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Pricing · Audits + Retainers

Accepting 1 new Fractional · May 2026
30-40 hrs/wk contract · Q2 2026

Fixed-scope audits first. Retainers when you need more.

Start with a scoped audit to understand your exposure. Then decide whether a monthly engagement makes sense. Either way, the first deliverable arrives in 7-10 days.

42µs TEE signing 3,095× AWS KMS 1,245 tests green AI orchestration: Letta + BAML

Fixed-scope audits.

Known scope, fixed price, defined delivery date. No ongoing commitment required.

EU AI Act compliance

Article 14 Gap Audit

$7,500

10 days · $1,500 deposit to reserve

  • . Article 14 gap analysis (4 control patterns)
  • . Evidence checklist mapped to regulatory ask
  • . Remediation roadmap, Aug 2 prioritized
  • . 1-hour walkthrough with engineering team
See scope and reserve →

Signing infrastructure

Signing Latency Audit

$5,000

7 days · $1,500 deposit to reserve

  • . Signing path instrumentation (prod or staging)
  • . p50/p99 under realistic load
  • . Comparison vs TEE, CloudHSM, KMS, colo HSM
  • . Threat-model review + remediation roadmap
See scope and reserve →

After the audit, here's what an engagement looks like.

Monthly retainers for teams that need ongoing infrastructure leadership. All three include the 10-day first-artifact guarantee.

Advisory

$5K / mo

  • . Weekly 90-min architecture review
  • . Async Slack channel for questions
  • . Infra risk register + remediation roadmap
  • . TEE / signing system audit
  • . 30-day rolling, cancel anytime
Start with advisory

Fractional CTO

$15K / mo

  • . Everything in Advisory
  • . Up to 20 hours active engineering per month
  • . Attend your engineering standups
  • . Hiring bar-setting + technical interviews
  • . Represent you in investor / customer technical calls
  • . Production AI orchestration: Letta and BAML agents for code review, test generation, dependency analysis, and documentation — under explicit guardrails, with humans on every critical path
Book a discovery call

Embedded

$30–40K / mo

  • . Everything in Fractional
  • . Dedicated primary focus (one client at a time)
  • . Hands-on production engineering ownership
  • . Full team leadership including vendor management
  • . Custom SLA and escalation path
  • . Engagement typically 3–6 months
Let's talk scope
Compare tiers side-by-side 8 features × 3 tiers

Advisory

Price
$5K / mo
Included hours / mo
.
Engineering standups
.
Hiring interviews
.
Investor / customer calls
.
Production ownership
.
Dedicated focus
.
Minimum term
30 days

Fractional CTO Popular

Price
$15K / mo
Included hours / mo
20
Engineering standups
✓
Hiring interviews
✓
Investor / customer calls
✓
Production ownership
.
Dedicated focus
.
Minimum term
30 days

Embedded

Price
$30–40K / mo
Included hours / mo
Dedicated
Engineering standups
✓
Hiring interviews
✓
Investor / customer calls
✓
Production ownership
✓
Dedicated focus
✓
Minimum term
3 months

The real comparison.

Fractional CTO economics land between full-time hire and Big Four consultancy. Here's the math.

Full-time Staff CTO

$300–500K/yr

Base + equity + benefits + recruiter fee. 6-month ramp. 12-month lock-in emotionally.

Me, fractional

$15K/mo

Production AI orchestration system. Cancel month-to-month. First architectural deliverable within 2–3 weeks.

Big Four consultancy

€250–500K

Fixed-fee Article 14 compliance program. 90-day kickoff. Partners bill; associates do the work.

Math: $15K × 12 = $180K annual. A senior Staff CTO at Series A–B typically lands $300–400K all-in. Big Four €250K for Art 14 conformity = ~$270K USD, same 90-day window. I'm half the cost of each and ship the first artifact 8 weeks earlier.

What the first deliverable looks like.

First concrete artifact within 2–3 weeks of kickoff. A working PoC, a remediated critical path, or a written audit with severity rankings.

What "artifact" means: something you can show an engineer, a regulator, or an investor. Not a Slack thread, not a deck. Code, a signed report, a deployed service, a remediation PR. The deliverable is always falsifiable.

Pricing questions.

Why not hourly?

If I billed by the hour, I'd get paid for slowness. You'd lose when I'm fast. Flat monthly rate flips that around. I win when you ship. That's the deal.

Can we start smaller than $5K?

Yes. The 20-minute diagnostic is free. Book it here. If the problem is narrow enough to not need a monthly retainer, I'll say so and send a fixed-fee proposal (typically $3-8K for a one-off audit).

What does Advisory actually include at $5K?

Weekly 90-min architecture review, async Slack channel, infra risk register + remediation roadmap, TEE/signing system audit (when applicable). Cancel anytime, 30-day rolling.

Is Embedded full-time?

Dedicated primary focus, one client at a time, typically 3–6 months. Not a legal employment relationship. Still fractional contractor status, but I'm not splitting attention. This is where the $30-40K tier lands.

How does your AI orchestration system work?

I run Letta and BAML agents for code review against my own checklists, test generation from spec, dependency vulnerability scanning, and documentation drafts. AI handles the parallelizable scope work; I handle architecture, judgment calls, and anything touching production systems where the cost of being wrong is high.

EU AI Act Article 14. You mentioned that. What are you offering there specifically?

Technical implementation of the human-oversight controls Article 14 mandates for high-risk AI systems: kill switch, attestation-backed signing, policy engine, tamper-evident audit logs. Not legal opinion. I work alongside your counsel. What I ship is the technical evidence that makes the compliance case possible.

Pick the tier or ask for a diagnostic.

Book a discovery call → Start with the free 20-min diagnostic →