Sourcing, screening, technical interviews, offer guidance — until the team is up and shipping. Fractional CTO retainer from $5,499/mo.
- Audit
- Architect
- Scale
monthly retainer
Who this is for
You are a non-technical founder about to make your first 2–5 engineering hires. You cannot evaluate candidates technically, agencies push people who look great on paper but ship badly, and one wrong call here kills your velocity for the next 12 months. That is exactly the problem I solve as a fractional CTO focused on hiring.
The pain today
- Cannot distinguish a strong engineer from a mediocre one in interviews
- Agency recruiters optimizing for placement fees, not your actual fit
- Previous bad hire cost months of velocity and team morale
- No technical leadership in-house to onboard new hires once they join
- Job descriptions attracting wrong-fit candidates from day one
The outcome you get
- Job descriptions tuned to your actual technical needs, not generic templates
- A three-step interview loop that tests real skill without LeetCode theater
- Sourcing across your network, LinkedIn, and specialized platforms
- Offer structure with compensation benchmarks and equity guidance
- 30–90 day onboarding plan so new hires ramp without chaos
Who to hire first — and who to wait on
The most common early mistake is hiring a specialist before there is specialized work to justify it. A DevOps engineer before there is prod load. A mobile developer before the web product is proven. A senior architect before there is a codebase worth architecting. At pre-seed to seed, the right first hire is almost always a product-minded full-stack engineer — someone who can ship end-to-end, reduce your coordination burden, and adapt as the product changes shape.
Once the product starts developing real complexity, you bring in a specialist matched to where that complexity lives. At GigEasy, the Barclays and Bain Capital-backed platform I joined as the first engineer hired, the MVP shipped in 3 weeks. The next hires followed the same logic: generalist first, then a data-focused specialist as scale demanded it. The pattern holds across startups at this stage.
I steer founders away from hiring for a title and toward hiring for the actual work in the next 12 months. Get that wrong and even a technically strong person becomes expensive dead weight.
Job descriptions tuned to your actual technical needs, not generic templates
My technical interview playbook for early-stage hires
Three rounds. No whiteboard algebra. No four-hour take-homes.
Round one is a 45-minute pairing session using a realistic problem from your actual codebase. I watch how the candidate thinks, where they get stuck, and how they communicate under uncertainty. This tests fundamentals far more reliably than abstract puzzles.
Round two is a 45-minute architecture discussion built around a real design challenge you have faced. I am listening for how they reason about trade-offs, not whether they land on the "right" answer. That distinction matters at early stage — the team is small, the product will pivot, and judgment ages better than any specific technical choice.
Round three is 30 minutes on context and fit: why this role, how they learn, how they have handled conflict in a small team. You own this round. After running two or three loops together, you will be able to run all three independently.
The point of this structure is repeatability. Once you have a playbook, every hire gets evaluated against the same bar. That consistency compounds — it is why second and third hires tend to be stronger than the first.
3 weeks: From kickoff to investor demo.
Compensation, equity, and offer structure
Getting the offer wrong in either direction is costly. Underpay and the best candidate walks. Overpay at pre-seed and you compress your runway before you know what the next 6 months demand.
Senior engineer base at pre-seed in major US markets typically lands between $140k and $180k. Smaller cities and global contexts pull that down. Equity for a senior early hire: 0.3%–1.5%, depending on stage, criticality, and how much risk the candidate is absorbing. Seed-stage compensation lifts roughly 10–15% from pre-seed. Series A another 15–20%.
I benchmark against comparable-stage companies in your specific market, not industry-wide averages that blend Series D money into the numbers. Vesting is standard four-year with a one-year cliff. Signing bonuses come up when there is real competing-offer pressure. I also plan equity refresh conversations at the two-year mark for hires who are performing well — it is cheaper than re-recruiting.
Recruiting platform costs (LinkedIn Recruiter, Triplebyte, others) are billed directly to you. Typical monthly spend is $500–2,000 depending on role and approach.
Sourcing without agency recruiters
Recruiting agencies charge 20–30% of first-year comp. On a $160k engineer that is $32k–48k per hire. For first 2–5 engineers, direct sourcing almost always wins on cost and candidate quality.
My preferred channels in order: your own network and your investors' networks (20–40% of early hires at most startups come from warm intros), specialized platforms for technical roles, LinkedIn Recruiter with targeted outreach, and engineering community presence in specific Slack groups and newsletters relevant to your stack.
I set up the sourcing playbook, write the outreach, and handle the first-pass qualification. Broader volume work (screening applications, scheduling) goes to a junior team member or to you, depending on your capacity. I do not pretend that one fractional CTO doing targeted sourcing across five active roles at once is sustainable — it is not, and I will tell you that in week one so planning is honest.
Agency recruiters add genuine value for hard-to-fill specialist roles or when you need to scale fast past the first few hires. For this phase, direct sourcing is the right call.
What happens when a hire doesn't work out
Most bad hires surface by day 30. Not because they lied in the interview — because the interview did not test the right things, or because the onboarding left them without enough context to succeed.
I set up 30-, 60-, and 90-day performance checkpoints with documented expectations from day one. When something is off at day 30, we have a specific conversation: here is what I am seeing, here is what I need to see. That directness is kinder than six months of vague discomfort.
If the hire is genuinely wrong, I help with the conversation and the role re-opens with sharper criteria. I have found that founders who dread these conversations avoid them until the problem is much worse. I back them through it.
One structural protection: for senior hires where the risk is high, I sometimes recommend a contract-to-hire arrangement — 30 to 60 days on contract before converting to full-time. It removes almost all the friction from a no-work-out situation and gives the candidate a clear path forward if they perform.
How this fits the fractional CTO retainer
Hiring-focused fractional CTO work fits squarely under the Advisory tier at $5,499/mo. That covers up to two active hiring loops at a time — two open roles being sourced, screened, and interviewed simultaneously.
If you are running aggressive hiring across three or more roles at once, or want deeper operational involvement beyond hiring, the Fractional CTO tier at $9,499/mo covers that. Most first-hire engagements run three to five months to get the initial team hired and ramping well.
I take on 1–2 fractional CTO customers at a time, by design. There is a 14-day money-back guarantee; cancel anytime after that. The engagement starts with a job description discovery week — I ask about the actual work, the team dynamics you want to build, and the technical bets your product is making. That context shapes every hire that follows.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Built and shipped an investor-ready MVP from scratch
Built the entire technological base and delivered MVP in just 3 weeks, enabling a successful rapid launch and investor demo.
Read the case studyFrequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
Yes — that is one of the clearest value-adds at early stage. I run rounds one and two of the interview loop (pairing session and architecture discussion), which are the hardest for non-technical founders to evaluate. You own round three, the context and culture conversation. After two or three loops together, most founders can run all three independently.
Strong candidate pipeline to offer: 4–8 weeks per role in normal conditions. Tighter markets, specialized roles, or below-market compensation push that to 8–12 weeks. I share realistic timelines in week one based on the specific role and your comp range. Founders who get honest timelines early plan better than those who receive optimistic forecasts.
I handle targeted outreach from your network and mine for senior roles. For broader volume sourcing — screening inbound applications, LinkedIn campaigns — I set up the playbook and either you or a junior team member executes. Five simultaneous searches is too much direct sourcing for a single fractional engagement, so I scope this honestly in week one.
Aggressive hiring on that timeline is doable but requires the right structure: multiple sourcing channels running simultaneously, a streamlined interview loop, and fast decision-making on offers. The Fractional CTO tier at $9,499/mo covers three or more active hiring loops plus deeper operational involvement. I will tell you upfront if the timeline is realistic given your comp range and market.
Structured 30-, 60-, and 90-day checkpoints with documented expectations set on day one. Most issues surface by day 30 — not because the hire is bad, but because the onboarding left gaps. The checkpoints make that visible early, when it is still correctable. For senior hires with high risk, I sometimes recommend a contract-to-hire arrangement before full-time conversion.
Job description work is usually the first week. I ask about the actual technical work, the decisions this hire will own, and the kind of team dynamic you are building. A specific JD filters wrong-fit candidates before they reach your calendar. Generic JDs — the kind that list 12 technologies and vague responsibilities — waste everyone's time and signal that the company doesn't know what it needs.
A full-time CTO makes sense once you have 8–15 engineers and the technical coordination load justifies a dedicated executive. For first 2–5 hires, you need technical credibility in the hiring process, a structured interview loop, and offer guidance — not a $300k/year salary. The fractional model gives you that expertise at $5,499/mo for the duration of the hiring push, then you can scale back or switch focus.