Service · Embedded leadership
Fractional Head of Data — senior platform leadership without a full-time hire.
One to two days per week embedded with your team. Direct hands on architecture decisions, hiring, roadmap, and stakeholder alignment. For scaleups that need senior data leadership now but aren't ready — or don't need — a full-time VP.
Book a 30-min discovery call$5,500–$11,000/month · 6–12 month engagements.
Hire this if you are…
- A CTO or founder at a 200–2,000 employee tech scaleup that needs senior data/platform leadership but isn't ready to hire a full-time VP
- A VP of Data who needs senior bench strength to land a multi-quarter platform initiative
- An organization in transition — between leaders, post-acquisition, or scaling past the threshold where the existing data lead can hold everything
- A company that ran an AI-Readiness Assessment and now needs the senior driver to make the roadmap real
- A team that's tried hiring a VP of Data, couldn't find one, and is bleeding momentum
Don't hire this if…
- You need 5+ days a week of leadership. Hire a full-time VP.
- You haven't yet figured out what the platform problem actually is. Run the Assessment first.
- You want a hands-off advisor doing one call a month. That's a different (cheaper, less impactful) engagement than what I offer.
What this looks like in practice
A typical week
- One day deeply embedded — architecture review, hiring loops, stakeholder 1:1s, decision-making with your data and engineering leads
- Async time across the week — design docs reviewed, PRs discussed, hiring rubrics tuned, exec questions answered
- Monthly exec readout — a one-hour structured update for CEO / CTO / CFO covering platform health, progress against the roadmap, and decisions needed
What I take ownership of
- Platform roadmap. Sequencing, dependencies, trade-offs.
- Architecture decisions. The decision seat for major platform and tooling calls.
- Hiring. Build the rubric, interview senior candidates, defend the role to finance.
- Stakeholder alignment. Translate platform work into business language; translate exec priorities into engineering reality.
- Operating cadence. Design reviews, oncall, incident reviews, roadmap updates.
What you get
By month 6
- A platform roadmap your team is executing against
- 1–2 senior hires made (or near-made) with a hiring rubric your team can run
- Clearer ownership across the data org
- Architecture decisions captured in writing, defensible to your board
- An exec narrative for the data org your CEO can repeat to investors
By month 12 (if extended)
- Full-time VP of Data hired and onboarded, with clean handoff, or
- A platform that no longer needs a dedicated senior leader because the systems and team have matured
What this is not
- Not a CTO replacement. I focus on data and platform; not full-stack engineering, not security, not corporate IT.
- Not a one-off advisor. Lighter advisory engagements (a few hours a month) aren't what I do well.
- Not exclusive by default. I typically hold one to two retainer slots at a time in non-competing companies. Exclusivity available on request at a premium.
- Not implementation IC work. I don't write production data pipelines. I lead the people who do.
Investment
1 day/week
$5,500
per month
1.5 days/week
$8,500
per month
2 days/week
$11,000
per month
Minimum term: 6 months. Most engagements extend to 9 or 12.
Payment: Monthly, in advance.
Notice: 30 days written notice to terminate after the initial 6-month commitment.
FAQ
- Can we start with the Assessment first?
- Yes — most clients do. The Assessment gives both of us a clear picture of whether the Fractional engagement is the right next step.
- Can we add more days as the work evolves?
- Yes. Engagements scale up (or down) with 30 days notice once the initial 6-month commitment is in.
- Do you take equity instead of cash?
- Not as a default. Equity-only or equity-heavy arrangements available case-by-case for genuinely exceptional companies at attractive stages.
- What if we want you to write code?
- Generally no — my edge is in the architecture, decision, and people layers. If you need someone hands-on in production code, you need a senior IC, not me.
- Are you available in our timezone?
- Based in Warsaw, working hours overlap comfortably with EMEA and US East Coast. West Coast US works with effort. APAC is harder.
- What languages do you work in?
- English and Spanish, both at native business fluency.
Need senior data leadership without the full-time hire?
30 minutes. We'll talk about your current state, what senior leadership is missing today, and whether 1, 1.5, or 2 days is the right shape.