Fractional CTO

Fractional CTO for Businesses That Run on Systems but Have No One Leading Them

Summary: A fractional CTO is a senior technology lead on a monthly retainer, for a set number of hours, who owns your technology decisions the way a full-time CTO would. This page explains what you get, what it costs, and what it is not.

Your business runs on systems: an accounting system, something that tracks jobs or orders, a store or a portal, a handful of vendors who built and maintain them. Nobody on staff leads that. Decisions get made when a vendor proposes something, renewals happen by default, and the AI question is being answered by whoever on your team opened ChatGPT first.

A fractional CTO fixes that without a full-time CTO salary. One senior technology lead, a set number of hours a month, written roadmaps and written decisions, and a seat in your leadership meeting. Sandcastle has spent more than two decades connecting business systems. Now that includes connecting them to AI.

Someone qualified, reading what your vendors send you. Book a 30-minute fit call, start with an AI Readiness Assessment, or call (206) 325-5383.

BOOK A FIT CALL

Who This Is For

Contractors and field-service companies with a job or project system, crews entering time, and material ordering that touches procurement. Systems that do not talk to each other, and nobody checking whether they should.
Distributors and B2B suppliers selling into customers’ procurement systems, with an ERP, a store and an integration or two that only one vendor understands.
Online retailers on a platform that is aging, with connections to shipping, accounting and marketplaces, and a vendor list that has grown by accident.

Typically an owner or division head who makes the final call, no technology leader in-house, and outside developers or IT companies who need someone on your side of the table reading their proposals. Clients like Prime Electric, EMCOR, Bond Arms and Southland Medical, all of whom have worked with us for seven years or longer.

What You Get

Every inclusion is a document, a meeting or a decision. Nothing on this list is “strategic guidance.”

Technology Baseline, in the first 30 days. A systems inventory, a vendor and contract register with renewal dates, a data map of which systems hold which data and what leaves the company, a ranked risk register, and a first roadmap. If you did the AI Readiness Assessment, its report is the baseline and this is a refresh.
Technology roadmap. A one-page, dated plan of what changes, in what order, why, and the budget range for each. Reviewed on your tier’s schedule and re-issued after each review. It is the document you can hand to a bank, a buyer or a new hire.
Technology budget plan. An annual technology budget built from the inventory: subscriptions, vendors, projects, contingency. Checked against actuals at Lead and above.
Platform and vendor decision memos. When a decision comes up, you get a written recommendation: the options, the choice, the cost, the risks, and what has to be true for it to work. Every memo includes at least one option that does not involve Sandcastle.
Oversight of outside developers and vendors. Proposals and statements of work reviewed before you sign; deliverables checked against what was promised; a monthly one-page vendor scorecard at Lead and above. You keep every vendor. The point is that someone qualified now reads what they send.
AI adoption and data-access policy (Lead and Embedded). A written policy, specific to your company: which AI tools are approved for which uses, which categories of data may be used with which tools and which may not, who approves new tools, and how often it is reviewed. Delivered with a one-page staff summary. It is a policy and an approved-tools list; this guide shows what goes into one. Security audits and penetration testing are a separate engagement.
A seat in leadership. Your fractional CTO attends your leadership meeting on the tier’s schedule, reports on the roadmap and budget, and answers for technology the way a CTO would. Between meetings you have a named person to call before signing anything technical.
Working sessions and calls on the tier’s schedule, each with written notes and decisions.

When a deliverable needs hands, such as a data pull, a proof of concept or documentation of an existing system, our team does it at development rates, quoted first, with 10% off at Lead and Embedded. Retainer hours stay on judgment.

What a Decision Memo Looks Like

Every technology decision a retainer client faces gets a memo like this one: the options, our recommendation, what it costs, what could go wrong, and what has to be true for it to work. This sample is for a fictional contractor. The format is the one you would receive.

Illustrative sample. The company, people and figures are fictional. The format is what a Fractional CTO client receives.

Decision memo

To: Owner and General Manager, Cedar Basin Electric (fictional)
From: Ashlee, Fractional CTO, Sandcastle
Date: 25 September 2026
Decision needed by: 15 October 2026 (the current support contract renews 1 November)
Subject: Job-costing system: keep, upgrade or replace

Background

The job-costing system that runs the company’s 40 active projects is on a 2016 on-premise version that the vendor stops supporting next year, and the support renewal is due 1 November. The choice is whether to renew as is, move to the vendor’s current cloud edition, or replace the system.

Job costs, purchase orders and crew hours all pass through this system, but hours are keyed in from the field time-entry app by two coordinators (about 9 hours a week) and accounting re-enters vendor invoices from it (about 4 hours a week). The system has no export beyond a monthly report and no way for the accounting system or the field app to connect to it. The AI opportunities identified in the assessment (timesheet anomaly flags, automated invoice matching) are all blocked by this one gap.

Options considered

	Option	One-time cost	Ongoing	Notes
A	Renew support on the current version for one more year and change nothing	$0	$9,600 a year	Keeps the 13 hours a week of re-keying. Support ends in 2027 regardless, so this defers the decision, it does not avoid it. Delivered by the vendor.
B	Move to the vendor’s cloud edition, which has an API and an accounting connector	$18,000 to $26,000 (vendor migration $12,000 to $15,000; connection to accounting and the field app $6,000 to $11,000)	$14,400 a year	Data migrates with history. Removes most of the re-keying. Unblocks the two AI features. Migration delivered by the vendor; the connections by Sandcastle or the vendor’s partner.
C	Replace with a contractor-specific platform that includes job costing, time entry and purchasing	$45,000 to $70,000 (licenses, migration, retraining)	$22,000 to $30,000 a year	Removes the field app and its subscription too. Twelve to eighteen months of disruption across the whole company for a gain the cloud edition mostly delivers. Delivered by the new vendor.
D	Custom-build a replacement	$120,000 or more	Maintenance	Sandcastle could build this. We recommend against it: job costing is a solved problem and the company’s needs are not unusual enough to justify owning the software.

Recommendation

Option B. Move to the current cloud edition before the November renewal, and connect it to the accounting system and the field app in the same quarter. It is the only option that removes the re-keying, keeps the history, and unblocks the roadmap for under $30,000.

This memo does not decide whether to replace the field time-entry app. That question is worth revisiting in twelve months, once hours flow automatically; the case for replacing it gets weaker, not stronger.

What has to be true for this to work

The vendor confirms in writing that project history and open purchase orders migrate intact (ask for a reference client who migrated in the last year).
The field app’s vendor confirms the API access needed for hours to flow across (they have said yes by email; get it in the contract).
Two coordinators are available for a week of parallel running in the migration month.

Risks and how we would handle them

The migration slips past the renewal date: negotiate a three-month support extension on the old version as part of the cloud deal, before signing.
The accounting connection needs custom work the connector does not cover: cap the connection budget at $11,000 and stage it, hours first, invoices second.
Staff resist the new screens: the coordinators who do the re-keying today are the ones who gain the most; involve them in the parallel-running week.

Next steps

Owner decides by 15 October.
Sandcastle requests the migration quote and the reference client from the vendor this week, and reviews the statement of work before signature.
Vendor migration November; connections December; parallel running the first two weeks of December; old version retired by 31 December.

Every memo lists at least one option that does not involve Sandcastle. Options A, B and C are delivered by outside vendors; Sandcastle’s role in Option B is limited to the connections and to reviewing what the vendor sends.

Three Ways to Work With Us

Limited to five clients at a time. Prices are published because they filter out the wrong conversations and because you would ask anyway.

	Advisor	RecommendedLead	Embedded
Monthly retainer	$1,800	$3,400	$6,400
Your CTO’s hours per month	8	16	32
Leadership meeting seat	Quarterly	Monthly	Monthly, plus a weekly working session
Scheduled calls	One 60-minute call a month	Two a month	Weekly
Response time	2 business days	Next business day	Same business day for requests before noon Pacific
Technology Baseline (first 30 days)	Included	Included	Included
12-month roadmap	Reviewed twice a year	Reviewed quarterly	Reviewed quarterly, tracked monthly
Technology budget plan	Annual	Annual, updated quarterly	Annual, tracked monthly
Decision memos	Up to 1 a quarter	Up to 1 a month	As needed within hours
Vendor oversight	Proposal and SOW review	Plus deliverable acceptance and a monthly vendor scorecard	Plus attendance at vendor status meetings
AI adoption and data-access policy	Available as a fixed-fee add-on	Written in the first 90 days, reviewed annually	Written in the first 60 days, reviewed twice a year
Team support	Development rates	Development rates, 10% off	Development rates, 10% off
Extra hours	$250 an hour, pre-approved in 4-hour blocks	Same	Same
Minimum term	3 months, then month to month	3 months, then month to month	3 months, then month to month
	Book a fit call	Book a fit call	Book a fit call

Hours are a monthly allocation and do not roll over. Hours used are reported on the monthly notes, so there are no surprises. Billed monthly in advance. For how these figures compare with the market, see what a fractional CTO costs.

I've been working with Sandcastle for a couple of years, and I have consistently appreciated their expertise and support with our application needs. Customer service is top tier, with fast responding and always willing to provide clear explanations whenever needed. Thank you Ashlee, for the countless assistance that you have provided for us.
- Cristian T, — Prime Electric

How It Starts

Most clients start with the AI Readiness Assessment. Two or three weeks, a fixed fee from $3,500, and a written report with a systems inventory, a data map and a roadmap: the same things the retainer would spend its first month building. It also gives both sides a low-risk look at each other. Sign a retainer within 90 days of the readout and half the assessment fee is credited across your first three months.

Or start directly. The first month is the Technology Baseline; at Advisor it takes most of the first two months’ hours, and we say so up front. Three-month initial term, then month to month with 30 days’ notice from either side. Move up a tier at any time; move down after the initial term.

What We Are Not

Not an IT company or MSP. Laptops, email accounts, printers, licenses and network hardware stay with your IT provider. We coordinate with them and often make their job easier.
Not an on-call service. Response times are business hours, Pacific time. Outage handling for hosted websites and applications comes from our managed hosting and cloud operations or a WordPress care plan, not from the retainer.
Not a development shop pretending to be a CTO. Retainer hours are for decisions, not coding. If a fix takes 20 minutes it gets done; anything larger is quoted as a project, and you are free to take it elsewhere.
Not a corporate officer. We advise; your officers sign contracts and carry regulatory obligations.
Not a security audit. Security audits, vulnerability scanning and penetration testing are always a separate engagement with their own scope. We offer them, we keep them separate from the retainer, and we will tell you when one is worth doing.

On conflict of interest, stated openly. Sandcastle also builds software. Every decision memo lists at least one option that does not involve us, you are free to take any project to another vendor, and retainer hours are never spent selling you anything. That is written into the agreement.

Proof

More than two decades of connecting business systems:

cXML and OCI punchout delivered, connected to SAP Ariba, Coupa, Jaggaer and Oracle Supplier Network. Southland Medical case study.
Data exchange with Salesforce, NetSuite, Epicor Prophet 21 and Microsoft Great Plains.
Microsoft 365 single sign-on crew-ordering portals for EMCOR.
A custom project-management application with electrician time entry for Prime Electric.
AI in production: MediaTrAiner for Fight or Flight, shortlisted for Best AI Platform at the PRWeek US Awards 2026 (case study); AI report writing built into a commercial property inspection platform (case study); the University of Washington PBIS Voice survey tool on the OpenAI API.
Clients who stay: Aviation Supplies & Academics since 2012, Marathon Tires and Prime Electric since 2013, EMCOR since 2016, Bond Arms since 2018, Southland Medical since 2019, National Tool Warehouse since 2021.
nopCommerce Silver Partner, Shopify Partner, BigCommerce Partner. More in our work.

About Your Fractional CTO

Ashlee was one of the founding members of Sandcastle in Seattle in 2001 and has led its technology decisions ever since: which platform to build a store on, when to migrate off one, how to connect an ecommerce system to an ERP without an “ERP project”, how to get a supplier into a customer’s procurement system, and lately which AI features are worth shipping and which are not.

FAQ

What does a fractional CTO do that my IT company does not?

Your IT company keeps laptops, email and the network running. A fractional CTO leads the systems your business runs on: the store, the job system, the ERP connections, the custom applications, and the vendors who build them. We decide what comes next, write it down, and read what your vendors send before you sign. Most clients keep their IT company, and we work alongside them.

How many hours do I get?

Eight, sixteen or thirty-two hours a month depending on the tier. Hours are reported on the monthly notes and do not roll over. Time in your leadership meeting counts.

What if we need more?

Occasional extra hours are $250 an hour, pre-approved in four-hour blocks. If you run over two months in a row, you move up a tier from the next billing date with no penalty and no new minimum term. If your needs go beyond Embedded, that is a project or a full-time hire, and part of the job is to say so.

Do you build what you recommend?

We can, for custom applications and integrations and AI features, and retainer clients get scheduling priority and 10% off development rates. But every decision memo includes at least one option that does not involve Sandcastle, you can take any project elsewhere, and retainer hours are never spent selling. It is in the agreement.

Is a security audit included?

No. Security audits, vulnerability scanning and penetration testing are always a separate engagement with their own scope. What the retainer includes is a written AI adoption and data-access policy and an approved-tools list your staff can follow. Keeping the audit separate means it gets a proper scope and a proper report instead of being squeezed into retainer hours.

What is the minimum commitment?

Three months, then month to month with 30 days’ notice from either side. Three months is long enough for the Technology Baseline and the first roadmap review, which is when you can judge whether it is working.

Do you work with companies outside Seattle?

Yes. Most of the work is remote, and several of our long-standing clients are outside Washington. Leadership meetings are attended in person inside King County and by video elsewhere.

Book a 30-Minute Fit Call

Thirty minutes to decide together whether it is an assessment, a retainer, or neither. Tell us what systems run your business and who decides technology questions today. You can also reach us through the contact page.