Fractional CTO
You don't need a full-time CTO yet. You need someone who's built platforms serving millions of users, led engineering teams through real growth, and can sit at the table and own the technical decisions.
The Gap You're Hitting
Most growing organizations hit the same wall on the engineering side: the founder or a generalist ops person is making architecture decisions they were never trained to make, the codebase is starting to groan under its own weight, and nobody senior is in the room translating technical reality into business terms.
A fractional CTO closes that gap. Not a contractor who writes code and disappears—someone who's actually led platform teams through the hard part: migrating monoliths to modern architecture, scaling engineering headcount without breaking culture, and keeping systems reliable while the business changes underneath them.
Less expensive than a full-time executive hire. More technically fluent than a generalist consultant. Someone who's done the migration, not just read about it.
New to Fractional CTO?
Fractional CTO is one lens on a single engagement model. Strategic Advisory is the whole picture—assessments, advisory, fractional, and embedded leadership, with the terms and the anchor spelled out.
See Strategic Advisory →What I Help With
One discipline. Many angles. Pick the work that matches where you are.
Monolith-to-microservices roadmaps, GraphQL federation, event-driven architecture. Real migration plans for real systems—with a track record of doing it without breaking production.
Building and scaling engineering teams sustainably. Hiring plans, org structure, Agile workflows, and the sustainable pace that keeps good engineers from burning out or leaving.
AWS serverless architecture (Lambda, SQS, SNS), infrastructure cost and reliability trade-offs, and the observability foundation that tells you what's actually happening in production.
An independent, senior technical read before you commit—on an acquisition, a platform migration, a CRM or ETL vendor switch, or an existing engineering team's output.
Turning flaky, slow systems into ones your team and customers can trust. Uptime, response time, and the monitoring that catches problems before customers do.
Translating engineering reality into terms a board or leadership team can act on. Honest reporting on what's working, what's risky, and what it will take to fix it.
If you see yourself here, we're probably a fit.
Startups and scale-ups making architecture decisions without a technical co-founder
Nonprofits and ministries running mission-critical platforms without in-house engineering leadership
Founders who need a senior technical voice at the table before committing to a full-time CTO hire
Organizations facing a platform migration, scaling problem, or an engineering team that's lost direction
Boards and leadership teams who want an independent technical read on an existing team, codebase, or vendor
How We Work Together
Pick the door that fits where you are right now.
Start Here · Free
30-minute call to scope your needs, share an honest read, and decide together if we're a fit. No pitch.
Book a CallCoaching · Monthly
You do the work. We bring the strategy, the playbook, and the accountability. Monthly engagement.
Book a CallDone For You
Long-term partnership. We own the work, the results, and the roadmap. Custom-scoped to your goals.
Get a ProposalThe engagements
Most relationships start with an assessment. Step up only when the work asks for it.
I audit the stack, interview the team, and deliver a roadmap and a recommendation memo you can put in front of a board. The front door—most engagements start here, because it's the lowest-risk way to find out what you actually need.
One 90-minute strategy session monthly, async access with a 48-hour response, decision memos as needed. Direction, not a person on your org chart.
Book a CallBiweekly sessions, vendor and platform evaluation, roadmap ownership, hiring input, and present in your team meetings about twice a month.
Book a CallWeekly. Named on the org chart. I actually run the function until you're ready to own it.
Book a CallReal Work, Real Results
BibleProject
Grew the platform engineering team from 4 to 12 while cutting response times from 2 seconds to sub-100ms and deployment build times from 40 minutes to 9.
NewSpring Church
Managed 10+ websites, apps, and systems serving 2.3M users annually, and led development of a giving platform that processed $26M+ in 9 months.
My Well Ministry
Saved nonprofit partners over $25M in processing fees through platform strategy, native apps, and a team built from the ground up.
Red Hat
Managed a global product team across US and APAC time zones through the transition.
Your Expert
I'm Jon—founder of NewCulture, based in Clayton, NC. For 20+ years I've helped organizations build the digital presence they need: from a guitar shop in Goldsboro to ministries reaching 100+ countries.
I've worked with Red Hat, NewSpring Church, BibleProject, and Holy Language Institute—and with local Raleigh-area nonprofits like The Ancient Way and Kid Lab. The framework I bring to your business is the same one I've built NewCulture on.
More on Fractional CTO
Deeper reads on what we cover in this service.
A friend forwarded me a proposal last week before she signed it—twelve pages, a lot of talk about transformation, not one sentence about what she'd actually have in her hands ninety days later. Here are the eight questions to ask an AI consultant before you hire one, and what a good answer to each one actually sounds like.
Church website redesign feels like the obvious fix when the site looks dated—but most churches don't need a rebuild. They need targeted optimization: navigation, speed, mobile, service times, and the local SEO signals that actually get a visitor through the door. Here's how to tell which one your church actually needs.
Search "seo audit services" and you'll get pitches, not answers. Here's what's included in an SEO audit that's actually worth paying for—five real deliverables, one honest warning, and a contrarian truth: 40-50 pages is average, and volume isn't value.
Owns technical strategy and architecture decisions, leads or mentors your engineering team, evaluates vendors and infrastructure, and reports up to founders, leadership, or the board—on a fraction of a full-time executive's time and cost.
A developer or agency executes tickets. A fractional CTO owns outcomes—architecture, hiring, prioritization, and the hard trade-off calls that determine whether the platform holds up in two years, not just two sprints.
Both, depending on the engagement. Some clients want a strategic technical partner who reviews architecture and leads the team. Others want someone hands-on in the codebase during a specific migration or build. We'll scope it to what actually moves you forward.
Monthly retainers, scoped to your needs—usually a set number of hours or days per month. Most engagements run 6+ months because platform and team changes take real time to land. Project-scoped engagements (an architecture review, a migration plan, a due-diligence report) are also common.
No. Almost every engagement augments an existing team—bringing senior architecture experience, mentorship, and accountability to engineers who are already doing good work but missing a technical leader in the room.
Yes—some of the most meaningful platform work I've done has been for mission-driven organizations running on stretched engineering budgets. The technical bar doesn't lower just because the mission is different.
Common starting point. A focused technical due-diligence or architecture review—codebase health, infrastructure risk, team structure—is a great way to get an honest, senior read before deciding whether ongoing engagement makes sense.
Tell me where your platform and team are today, and where you need them to be. We'll figure out together what the right engagement looks like.
