FAQs

A fractional CISO is a part-time Chief Information Security Officer who owns your security strategy, risk management and compliance. For most businesses between £5M and £50M revenue, a full-time CISO is more than you need, but customer security questionnaires, cyber insurance requirements and frameworks like Cyber Essentials and ISO 27001 still demand senior ownership. A fractional CISO gives you that ownership at a sensible cost.

A fractional CPO is a part-time Chief Product Officer who leads product strategy, roadmap, discovery and the product team. They are most valuable when your product decisions are being made by whoever shouts loudest, when the roadmap is a wish list rather than a strategy, or when founders need to hand product leadership to someone who has done it before.

A fractional Chief AI Officer is a part-time executive who leads your AI strategy and adoption: identifying where AI genuinely creates value in your business, running pilots that survive contact with reality, putting governance and policy in place, and stopping you spending money on hype. It is the newest role we place and the one where a few days of experienced judgement saves the most money.

The same things a full-time executive does, compressed into the days you engage them for. That typically means owning the strategy and roadmap for their function, leading and developing your existing team, running key meetings and board reporting, making the significant decisions, and being accountable for outcomes. They are not advisors who leave you a slide deck. They sit inside your business, with their name against the results.

A fractional executive typically costs 20 to 40 percent of the fully loaded cost of the equivalent full-time hire.

Boardman engagements are priced as a simple monthly fee based on days per week, with day rates typically in the range of £6000-£18,000 depending on role and scope. No recruitment fees, no equity requirement, no surprises. We will give you an exact figure after a scoping conversation, usually within 48 hours.

A full-time C-level technology hire in the UK typically costs £150,000 to £250,000 in salary alone, before bonus, equity, pension, National Insurance and recruitment fees, and takes three to six months to find.

A fractional executive delivers the same seniority for a fraction of that cost, starts within weeks, and carries no severance risk if your needs change.

No. Boardman engagements run on rolling monthly terms with a short notice period.

We keep it that way deliberately: if the engagement is not creating value, you should be able to end it without pain. In practice, most clients extend rather than exit, but the flexibility is the point of the model.

Hire fractionally when you need executive-level judgement but not five days of it. Common triggers: you are scaling past the point where the founder can lead technology, product or security personally; a customer, insurer or investor is demanding senior ownership of an area; a full-time hire is unaffordable or premature; or you need leadership in place now, not in six months. If your needs genuinely require a full-time executive, we will tell you that too.

Start from the problem, not the job title.

Customers use your technology and it is holding back growth: CTO.

Internal systems, IT and data are the bottleneck: CIO.

Security questionnaires, compliance or cyber risk: CISO.

Product direction and roadmap: CPO.

Working out what AI should actually do for you: Chief AI Officer.

Many businesses arrive asking for one role and need another, which is why every Boardman engagement starts with a scoping conversation rather than a CV.

It starts with a 30-minute conversation about your business and what you are trying to achieve. From there we scope the role, match you with the right consultant from our bench, and introduce you before anything is signed.

Most engagements begin within two to three weeks of first contact, and the first month typically focuses on assessment: understanding your team, technology and priorities before committing to a plan.

No. Boardman engagements run on rolling monthly terms with a short notice period.

We keep it that way deliberately: if the engagement is not creating value, you should be able to end it without pain. In practice, most clients extend rather than exit, but the flexibility is the point of the model.

We match on three things: sector and stage experience, the specific problem you are solving, and fit with your leadership team.

Boardman maintains a bench of around 25 vetted senior executives, all of whom have held the role full time before offering it fractionally.

You meet the proposed consultant before committing, and if the fit is not right, we propose someone else. You are never assigned whoever happens to be free.

A fractional CTO is ongoing and part time: one to three days per week, indefinitely, as a member of your leadership team.

An interim CTO is full time and temporary, usually covering a gap or a crisis for a fixed period. A consultant advises and leaves; they recommend, but they do not own the outcome.

If you need sustained senior leadership without a full-time cost, fractional is the model built for it.

Fractional executives are hands-on and accountable. They attend your leadership meetings, manage your people, make decisions and answer for the results, which is fundamentally different from an advisor who offers opinions from the outside.

If you want someone to talk to occasionally, an advisor is cheaper.

If you want someone to be responsible for the function, that is what a fractional executive is.

Most Boardman engagements run at one to three days per week, and we shape the commitment around the work rather than the other way round.

Some clients start at one or two days during an intensive phase and taper down once the team and foundations are in place.

The days can flex month to month as your needs change.

Both, in whatever mix works for your business. Boardman is based in Manchester and our consultants are across the UK, so regular on-site presence is normal, not exceptional. Most engagements settle into a rhythm of some days in your office for leadership meetings and team time, with the rest remote.

You end it, with a short notice period and no penalty. If the issue is fit rather than the model, we replace the consultant. And if you grow to the point where you need a full-time executive, that is a success, not a problem: your fractional executive will often define the full-time role, help you hire into it, and hand over properly. Several of our engagements have ended exactly that way, deliberately.

Every Boardman consultant is a senior executive who has held the role full time at a scaling business before joining our bench.

We vet for track record, references and the ability to operate in mid-market businesses specifically, where pragmatism matters more than big-company process.

The bench is around 25 strong across CTO, CIO, CISO, CPO and Chief AI Officer roles, and it is deliberately curated rather than a marketplace.