Kasra Dash: So if I am looking to hire a fractional CTO and I want to vet out this person, what are some questions I should ask?

James Dooley: The first question you'd want to ask a fractional CTO is what tools they use. Fractional means part time. CTO means chief technical officer. You need to know what tools they rely on because their tooling shows how they think.

James Dooley: Technical covers databases, APIs, email systems, automation, sales funnels and digital infrastructure. Your website must stay technically clean so Googlebot can crawl it properly. You need tools that track errors, monitor performance and report issues.

James Dooley: People obsess over Screaming Frog, Sitebulb or Deepcrawl. Those are fine but they are not enough. If that is all they use, they are not a real technical operator. A good CTO reads server logs. They check how Googlebot crawls. They monitor Search Console errors that crawlers do not show. They make sure Googlebot hits the right URLs at the right frequency.

James Dooley: A fractional CTO becomes a mentor. They level up your team. They improve your developers, your SEO staff, your database manager and anyone touching the tech stack. They have failed a lot in the past. They know what not to do.

Kasra Dash: One thing to bear in mind is that we just went down the SEO rabbit hole. Fractional CTOs also work in cyber security, fintech, e-commerce and SaaS. Everything we are saying applies across sectors. Whatever the industry, you still need to know what tools they use.

Kasra Dash: The next thing I would ask is what case studies they have. Who have they worked with? What problems have they solved? You want alignment. If they worked with Argos and you run a large e-commerce store, that matters.

James Dooley: Cyber security is a great example. Bet365 gets hammered with DDoS attacks on the first day of the Premier League. Their CTO must have the right CDN setup, usually Cloudflare, to stop the site going down. That is the level of preparation you want.

James Dooley: Ticketmaster is another example. Oasis announced a tour. Four million people tried to buy tickets. The system collapsed. That should never happen. A good CTO prepares for demand surges.

Kasra Dash: A similar example is Gymshark. They had a complete outage on Black Friday. They ended up hiring the CTO of Shopify. You want someone who has solved the problems you face.

Kasra Dash: I would also ask what Sops they have. A real CTO does not send a giant audit and leave you stuck. They fix the first issue, record how they fixed it and show your team how to complete the remaining tasks. That is proper mentorship.

James Dooley: Pricing also matters. You need value. Some CTOs want £10,000 a month for two hours a week. Not worth it. Others charge a couple of thousand and deliver heavy audits, fix issues and provide action plans. That is value.

James Dooley: Good CTOs solve website errors, find email deliverability issues, protect your site from attacks and fix databases. They reveal technical weaknesses you would never find yourself.

Kasra Dash: So those are the questions you should ask. If we missed any, drop them in the comments. If you want to hire us as fractional CTOs, go to fatrank.com, fill in the contact form and either myself or James Dooley will help you.