No. DBHQ is engaged for defined pieces of work with agreed deliverables, and no engagement appoints Daniel Grimes as your CTO, director or office-holder. Executive authority, budget approval and employment decisions stay with you.

Then who makes the decisions a CTO would make?

The technical ones inside the agreed scope are part of the delivery: architecture, integration boundaries, build or buy, and what has to be true before a release can go live. They are recorded rather than left in somebody's head. Decisions about budget, headcount and company direction are yours, and stay yours.

Can we buy this monthly?

No. An engagement is either a bounded piece of work quoted against agreed deliverables, or agreed days on one named workstream - and both have an end date. There is no open-ended monthly technology-ownership arrangement, under this name or any other.

What if we genuinely need a fractional CTO?

Then DBHQ is not the right supplier, and hearing that on the first call is cheaper than discovering it in month three. What DBHQ is the right answer to is a defined piece of engineering work that has to reach production - and if that is what is actually blocking you, the leadership framing may be costing you time.

Do we own what you build?

You do. Code, documentation, data and tooling stay in your own accounts, and handover to a named operational owner is part of the work rather than a favour at the end.

A short call to establish what is not happening and who is accountable for it. If the work can be bounded, you get a fixed price and the acceptance criteria in writing. If it cannot be bounded yet, DBHQ says so and quotes the investigation that would make it possible.

Fractional CTO or scoped technical consultancy?

Here is what the fractional model covers, what it does not, and where a bounded engagement answers the same problem without putting anyone on your org chart.

What a fractional CTO actually is

A senior technologist engaged part-time to hold a company's technology leadership - strategy, architecture, hiring, vendor choices, board reporting - usually for a monthly fee and usually with no end date attached.

It exists because a company can need that judgement long before it can justify the salary, and that reasoning is sound. For some companies the model is the right answer.

It is also, in substance, an appointment: someone comes inside the business and holds a position in it. Buying a defined piece of engineering work is a different transaction, and the difference is worth being clear about before money changes hands.

What the model is good for, and what it is not

Worth being straight about, because the honest version is what makes the recommendation worth anything.

When it fits

A founding team with no senior technologist
Someone has to own the architecture, the build-or-buy calls and the hiring bar, and nobody internal can.
A board that needs a technology voice
Diligence, reporting, and a translation layer between the engineering and the people funding it.
A company between CTOs
Continuity over the decisions that cannot wait while a permanent hire is found.

When it does not

The problem is a specific piece of work
A stalled integration, a migration, a release nobody can get out of the door. That needs delivery, not governance.
There is already a technology lead
A second senior voice over the same decisions creates ambiguity rather than capacity, and the ambiguity lands on the team.
What is actually needed is code shipped
Leadership time and delivery time are different purchases. Paying a leadership rate for delivery hours is how this model gets expensive quietly.

What DBHQ does instead

DBHQ Consulting Ltd provides technical consultancy for defined projects, with agreed deliverables and a clear handover. The work a company looks for a fractional CTO to do usually turns out to be two separate purchases, and separating them is most of the value.

Deciding what to build. Where named uncertainties stop the work being quoted - an undocumented integration, unresolved business rules, a platform choice nobody has evidence for - a bounded investigation answers those questions and hands back an editable pack. It is bought only when that uncertainty is genuinely in the way.

Getting it built. One bounded release owned through to production and handed to a named operational owner, on a fixed price, or agreed days on one named workstream when a lead is unavailable and a release cannot wait.

The technical leadership a build needs is carried inside that scope rather than sold as a standing role: the architecture calls, the integration boundaries, the build-or-buy decisions and what has to be true before anything goes live, closed and recorded as part of the delivery.

The bounded investigation When named uncertainties stop the work being quoted
Production delivery in full When it is clear enough to build

Where the line sits

The commercial shape of a DBHQ engagement, stated rather than implied.

The client retains executive authority, budget approval and employment decisions
Technical delivery leadership is limited to the agreed project scope
No engagement appoints Daniel Grimes as the client's CTO, director or office-holder, and there is no seat on the org chart
Scope, price and acceptance criteria are agreed in writing before work starts
Every engagement ends on a named date, with a handover to a named operational owner

DBHQ does not sell an ongoing monthly technology-ownership arrangement, under this name or any other. Technical delivery leadership exists as a responsibility inside a scoped engagement, which is where it can actually be held to something. How that works on a delivery engagement →

Questions, answered

Will you be our CTO?: No. DBHQ is engaged for defined pieces of work with agreed deliverables, and no engagement appoints Daniel Grimes as your CTO, director or office-holder. Executive authority, budget approval and employment decisions stay with you.
Then who makes the decisions a CTO would make?: The technical ones inside the agreed scope are part of the delivery: architecture, integration boundaries, build or buy, and what has to be true before a release can go live. They are recorded rather than left in somebody's head. Decisions about budget, headcount and company direction are yours, and stay yours.
Can we buy this monthly?: No. An engagement is either a bounded piece of work quoted against agreed deliverables, or agreed days on one named workstream - and both have an end date. There is no open-ended monthly technology-ownership arrangement, under this name or any other.
What if we genuinely need a fractional CTO?: Then DBHQ is not the right supplier, and hearing that on the first call is cheaper than discovering it in month three. What DBHQ is the right answer to is a defined piece of engineering work that has to reach production - and if that is what is actually blocking you, the leadership framing may be costing you time.
Do we own what you build?: You do. Code, documentation, data and tooling stay in your own accounts, and handover to a named operational owner is part of the work rather than a favour at the end.
How does it start?: A short call to establish what is not happening and who is accountable for it. If the work can be bounded, you get a fixed price and the acceptance criteria in writing. If it cannot be bounded yet, DBHQ says so and quotes the investigation that would make it possible.

Twenty-six years of engineering delivery across defence, banking, insurance, energy, commodities, healthcare and identity - the decisions above have been made in places where getting them wrong was expensive

See the work

Is it a leadership gap or a delivery gap?

Describe what is not happening and who is accountable for it. You will get a straight answer on whether this is work DBHQ should be doing, and what it would take.

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