Last updated: August 6, 2026
Fractional Executive Placements: CFO, CRO, and CTO
Senior leadership at two days a week, hired on your terms. Built for PE-backed and venture-backed companies that need the judgment now and can decide about the full-time seat later.
A fraction of a great executive beats all of an available one. Most of our clients work that out the hard way first.
Fractional executive placement is the hiring of a CFO, CRO, or CTO on a part-time basis, usually one to three days a week across an engagement of six to eighteen months. KORE1 places them nationwide.
The Question Behind Every One of These Calls
Three separate discovery calls this year opened with almost the same sentence. Why a fractional CFO, and why now. One was a healthcare services company whose controller had been quietly doing CFO work for two years. One was a manufacturer moving off a full-time finance chief and unsure whether to backfill. The third just wanted to know if the contract route bought them flexibility they didn’t have.
None of them were shopping for a discount. What nobody said out loud, and what all three of them got to eventually, was that the finance work had already outgrown the person doing it, and the only open question was whether they solved that with a title or with a schedule.
They were all asking the same underlying question, which is whether they could buy the top two days of an executive’s week and skip the rest. For a company doing $30M to $250M with a board that wants a real forecast by Friday, the answer is usually yes, and the harder part is finding somebody who has actually done it rather than somebody between jobs who likes the title.
That’s the search we run. It sits inside our broader executive search practice, alongside retained and engaged permanent placements, so the fractional bench and the permanent bench are the same network of people. If the seat turns permanent in month nine, we already know who’s good.
Three Seats, Three Very Different Problems
The word fractional describes the schedule. It says nothing about the job, and these three jobs share almost no overlap.
Fractional CFO Placement
Cash, forecast, board reporting, and the audit or diligence that’s coming whether you’re ready or not. Most engagements start because a number stopped making sense. Full detail on fractional CFO services.
Fractional CRO Placement
Sales leadership, pipeline discipline, pricing, and one honest forecast instead of three optimistic ones. Usually hired after a founder-led sales motion runs out of room. See fractional CRO services.
Fractional CTO Placement
Architecture calls, build versus buy, security posture, and whether the engineering roadmap matches what sales is promising. Often the first executive a venture-backed company rents. See fractional CTO services, or fractional CPO services when the gap is what to build rather than how to build it.
Adjacent seats run the same way. We staff fractional CIOs for enterprise systems, fractional CMOs for brand and demand, and fractional and interim VPs of Engineering when the gap sits one level below the C-suite. A fractional CIO for an ERP program is its own animal and has its own page.
What the Full-Time Version Costs
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2024 wage data. KORE1 placement records, trailing 12 months.
Those medians are base pay, before bonus, equity, benefits, payroll tax, and the search fee to find the person. A fractional engagement at two days a week lands well under half of the loaded number, and it ends when you say it ends.
Fractional, Interim, or Just Hire Somebody
Three different answers, and picking wrong costs you a quarter.
Fractional means part of a week, indefinitely. It fits when the work is real but not full time, which is most finance and technology leadership below roughly $150M in revenue. The executive keeps other clients. You get their judgment on a schedule, and you accept that they won’t be in the building on Wednesday when something breaks.
Interim means all of a week, temporarily. It fits a departure, a leave, a carve-out, or a diligence process with a hard close date. Interim executives cost more per week and they should, because you are asking somebody to clear their calendar for four to nine months and then leave.
Permanent is the one everyone defaults to, and it’s frequently the wrong first move. We’ve had two clients in the past eighteen months run a fractional engagement for six months, learn what the role actually needed, and then hire a permanent executive against a job description that looked nothing like the one they started with. Both of those searches closed faster than they would have otherwise, because by then the company could describe the job in specifics instead of adjectives. That’s the quiet argument for going fractional first, and it has very little to do with saving money.
Underneath all three sit our normal engagement models, direct hire, contract, contract-to-hire, and project-based. The label matters less than getting the shape right.
How the Search Runs
Four stages, in order. Most fractional searches reach a shortlist inside two weeks, because the bench is already built.
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01Scope
Days, Duration, Decision Rights
How many days a week, for how long, and what this person is allowed to decide without asking. That third one gets skipped constantly and it’s the reason fractional engagements fail.
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02Shortlist
Three or Four, Not Twelve
Executives who have carried this specific problem before, screened for whether they’ve run at your revenue stage and your ownership structure. Board experience is its own filter for sponsor-backed companies.
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03Working Session
Skip the Panel Interview
Give the finalists a real problem from your business and two hours. You’ll learn more from watching somebody work through your actual cash cycle than from any structured interview loop.
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04Start
Land, Then Plan the Exit
First thirty days on the specific problem that triggered the search, a written view of what the seat needs long term, and an agreed trigger for converting to permanent or stepping down.
How We Engage
Four models. The right one depends on how much of the problem is still unknown.
| Model | Best For | Typical Commitment |
|---|---|---|
| Fractional Executive | Real executive work that isn’t a full-time job yet, or a seat you want to test before it goes on the org chart | 1 to 3 days per week, 6 to 18 months |
| Interim Executive | A departure, a leave, a carve-out, or a transaction with a close date that will not move | Full time, 4 to 9 months |
| Project-Based Advisory | A financing round, a systems selection, a pricing reset, or a second opinion on a plan that stopped adding up | Scoped per engagement |
| Direct Hire | A permanent executive once the shape of the role is settled | Permanent, via retained or engaged search |
Conversion is common and we price for it rather than penalizing it. Several clients have started somebody two days a week, watched them run a board cycle, and made an offer. That’s a perfectly sensible way to hire an executive, and it beats a resume.
Why KORE1 Runs These Searches Differently
We’ve placed leaders since 2005, across 30-plus US metros, with recruiters who average 15 years on the desk. Eight verticals, one bench.
Here’s a search worth describing, kept anonymous at the client’s request. A venture-backed software company around $22M ARR had a founder still running sales and a board asking for a forecast they could underwrite. They wanted a full-time CRO. Their runway said they could afford one for about eleven months, which is roughly how long it takes a full-time revenue chief to find out whether the motion works, so the math quietly cancelled itself. We put a fractional CRO in two days a week instead. She spent the first month rebuilding the pipeline definition, killed a segment the founder loved, and had the forecast within 12% of actual by the second quarter. They converted her to four days at the next raise.
The screen that matters is small and most firms skip it. Has this person operated at your revenue stage, not just at a company that once passed through it. Have they reported to a board that includes an investor, which is a different job than reporting to a founder. And can they name a decision they got wrong and what it cost, because anyone whose story is all wins is telling you half of it.
Worth naming the backdrop. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts median pay for financial managers at $161,700 as of May 2024 and projects 15% employment growth through 2034, faster than almost any other management occupation. Deloitte’s CFO Program publishes useful reading for anyone building the internal case for the seat.
For comp calibration before you make an offer, teams use the KORE1 salary benchmark assistant. If the gap is finance depth below the executive line, VP of Finance staffing is usually the better call, and permanent CTO, CRO, and COO searches all run out of the same practice. Meet the people who run them on our team page.
Common Questions
What does a fractional executive actually do all day?
A fractional executive owns a real function on a part-time schedule, typically one to three days a week. That means decisions, not advice. A fractional CFO signs off on the forecast and runs the audit. A fractional CRO owns the number and manages the sales team. The distinction from consulting is accountability, and it should be written into the engagement rather than assumed.
How much does a fractional CFO cost?
Most mid-market fractional CFO engagements run $6,000 to $15,000 per month depending on days per week, company size, and whether there’s a transaction in the window. For comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts median pay for financial managers at $161,700 as of May 2024, and that’s base pay before bonus, benefits, and payroll tax. Fractional CROs and CTOs sit in a similar band. Transaction-heavy work and regulated industries price at the top of it.
Isn’t this just a consultant with a better title?
No, and the difference shows up the first time something goes wrong. A consultant delivers a recommendation and leaves. A fractional executive holds the seat, carries the number, sits in the board meeting, and manages people who report to them. We screen specifically for candidates who have held P&L or functional ownership rather than advisory-only backgrounds, because the second group interviews beautifully and struggles in month three. The tell usually shows up when you ask what they did after a recommendation got rejected, since an operator has an answer and an advisor has a story about the client not listening.
Our PE sponsor wants a permanent CFO. Why would we go fractional?
Often you shouldn’t, and we’ll say so. Where fractional wins with a sponsor is the window between close and the first full budget cycle, when nobody yet knows whether the company needs a technical accountant, a capital markets operator, or a systems rebuilder. Running six months fractional produces a job description written from evidence. It also filters for board fit, because an executive who has only ever presented to a founder tends to find out in their first quarterly meeting that an investor board asks a different class of question and wants the answer in writing beforehand. Sponsors tend to like that a great deal more than a failed permanent hire at month nine, and several have asked us to do it that way on the next portfolio company. On the CTO side that window opens earlier, inside the technical diligence window, when the report has already named which engineering seats the sponsor is buying a problem in.
How fast can KORE1 place one?
Our average time-to-hire across IT and technology roles is 17 days, and fractional executive searches usually reach a shortlist inside two weeks. Interim and permanent executive placements run longer, four to eight weeks end to end, with most of the variance sitting in the client’s interview calendar rather than in sourcing. Fractional moves faster for a simple reason. The candidate doesn’t have to resign from anything.
Can one person cover two seats?
Rarely, and we’d push back on it. CFO and COO occasionally combine at smaller companies where the operational scope is genuinely narrow. CRO and CTO almost never do, because one is selling what the other is deciding not to build yet. If budget is the constraint, a better move is one seat at two days a week and a strong director underneath the other, which costs about the same and doesn’t ask anyone to be two people.
What happens when the engagement ends?
Three outcomes, and we plan for all of them at the start. The company converts the person to full time, which happens on roughly a third of our fractional placements. The company hires a permanent executive against a much clearer job description, and the fractional leader helps run that search, which usually produces a better hire because the person writing the scorecard has done the job inside your building for six months. Or the work is finished and the seat closes, which is a legitimate result and not a failure. Engagements that end without a plan tend to trail off for months, and nobody wants that on either side.
Buy the Two Days You Need
Fractional and interim CFOs, CROs, and CTOs for PE-backed, venture-backed, and independent mid-market companies. Screened by recruiters who have staffed both the fractional seat and the permanent one that follows it. Nationwide.
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