Interim CTO · Temporary Technical Leadership
Interim CTO for startups: senior leadership, starting this month
An interim CTO runs your engineering for a defined period, usually three to nine months, because your CTO left, your product is stuck, or a raise is weeks away and there is nobody senior to put in front of investors. The engagement ends with your permanent CTO hired and onboarded, or with a hand-over to a lighter fractional cadence.
I'm Kunal Vohra. I've been the technical co-founder six times across three continents, I hold an M.Tech in Cybersecurity, and I have stepped into other people's engineering teams often enough to know the first two weeks are the ones that matter. My rates are published, and I can usually start within a week of the call.
If your situation is not urgent and you want two or three days a week indefinitely, the fractional CTO page is the one you want.
Interim CTO meaning
Interim vs fractional vs part-time vs full-time CTO
The words get used interchangeably and they should not be. Interim, temporary, short-term, and bridge CTO all describe the same thing: a near-full-time leader for a limited period with a planned exit. Fractional and part-time CTO describe an open-ended, lighter arrangement. Here is how they actually differ.
| Interim CTO | Fractional CTO | Part-time CTO | Full-time CTO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is for | A gap or a crisis: the CTO left, the product is stuck, or a raise is weeks away | Ongoing senior leadership for a company that will never need a full-time CTO yet | The same as fractional, at a lighter cadence, for a smaller team | A company past Series A with eight or more engineers |
| Time commitment | Four to five days a week, often more in the first month | Two to three days a week | One to two days a week | Everything |
| Duration | Three to nine months, with a defined end | Open-ended, month to month after a three-month minimum | Open-ended | Years, plus a four-year vesting schedule |
| Ends with | Your permanent CTO hired and onboarded, by me | Whenever you outgrow it | Whenever you outgrow it | An exit, or a hard conversation |
| Equity | None | None, unless you want a cash and equity mix | None | One to four percent, typically |
Five situations
When a startup needs an interim CTO
Almost every interim engagement I have taken started with one of these five sentences on the first call. If one of them is yours, the rest of this page will feel familiar.
01
Your CTO or technical co-founder just left
This is the most common reason anyone hires an interim CTO. The team is suddenly leaderless, the roadmap is guesswork, and every engineer is quietly updating their profile. I step in within a week, take over the standups and the architecture decisions, and stabilise the team before you lose anyone else. Then I help you hire the permanent replacement properly instead of in a panic.
02
You are raising and the technical diligence is coming
Investors will ask who owns the architecture, how the security posture looks, and whether the codebase can scale past the deck. If the honest answer is nobody senior, that is a term-sheet problem. An interim CTO gives you a real technical leader to put in front of them, a codebase that has been cleaned up by one, and a hiring plan that survives questioning.
03
An agency built the product and now nobody understands it
The MVP works, mostly. The agency has moved on, the documentation is a Slack thread, and every change takes three weeks. I audit what you actually have, decide what to keep, and either rebuild the team around it or rebuild the parts that will not survive real users. I have inherited enough agency code to know which is which within a fortnight.
04
You are a non-technical founder past the MVP stage
The first version shipped, real users arrived, and the questions got harder: what to hire, what to rewrite, what to say to the enterprise customer asking about SOC 2. A temporary CTO gets you through the six months where those decisions are most expensive to get wrong, without handing over equity to someone you have known for a month.
05
You need someone to run engineering while you search
A good CTO search takes four to six months. Nothing about your roadmap waits that long. I run engineering as the bridge, define the role you are actually hiring for based on what I see inside the company, sit on the interview panel, and hand over to the person we choose together. My job is done when theirs starts.
How it runs
What an interim CTO does in the first six months
The plan is the same shape every time, because the problems are. The details change once I have read your code.
Days 1 to 14
Stabilise
I meet every engineer one to one, read the codebase and the infrastructure, take over the release process, and find out what is about to break. You get a written state-of-engineering memo by the end of week two: what is solid, what is fragile, what is on fire, and what I am doing about each.
Days 15 to 60
Fix and ship
The roadmap gets re-planned around what the team can actually deliver. The two or three technical debts that are costing the most get paid down. Security basics get done. Hiring, if you need it, starts now, with me writing the job specs and running the technical interviews.
Days 61 to 180
Hand over
If the plan is a permanent CTO, I help you find and hire them, then overlap with them for at least a month. If the plan is that you do not need one yet, I taper down to a fractional cadence so the company keeps senior oversight without paying for a full-time seat.
The lighter version
Part-time CTO: the same person, a lighter cadence
A part-time CTO is what most founders are actually looking for when the team is small, the decisions are big, and there is no crisis. One or two days a week is enough to own the architecture, run the hiring, and keep a team of three to six engineers pointed in one direction. It is not enough to run a rescue, which is why I keep the two engagements separate.
On this site the part-time engagement is the Fractional CTO tier at $2,500 a month, and the fractional CTO page describes it in full. Most interim engagements end by turning into one: the emergency is over, the permanent hire is not needed yet, and the company keeps senior oversight at a fraction of the cost.
Pricing
Interim CTO cost: $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 both tiers below are sized from that. A full-time startup CTO in the US runs about $260,000 a year before equity. Three-month minimum on both, then month to month; the interim engagement usually ends by design between month three and month nine.
Interim engagement
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.
Part-time engagement
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.
Questions
Interim CTO questions, answered plainly
What does interim CTO mean, exactly?
An interim CTO is a senior technology executive who runs your engineering for a defined period, usually three to nine months, to cover a gap or get the company through a critical stretch. Interim means the engagement has a planned end: typically the hire of a permanent CTO, or a hand-over to a lighter fractional arrangement. A temporary CTO, a short-term CTO, and a bridge CTO all mean the same thing.
What is the difference between an interim CTO and a fractional CTO?
Time and intent. An interim CTO is close to full-time for a limited period and exists to fix a specific situation. A fractional CTO is two to three days a week, open-ended, and exists because the company needs senior technical leadership but not a full-time seat. Many of my interim engagements turn into fractional ones once the crisis is over; the person stays the same, the cadence drops.
And a part-time CTO?
A part-time CTO is a fractional CTO at a lighter cadence, usually one or two days a week, for a smaller team. I offer it as the Fractional CTO tier. If you are searching for a part-time CTO because your team is small and the decisions are big, that is the right fit; if you are searching because your CTO left, you need the interim engagement, not the part-time one.
How quickly can you start?
Usually within a week of the call, sometimes faster if the situation is urgent. The first two weeks are diagnostic and you will have a written assessment of your engineering by the end of them.
Will you help hire your own replacement?
Yes, and I think it is the most valuable part of the engagement. After a couple of months inside the company I know what the role actually needs, which is rarely what the original job description said. I write the spec, run the technical interviews, and overlap with the person we hire for at least a month.
Do you write code as an interim CTO?
When it is the fastest way to unblock the team, yes. Interim engagements usually involve more hands-on work than fractional ones, particularly in the first month. But my job is to make the team faster, not to be the best engineer on it, and I am careful not to become a bottleneck the company depends on after I leave.
What does an interim CTO cost?
My rates are published. The interim engagement is the Embedded CTO tier at $4,000 a month for a minimum of 80+ hours a month, 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. For comparison, a full-time startup CTO in the US runs about $260,000 a year before equity. The full pricing guide has every tier.
If the situation is urgent, say so on the call
Thirty minutes: tell me what happened and where the team is, and I'll tell you whether you need an interim CTO, a part-time one, or neither yet. If you do, I can usually start within the week.
Book a 30-min callSend me a message