Fractional CTO · Boston

Fractional CTO
in Boston

Senior technical leadership without the $300K base.

We embed as fractional CTO for founders in Boston who need senior technical leadership but aren't ready for a full-time hire. Architecture decisions, hiring rubrics, code review for your existing team, and hands-on execution when something needs to ship today.

Engagement shape

From

$4,000

Flat price, quoted after 30-min call

Timeline

Monthly engagement

First production deploy

1

Senior engineer, named

Day 1

Code in your GitHub

$0

Retainer, equity, lock-in

How this works

One AI-native engineer.
The output of a team.

One senior engineer plus AI agents now ships fractional cto that used to need a four-person team. Same code quality, half the cost, three-week timelines instead of three months. Built for pre-seed to Series A founders in Boston who need to ship before the next round closes.

The local read

Why fractional cto is hard in Boston

Boston founders have access to the best deep-tech talent in the country and almost none of it is hireable at seed stage. Biotechs pay above market for ML engineers. Cambridge robotics shops pay close to that for ROS 2 specialists. The local agency option is mostly enterprise consulting with multi-quarter contracts.

We're not enterprise consulting. One senior engineer owns the build, Eastern Time, overlap with your MIT advisors and Boston-based investors. FHIR or HL7 for healthtech. PyTorch and Hugging Face for ML features. Next.js for the SaaS layer. Flat-price quote in 24 hours. Code in your GitHub from commit one.

Hiring one senior leader here is a ~$290K year-one outlay and a 60–90 day search. Our fractional cto engagement starts at $4,000 with a first deploy in Monthly engagement.

Did you know · Boston

Boston has more universities per square mile than any other US city — 50+ in the metro area.

Time zone

--:--:--

ET

Eastern Time. Overlap with you, your investors at General Catalyst and NEA Boston, and the academic calendar that affects half your hires.

Sectors in Boston

Biotech toolsRoboticsB2B SaaSHealthtechClimate tech

Stack we use

ArchitectureHiringCode ReviewRoadmapInfrastructureAI Strategy

What you actually get

Concrete deliverables.
Live in Monthly engagement.

No discovery phase that bills for itself. No Figma-only delivery. Every item below is something you can open, click, and ship to a user.

01

Weekly 1:1 with founder, monthly board-style technical update

02

Architecture decisions documented as RFCs, not as Slack threads that disappear

03

Hiring scorecards, take-home rubrics, final-round technical interviews run by us

04

Code review on your team's PRs — fewer regressions, faster reviewer cycle

05

Optional hands-on weeks when a critical build is behind

Why us

Why founders in Boston pick us for this

01

We've been the technical owner on 50+ products — the failure modes are pattern-recognized, not theorized

02

Hands-on when you need it: not just a strategy deck, the senior engineer still ships code

03

No equity ask, no notice-period games — month-to-month

04

Cheaper than the recruiter fee on a single bad CTO hire

FAQ

Common questions about fractional cto in Boston

How much of your time do we get?

+
Plans typically range 10–30 hours/month depending on scope. We're not your only commitment, but we set a fixed window every week that's yours — same day, same hours.

Is the price really flat?

+
Yes. After a 30-minute call we send a single number and a scope you can accept or reject. No hourly billing, no change-order games. If we underestimate, we eat it.

Can you hire engineers for us?

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Yes — full hiring loop: writing the JD, sourcing channels (we have a network), screening, technical take-home design, final-round interview. Most CTOs we've helped hire run their first sprint inside a month of starting.

Will you keep coding if we hire a full CTO later?

+
Happy to. Many founders bring on a full-time CTO and keep us as senior IC for 2–3 months while they ramp. No ego — we'll happily report to whoever you hire.

Who owns the code?

+
You do, from commit one. The repository is created in your GitHub org. Infrastructure is provisioned in your cloud account. We don't host your stack on ours and we don't lock you in.
More questions → /faq/partnership · /faq/team · /faq/scaling

Got a question about fractional cto in Boston?

Ask me anything.
Right now.

Real chat. Real answers from our FAQ. If I don't have a clean match, I'll email you back within a day.

Valery Satsura

Valery Satsura

CEO · Start Matter · usually replies in minutes

Hey, I'm Valery. Ask me anything about working with us from Boston.

Fractional CTO elsewhere

We ship fractional cto for founders in

Ready when you are

Ship fractional cto in Boston
in Monthly engagement.

30-minute call → flat-price quote in 24 hours → first deploy inside two weeks.