80 to 120 hours per month.

The problem

Your data stack was designed by a vendor. Maybe two vendors. The shape of your platform reflects what they sell, not what your workload actually needs. The bill grows every quarter and nobody on the team can tell you, with confidence, which line item is load-bearing and which is paying for a slide in someone else’s roadmap.

This is the disease. Overspending is the symptom. We see it everywhere because most companies do not have a senior data person in the room when the first architecture meeting happens. By the time anyone with scars walks in, the contract is signed and the data model is in production. The cost of unwinding it is now larger than the cost of living with it.

A fractional CDO is not an advisor who shows up once a month with opinions. We sit in your planning meetings. We review pull requests when they matter. We take the vendor call with you. We tell your CEO the same thing we tell your staff engineer, in the language each of them needs to hear it. Most data infrastructure problems are decided in the first architecture meeting. We make sure someone senior is in that meeting.

What we do

We sit with your team one to three days a week as your acting Chief Data or AI Officer. The engagement covers the decisions and artifacts your platform needs — not status reports.

Weekly standing with you, weekly with your senior engineers, monthly with your board or leadership when it helps
Architecture decisions, vendor evaluations, hiring scorecards, quarterly roadmap reviews
Slack, repo, architecture docs, roadmap, vendor calls, and hiring loops
Written architecture decision records for every major call
Access to a curated network of specialists for scoped collaborations when the work calls for it

We do not hand off to juniors. Every engagement is led by someone who has shipped production data systems for decades.

What you get

Senior operator capacity in the room, not a deck at the end of a quarter. The engagement delivers written artifacts for every major decision so the work is legible to your board, your next hire, and your team long after the engagement ends.

By the end of month three you know whether to extend us, replace us with a full-time hire we helped you pick, or both.

How it works

Month 1 — Land and diagnose. We read everything: architecture docs, recent incident reviews, the last two quarterly plans, the roadmap, the team directory, the cloud bill. We sit in on meetings without speaking for the first week. By week two we surface the three or four things that matter most. By week four we have agreed on what we are solving for.

Month 2 — Move. We pick the one or two architectural calls that need to be made now and drive them to a decision with your team. Vendor bake-offs, migration paths, data model reviews, hiring loops. The goal is to close decisions that have been sitting open, not to open new ones.

Month 3 — Harden. We turn decisions into commitments. Written ADRs, roadmap updates, hiring scorecards, a six-month plan your board can read.

Month 4 and beyond. If we extend, the cadence flattens. Weekly rhythm, quarterly recalibration. We are there for the decisions that only a senior person should make and out of the way for everything else.

Most data infrastructure problems are decided in the first architecture meeting. We make sure someone senior is in that meeting.

Questions teams ask

How is this different from the Strategic Advisory retainer?

Advisory is a sounding board at 10 to 40 hours a month. Fractional CDO is embedded leadership at 80 to 120 hours a month. If your team needs someone in the room when the architecture call gets made, you want Fractional. If they need someone to call when a decision is already drafted, you want Advisory.

Can you replace our open Head of Data search?

No, and you should not want us to. We can cover the seat while you search, help you build the scorecard, and sit on the hiring loop. The goal is to hand off to a full-time hire within six to twelve months, not to become permanent.

Will you sign an NDA and work inside our security perimeter?

Yes. We work on client laptops when required and are comfortable with the usual enterprise security stack.

What if we only need a few days a month, not a few days a week?

Then you want the Strategic Advisory retainer, not this. Ten to forty hours a month, same senior bench, different shape.

Can we see references?

Yes, on a qualified call. Most recent work is under NDA until contracts allow publication.

Do you take equity in lieu of cash?

Small amounts, case by case, on top of a reduced cash rate. Never in lieu of the full cash engagement.

Let’s look at it together.

Bring us whatever you're wrestling with — a new architecture, a migration plan, a bill that keeps growing, a team that needs a sounding board. Thirty minutes, no pitch. We'll tell you what we see.

Book a 30-minute diagnostic call hello@mcfad.in