CTO as a Service · CTO for Hire
CTO as a service for startups: a named CTO for hire, not an agency
CTO as a service means buying senior technical leadership on a monthly retainer instead of hiring a full-time chief technology officer. The version worth paying for is one named person who owns your architecture, your engineering hires, your security posture, and whether the roadmap ships, for a fixed number of days a week.
I'm Kunal Vohra. I've been the technical co-founder six times across three continents, I hold an M.Tech in Cybersecurity with 30+ academic citations, and I run ColadAI, a production multi-LLM platform. When you rent a CTO here, you get me, every week, not a rotation of whoever the agency has free. Rates are published below.
Remote, across US, UK, Gulf, Singapore, and Indian working hours. Sized for funded teams; if you are pre-product, start with the MVP page instead.
The service, itemised
What CTO as a service actually includes
Six things a startup needs from a CTO, whether or not it can afford one full-time. Every retainer covers all six; the tiers differ in how many days a week I am inside the company doing them.
Architecture and technical strategy
The decisions that are expensive to reverse: stack, data model, cloud layout, build versus buy, and where AI actually belongs in the product versus where it is a demo. I make them, write them down, and own them when they turn out to be wrong.
Engineering hiring and team building
Job specs that describe the real role, technical interviews I run myself, offers calibrated to the market you are hiring in, and an onboarding that gets a new engineer shipping in week one. I have hired for six startups; the signals that predict a good engineer are not the ones on the CV.
Security and compliance posture
An M.Tech in Cybersecurity means this is not the part I outsource. Access control, secrets, audit trails, and the groundwork for SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, or DPDP, depending on who your customers are. Done early, it costs days. Done during an enterprise deal, it costs the deal.
Agency and vendor oversight
If an agency builds your product, someone on your side has to be able to read what they ship. I review their architecture, their code, and their estimates, and I tell you which of the three to push back on. Most founders overpay agencies because nobody senior is checking the work.
The technical story for investors and enterprise buyers
Diligence questionnaires, architecture walkthroughs, the security section of an RFP, and the board update that explains why the roadmap moved. I have sat on both sides of these conversations and I write the answers so they survive a follow-up question.
Roadmap ownership and delivery
Sprint planning that reflects what the team can actually build, release discipline, incident response when something breaks at 2 a.m., and the standing accountability that the product ships. This is the part a consultant will not give you and an agency cannot.
Read this before you compare quotes
CTO for hire vs a CTO agency vs a consultant
Three very different things get sold under the same search term. The price is not the difference that matters; the incentive is.
| A named CTO (this page) | CTO agency | Consultant | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who you actually get | One named senior engineer and founder, every week, for as long as you need | An account manager, and whichever senior person is free this quarter | A report, then a goodbye |
| Incentive | Your product working, because my name is on the architecture | Billable hours and a bigger scope next quarter | Recommendations that are hard to argue with and harder to implement |
| Hands on the code | Yes, when it is the fastest way to unblock the team | Yes, by people you will never meet | No |
| Hiring your engineers | I run the interviews and calibrate the offers | Prefers you did not; that is their revenue | Out of scope |
| Accountable for delivery | Yes | For the statement of work, not for the product | No |
| How it ends | You outgrow it and hire full-time, with my help | A change request | An invoice |
On demand, retained, or embedded
Three ways to rent a CTO, matched to how founders search for it
On-demand CTO, CTO as a service, CTO for hire: people mean different cadences by these, so I price them as three retainers rather than one.
01 · on-demand CTO, CTO consultation
On demand
The Technical Advisor tier
You have a team or an agency and mostly need the big decisions checked. Architecture reviews, hiring calls, a second opinion on an estimate, a technical voice in the investor meeting. A floor of hours a month, and I answer the phone in between.
02 · CTO as a service, rent a CTO
Retained
The Fractional CTO tier
Two days a week as your acting CTO. I own technical direction, run the engineers, and the roadmap ships because someone senior is accountable for it. This is what most people mean by CTO as a service, and it is where most of my engagements sit.
03 · CTO for hire, hands-on CTO
Embedded
The Embedded CTO tier
Three days a week with hands on the keyboard. Everything in the retained tier, plus I build the hard parts myself instead of delegating them. The right fit when the product is technically difficult or the team is too junior to be left alone with it yet.
Remote CTO services
Remote by default, reachable by design
Almost every engagement runs remotely and always has. What makes remote CTO services work is not the tooling, it is whether the person is actually present: in the standups, in the incident channel at the wrong hour, in the interview loop, and in the investor call. I keep real overlap with US mornings and full overlap with UK, Gulf, and Indian working hours, and I have run engineering teams across all of them.
If you searched for a virtual CTO near you, the honest answer is that proximity has never once been the thing that made one of these engagements work. Availability has. The fractional CTO page has the regional and industry specialisations, from healthcare to fintech to AI-first products.
Pricing
CTO as a service pricing: $750 to $4,000 a month. Published, not quoted.
My standard rate is $100 an hour; until December 2026, or until I join a new venture full time, whichever comes first, I am holding it at $50, and every retainer is sized from that. The hours are a floor I commit to, not a cap I bill against. A full-time startup CTO in the US runs about $260,000 a year before equity. Three-month minimum, then month to month.
On demand
Technical Advisor
$750
per month · Minimum 15+ hours a month
A senior technical brain on call. For founders who mostly need the big decisions checked rather than someone in the codebase.
Retained
Fractional CTO
$2,500
per month · Minimum 50+ hours a month
Around 50 hours a month as your acting CTO, usually two days a week. I own technical direction, and the roadmap ships because someone senior is accountable for it.
Embedded
Embedded CTO
$4,000
per month · Minimum 80+ hours a month
Around 80 hours a month, usually three days a week, hands on the keyboard. Everything above, plus I build the hard parts myself instead of delegating them.
Questions
CTO as a service, answered plainly
What is CTO as a service?
CTO as a service means buying senior technical leadership on a monthly retainer instead of hiring a full-time chief technology officer. The good version is a named person who owns your architecture, hiring, security, and delivery for a fixed number of days a week. The bad version is an agency selling a bundle of hours under a title. I deliver the first kind: you get me, not a rotation.
How is this different from an outsourced CTO or a CTO agency?
An agency's incentive is to sell you more building. Mine is to make your product work, which sometimes means telling you to build less, fire a vendor, or hire in-house. You also get continuity: the same person who designed the architecture is the one explaining it to your Series A investors a year later.
What does CTO for hire mean? Is that the same thing?
Close enough. CTO for hire, rent a CTO, on-demand CTO, virtual CTO, and CTO as a service all describe the same idea: senior technical leadership without a full-time salary or an equity grant. The differences are cadence and duration, which is why I publish three tiers rather than one.
Can I rent a CTO for a single month?
Not usefully. The first month of any engagement is mostly diagnosis, and you would be paying for the part with the least output. Retainers run a three-month minimum, then month to month. If you genuinely need one intense month, that is a scoped review, and I will say so rather than sell you a retainer.
Do you work remotely? Where are your clients?
Almost entirely remotely. Most clients are in the United States, with the rest across the United Kingdom, the UAE, Singapore, and India. I keep real overlap with US mornings and full overlap with UK and Gulf working hours. Remote CTO services only work if the person is actually reachable; I am.
Do you also build the product?
If there is no product yet, the answer is usually an MVP build first and CTO as a service afterwards, once there is something to lead. The MVP development page covers the build, priced per screen. Once real users arrive, the retainer takes over.
What does CTO as a service cost?
My rates are published. The three monthly retainers run from $750 to $4,000 a month depending on how many days a week you need, all sized from a $50 an hour rate that is half my standard $100 and held until December 2026, or until I join a new venture full time, whichever comes first. A full-time startup CTO in the US runs about $260,000 a year before equity. The pricing guide has the market comparison.
When should I not buy this?
If you have no code, no team, and no customers, you need the thing to exist before you need someone to lead it. If you are past Series A with eight or more engineers, you should hire a full-time CTO, and the useful version of me is the bridge who runs engineering while you search. I will tell you which of these applies on the first call.
One call, one straight answer
Thirty minutes: tell me what you're building, who is building it, and where it is stuck. I'll tell you which retainer fits, or that you don't need one yet. You've already seen the prices.
Book a 30-min callSend me a message