Fractional CTO, Belgium
A CTO's judgement, without a CTO on the payroll.
A fractional CTO in Belgium is an experienced CTO who leads your engineering for part of the week, usually 2 to 3 days a week or 2 to 4 days a month, on a monthly day-rate contract instead of a salary, and steps back once your own people can carry it. Most Belgian companies that need senior technology leadership don't need it five days a week. They need the right calls made, in Dutch or English, by someone who has sat in the seat.
I work from Flanders, across Belgium and the Netherlands. This page covers who the fractional form fits and who it doesn't, the situations that usually lead to it, how the first months run, what it costs, and how it compares with hiring a full-time CTO or leaning on your supplier. A fractional CTO is sometimes called a part-time or deeltijdse CTO. Same job, different label.
Who this is for
- Owner-led SMEs of roughly 40 to 400 staff, with 5 to 40 people in and around software they built or bought and now depend on.
- Scale-ups with 15 to 60 engineers whose leads are good engineers but have never run an organisation of this size.
- Founders without a technical co-founder who need someone senior to check the roadmap, the supplier and the hires.
- Companies with a Belgian entity, where team changes run through Belgian employment law and, above a certain size, a works council.
Who it is not for
- You need someone to build the product. A fractional CTO does not write your production code, and I don't.
- Your CTO seat is empty and the team is drifting. That needs the seat held, which is the interim form, not a few days a month.
- You can only pay in equity, or as a share of the savings. Day rate only.
- You have more than about 120 engineers. A part-time leader is not enough at that size.
- You want a name on the pitch deck. The practice is anonymous on purpose, and a CTO who only appears in slides helps nobody.
The situations that lead to the call
- The team outgrew its lead. The lead developer who built the first version now manages 12 people, and both the code and the people are suffering for it.
- A supplier nobody can check. An agency or IT partner invoices every month against a contract nobody in the building can technically assess. Deadlines move, and nobody can say whether that is reasonable.
- The cloud bill grows faster than revenue. Finance negotiated a discount twice and the curve did not move, because the problem is ownership, not pricing.
- A hire you are not sure about. You are about to recruit a head of engineering or a first CTO and have nobody to run the technical interview or write the profile.
- The board or the bank asks a technical question. An investor, an acquirer or a lender wants a view on the platform, and the honest answer is that nobody senior has looked in a while.
Most of these are not emergencies. That is exactly why they drag on for a year. One lead developer, two agencies, no CTO describes the most common version I meet at SMEs.
How an engagement runs
Fractional work has a start, a rhythm, and an end. If someone offers you a fractional CTO without the last one, keep looking.
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| Weeks 1 to 3 | The fixed-price diagnosis. Delivery data, the cloud and supplier bills, the org chart against the roadmap, and interviews with the people everyone mentions. You get a written report and a plan. If a few days a month is genuinely all you need, the report says so, and that is what you buy. |
| Month 1 | The rhythm set: a fixed day or two each week, or a fixed block each month, with the same meetings every time. One page of priorities with an owner per line. The decisions that were waiting for someone senior get taken. |
| Months 2 to 3 | The supplier contract reread, the hiring profile written, the cloud bill split into waste, debt and real cost. The internal lead coached into the bigger job, with the mandate made explicit rather than assumed. |
| Each quarter | A review with you: what moved, what did not, and whether the days should go up, go down, or stop. The default direction is down. |
| Handover | The engagement ends when your own lead, or a permanent hire, holds the decisions without me. I hand over over the last 6 weeks, then leave. No standing retainer. |
Advisory engagements, 2 to 4 days a month, have a 3-month minimum. Embedded fractional work at 2 to 3 days a week usually runs 3 to 9 months. Both start with the same diagnosis.
What it costs
Day rates in the normal Western European band of EUR 1 000 to EUR 1 600, invoiced monthly. The diagnosis is EUR 9 500, fixed, agreed before the work starts. No equity, no success fee, no cut of a cloud saving, and no discount for a longer commitment. For a smaller company the shape is fewer days, not a lower rate, so the total stays in proportion to the business.
Against a full-time CTO, the question is not the day rate but the number of days you actually need. Below roughly 40 people in and around software there is rarely 5 days of CTO work in a week. What a fractional CTO costs lays out the bands and the comparison with a permanent hire.
What it looked like in practice
Four engagements, anonymised. Sectors, sizes and timings are shifted enough that no company is recognisable. The shape and the orders of magnitude are real.
- The portal shipped in 11 weeks. Owner-led SME, 60 people, eighteen months of supplier delay. EUR 180 000 a year off the agency bill, the lead developer promoted into the job. 18 days of my time in total.
- Cloud bill down 42 percent. Scale-up on AWS. From EUR 74 000 to EUR 43 000 a month in 5 months, no layoffs, no re-platforming, at one day a week.
- 45 engineers to 22. Series B SaaS. Weekly releases again after 4 months, payroll from EUR 4 000 000 to EUR 2 000 000.
- A founding CTO replaced, nobody lost. Series A, 28 engineers, an 8-month bridge. Zero regretted attrition.
The first two are fractional work: a few days, a narrow problem, a big number. The last two needed the seat held, which is interim.
Fractional CTO, full-time CTO, or your supplier
| Fractional CTO | Full-time CTO | Agency or IT supplier | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time | 2 to 3 days a week, or 2 to 4 days a month | Full time | Whatever the contract buys |
| Commitment | Monthly, reviewed each quarter | A permanent contract and Belgian notice periods | The contract term |
| Whose side | Yours, with no stake in the bills | Yours | The supplier's, however well meant |
| Best when | The problem is real but not 5 days a week | Engineering is big enough to need a leader every day | The work is well specified and someone senior checks it |
| Ends with | Your own lead holding the decisions | It doesn't, by design | Renewal |
The interim form is the fourth option, for when the seat itself is empty. Fractional versus interim draws that line.
Why local matters here
Team decisions in Belgium run through Belgian employment law, works councils, and notice periods that surprise foreign advisors. I work in native Dutch and English and have run restructurings under the Renault procedure. In a Flemish SME the technical team often works in Dutch and the supplier in English; I sit in both rooms without a translator. If your entity is Dutch, fractional CTO in the Netherlands covers the Dutch law and costs.
Put a number on it first: the engineering cost calculator
Frequently asked
What does a fractional CTO do?
A fractional CTO takes on the responsibilities of a CTO for part of the week, over a defined period. In practice: the roadmap challenged, the supplier and hiring decisions made with you, the cloud bill read by someone with no stake in it, and an internal lead coached into the bigger job.
What does the fractional CTO form cover in Belgium?
2 to 3 days a week embedded, or 2 to 4 days a month as advisory with a 3-month minimum. Both start with a 3-week diagnosis and both end when your own people can carry the decisions. The work runs in Dutch or English and under Belgian employment law.
How much does a fractional CTO cost in Belgium?
Day rates in the normal Western European band of EUR 1 000 to EUR 1 600, invoiced monthly. The diagnosis is EUR 9 500, fixed. No equity and no success fee; a smaller company buys fewer days, not a lower rate.
Is a fractional CTO the same as a part-time CTO?
Yes. A part-time or deeltijdse CTO is the same job under an older name. The difference that matters is with an interim CTO, who holds an empty seat full time for a bounded period.
Do you work with SMEs, or only with startups?
Both, and owner-led SMEs are a large share of the work. The problems are the same as at a scale-up: a team that grew without a shape, a supplier nobody can check, a bill going up with nothing to show for it. There is no board or funding round, so the work has to pay for itself, and I'll say on the call whether it will.
Why does local matter for a fractional CTO in Belgium?
Team decisions in Belgium run through Belgian employment law, works councils, and notice periods that surprise foreign advisors, including restructurings run under the Renault procedure. The work also runs in Dutch where the team does, which matters more at an SME than at a scale-up.
Related
- The four problems I take on, and the advisory option, on the homepage.
- For owner-led SMEs and for scale-ups, if you want the version written for your kind of company.
- The diagnosis: what the 3 weeks cover and what you get at the end.
- The SME that became a software company by accident.