What is a fractional CTO, and do I need one?

A fractional CTO is a senior technical leader who works part-time across one or more companies, typically one to two days a week. You likely need one if your team is shipping software but has no senior engineering voice in the room — for hiring, architecture, security, roadmap and tough technical decisions.

How much does a website accessibility audit cost?

A small marketing-site WCAG 2.2 audit typically starts around £1,500, with larger product audits in the £4,000–£10,000 range depending on the number of templates, components and user journeys. Every engagement includes a prioritised issue list and a remediation plan you can hand directly to your developers.

What is WCAG 2.2 and does my site need to comply?

WCAG 2.2 is the current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines standard. In the UK, public-sector sites are legally required to meet WCAG 2.2 AA under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018. Private-sector sites are expected to be accessible under the Equality Act 2010 and increasingly under the European Accessibility Act from June 2025.

How long does a website performance audit take?

A typical performance audit takes one to two weeks: lab testing against Core Web Vitals, field-data review from real users, render-path analysis and a written report with prioritised fixes. Urgent engagements can be completed in a few days if the site is small and the issues are obvious.

Do you work with teams outside the UK?

Yes. chrimes.dev is remote-first and based in Leeds, UK, working across UK and European time zones. Most engagements happen over video calls, shared docs and pull requests. I travel to clients in person for kick-offs and workshops when it helps.

What technology stacks do you specialise in?

Modern web stacks — Next.js, React, TypeScript, Node.js, and headless content systems. I have deep experience with design systems (including the NHS and GOV.UK patterns), accessibility tooling and performance engineering. For audits I’m stack-agnostic.

How do engagements typically start?

A short free call to understand the problem, a written proposal with scope, price and timeline, and a signed agreement before any work begins. Audits are fixed-price; retainers and fractional CTO work are billed monthly.

Fractional CTO

Turizum — fractional CTO for a travel-tech startup

Senior technical leadership for Turizum, a travel-tech startup reinventing how people plan and book trips with personalised recommendations and a seamless booking experience.

Client: Turizum
Role: Fractional CTO
Year: 2026
Duration: Ongoing — two days a week

In short

Fractional CTO two days a week — helping a small founding team make the technical calls a full-time CTO would.
Architecture, hiring, roadmap and the difficult conversations — without the full-time overhead an early-stage startup can't yet justify.
Writing code when it helps, stepping back when it doesn't.

The brief

Turizum is an early-stage travel-tech startup building a product that blends curated trip-planning with a modern booking experience. The founders had a strong product vision and a small engineering team, but needed a senior technical voice in the room — the kind of person who's shipped this scale of product before and can help the team avoid the expensive mistakes.

A full-time CTO wasn't the right fit at this stage: the company isn't big enough to need one every day of the week, and the salary bracket is a year's runway. A fractional arrangement gives the founders senior judgement when they need it, and leaves them to own the product.

Approach

Anchored in a weekly leadership conversation with the founders — roadmap, hiring, risk, the uncomfortable trade-offs.

Architecture sessions with the engineering team — unblocking the hard technical questions and keeping the platform headed somewhere maintainable.

Hiring — helping shape the job descriptions, running the technical parts of interviews, calibrating the bar.

Occasional hands-on code review and pair programming on the thornier parts of the stack, so my feedback stays grounded in the real implementation.

What I delivered

Weekly leadership one-to-ones with the founders
Technical roadmap reviewed and refreshed each quarter
Interview scorecards and technical assessment for engineering hires
Architecture decision records for the calls that outlived the meeting
Security and resilience reviews ahead of milestones

Outcomes

A small engineering team that ships confidently and knows why it's making its calls
Founders making faster technical decisions with senior backup
A platform set up to scale with the company rather than against it

Software DevelopmentKainos (for NHS England), 2026

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