Growing businesses often reach a point where they need senior technology leadership — someone to own the roadmap, manage vendors, and make sure technology decisions actually serve the business — but aren't ready for the cost of a full-time IT Director or CTO. This service is built to fill exactly that gap, at whatever level of seniority and whichever shape of role your business actually needs.
What This Is
This isn't a consulting engagement where you get a report and a recommendation and are left to implement it yourself. It's ongoing, embedded leadership: a senior technology leader who works with your business on a regular, flexible basis — typically a set number of days each month — and takes real ownership of outcomes rather than offering advice from the sidelines.
What the Role Covers
- Technology Strategy & Roadmap: Sets a clear direction for your technology investments, aligned to your actual business goals rather than chasing every new trend.
- Vendor & Budget Management: Handles contract negotiations, supplier selection, and onboarding, so you get the right technology partners at the right price.
- Digital Transformation & Automation Oversight: Owns the roadmap for modernising systems and automating manual processes, and makes sure delivery teams stay on track.
- Agile Delivery Governance: Brings proven Scrum/Agile discipline to how your technology projects are planned, tracked, and delivered.
- Security & Compliance Oversight: Provides governance-level oversight of your security posture and regulatory obligations, and brings in specialist partners for hands-on implementation when deeper expertise is needed.
- A Translator Between Business and Technology: Sits between your leadership team and your technical staff or vendors, so decisions get made with both business and technical reality in view.
- AI Adoption Judgment: Agentic AI is new enough that nobody has years behind them, so the honest question to ask any supplier is whether they have shipped with it or only trained on it. You get a leader who has built with these tools in live delivery and led a team doing the same — and who can therefore tell your board where AI earns its place, where it doesn't, and what it will cost to keep running once the pilot is over.
Which Role Do You Need?
"Fractional technology leadership" covers more than one job title. The right shape depends on where your business actually needs the help — and we'll be straight with you about which of these fits, including when the answer is none of them.
Owning the whole technology function — strategy, vendors, budget, infrastructure, and security and compliance oversight. The right fit when technology supports the business rather than being the product.
Technical direction where software is the product: architecture decisions, build-versus-buy calls, and the technical judgment behind a product roadmap.
Leading a development team day to day — sprint delivery, code quality, ways of working, and input on who to hire next. Useful when you have developers but nobody senior running them.
Owning one significant change end to end rather than a standing function — a system migration, a modernisation programme, or a rollout that needs someone accountable for landing it.
How It Works
The engagement runs on a flat monthly rate for an agreed number of days per month — scaled up or down as your needs change — with none of the on-costs of a full-time hire (salary overhead, pension, benefits, recruitment risk). It's a genuine director-level relationship, not a block of consulting hours.
Start with a few days a month and adjust as your needs grow or change. There are no long, rigid contracts — if the shape of the engagement needs to change, it changes.
Want to Talk It Through?
A free call, no obligation — we'll tell you honestly if this isn't the right fit.
Meet Your Technology Leader
Joao da Mota
Joao brings over 20 years of software engineering experience and more than a decade leading teams and technology projects across government, education, and biotechnology.
His government experience spans seven years across two countries, the UK and Brazil, delivered through previous employers and contracts. On a fixed-term contract he led development of a project for a Crown Prosecution Service — the work itself cannot be discussed, but both projects were delivered on time and the team received a stellar review from the client. For public-sector buyers, that means a technology leader who has already delivered inside government and knows how those environments actually operate.
As a Business Consulting Manager he led low-code development and public-sector delivery for local authorities including Norwich City Council, Cambridge City Council, North Northamptonshire Council, and West Northamptonshire Council — managing supplier selection, contract renewals, and a cloud infrastructure migration for Norwich City Council. Earlier he led RPA and OutSystems development teams at a global biotechnology and pharmaceutical services company, building automations and manufacturing-visibility systems used across the business.
More recently his focus has moved to agentic AI: building with agentic coding tools — Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and Gemini — in his own delivery practice, delivering agentic AI project work for clients, and leading engineering teams working with these tools. The difference between advising on AI and having actually shipped with it.
Credentials
- Government delivery: DBS checked; seven years across UK and Brazilian government, including the Crown Prosecution Service
- Leadership & strategy: Executive Leadership Principles Program (MIT xPRO); Inquiry-Driven Leadership and Blockchain Technologies: Business Innovation & Application (MIT Sloan); Strategyzer certifications in Business Models, Value Propositions and Business Testing; Certified Scrum Master
- Currently studying: Executive Certificates in Digital Business and in Management & Leadership, MIT Sloan School of Management
- Technical: UiPath Certified RPA Associate; OutSystems Web Associate Developer; C# Machine Learning Developer
- AI engineering: Claude Code for Professional Developers; Build AI-Powered Apps (Code with Mosh, 2026)
Backed by a Trusted Network
When a project calls for a specific specialty or extra capacity, the engagement isn't limited to one set of skills. Joao works alongside a trusted network of senior technology leaders who can step in for specific engagements or provide additional support when needed.
Bruno Gomes
Systems Manager — Salesforce, Data Science & AI
Bruno brings over 21 years at Fundação Getulio Vargas, currently serving as Systems Manager responsible for Salesforce, Dynamics 365, satellite systems, and AI projects. As Tech Lead for CRM and AI initiatives, he led the implementation of Salesforce Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud, Dynamics 365 Field Service, and AI projects focused on education. He holds MBAs in Artificial Intelligence, Business Technology (AI, Data Science & Big Data), and IT Governance, along with certifications in Copilot Studio multi-agent solutions, prompt engineering, and stakeholder management.
Who This Is For
Fractional Technology Leadership is built for small and mid-sized organisations that don't have a full-time technology leader in place — whether you've never had one, or you're between hires and need continuity. It's a particularly strong fit for businesses in regulated or technically complex sectors such as government, education, and life sciences, where the right technology decisions carry real operational and compliance weight.
Curious If This Is Right for You?
Let's talk about your business, which shape of leadership it needs, and whether this is a good fit.