Services · Fractional CTO

A fractional CTO for teams with decisions to make

Architecture, hiring, releases and the calls on AI systems, taken with your team and written down. Remote, with international teams.

Last updated 3 October 2026

As a fractional CTO I take the senior technical decisions for a company before its first full-time CTO: what to build, on which architecture, with which people, and when an AI system is worth the investment. I'm Matteo Gazzurelli, based in Brescia, Italy; I do this work through MaGa Srl, remotely, with international product teams.

What is a fractional CTO?

The job of a CTO, for the share of time the company needs and can pay for. In my engagements it comes down to four kinds of work.

Architecture, and build or buy

Which systems to build, which to buy, how they fit together and what it will cost the team to maintain them. Each decision written down, with the reasons.

Delivery you can see

Work cut into increments that reach production, a release rhythm the company can hold, engineering and management in the same planning meeting.

Hiring and the shape of the team

Which roles to open first, the seniority mix, how to interview. Mentoring of your technical leads is included, so the decisions stay with them after I leave.

The calls on AI systems

Whether an agent, a model or a plain workflow fits the product, which platform, and what has to be in place before it reaches users.

How I compare Google and Anthropic for agents

When does a fractional CTO make sense?

Four situations where I step in.

  • A product led by business-side founders, where architecture and hiring get decided in whatever meeting they come up in.
  • A product that outgrew its early technical choices, with the same questions coming back every month.
  • An AI initiative that has to move from a demo to something users rely on.
  • A company that will hire a full-time CTO later and wants the ground prepared, including the hire itself.

I turn down vendor choices made once and left there, and coaching for junior developers as a product of its own.

How we work together

The shape of the engagement, how often we meet and for how long are agreed after the first conversation. Three things stay the same.

Decisions are written down. Every call on architecture, hiring or scope ends in a short document your team can point to months later.

I join your planning rhythm: sprint planning, roadmap reviews, the meetings where you decide whether to go on. I'm in the room with your developers.

Your leads take over. I work alongside your tech leads so that, by the end, the decisions are theirs and I'm a second opinion.

Two engagements

Two cases, anonymised: context, problem, what I did and what changed.

Industrial software, regulated releases

Context
A B2B software company shipping into industrial, compliance-bound environments. Engineering and management worked on different timelines.
Problem
Each release bundled months of work. Technical debt and sign-off steps made every date a guess, and the people deciding on scope saw the product late.
What I did
As fractional CTO I split the delivery into scoped increments, put engineering and decision-makers in the same planning rhythm, and set a release cadence the organisation could keep.
What changed
Releases became regular, about every three or four weeks, and delivery dates stopped slipping. Management could see progress while the work was being done, instead of only at the end.

Education SaaS

Context
A SaaS product for schools and training providers, founder-led; the technical decisions sat with the founders.
Problem
Architecture choices, hiring and what to build next were decided meeting by meeting. The same questions came back every month, and the backlog followed whoever spoke last.
What I did
As fractional CTO I owned the technical decisions on roadmap, stack and team shape, wrote them down, and mentored the leads in the same weeks so they could take them over.
What changed
The decisions on architecture and priorities were written down, and once written they stopped being reopened every month.
Who I am

Do you work remotely with international teams?

Yes. I'm in Brescia, Italy, and most fractional CTO work happens over video with teams in Europe and the United States. The working language is English; meeting times follow the team's time zones.

I come on site for the moments that need a room: the kick-off, a hiring round, a release that matters.

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A decision waiting for a CTO?

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