Fractional CTO for growing businesses.
Senior technology leadership, without the full-time hire.
For start-ups, scale-ups and established small businesses.
I’m Paul Leigh. For over 30 years I’ve designed, built and run technology for businesses from start-ups to household names. I work with founders, owners and leadership teams part time, as the senior technical voice the business needs right now.
Hands-on · security-first · board-level · commercially minded
- 160+ Appsmoved to Azure from regional data centres, 20 countries
- £2M a yearin cloud savings identified for a single department
- 300 to 750eCommerce orders a day after a 3 month turnaround
- 395 to 5days quoted by a tier-one supplier, delivered in 5 days
- 1,000 to 13rd line support tickets backlog reduction
Over 30 years of building, running and fixing technology.
I started out running my own computer business in 1992, then spent years as a developer, architect and consultant, mostly on contract, for banks, insurers, retailers, airlines and SaaS companies. Over time the work moved from writing the systems to leading the teams, budgets and suppliers behind them.
Recent work includes leading a 160-application Azure migration across 20 countries, building and running a B2B SaaS platform for 100,000 customers, and stepping in as interim Operations Director to turn around an eCommerce business, where I now sit as a non-executive director. Alongside that, I founded and built Inheritable.
I am commercially minded, calm under pressure and comfortable at board level, and I have never stopped being hands-on. I translate technical issues into practical advice for non-technical leaders, and I like work that has a real problem in it.
Outside work I am a private pilot. I gained my licence in sixteen days, have rebuilt microlights, and am building a two-seat kit aircraft that I intend to fly around the world.
More about life beyond work: flying, drones, skiing, CAD, 3D printing and other side projects.
When technology starts to hold the business back.
Do you wonder whether your systems are really right for the business? You may sense a better way, but lack the people, time or outside experience to find it. What helps is a fresh, senior perspective from someone who has helped others solve the same problems.
Most of my work starts with one of these.
Technology costs keep rising. Results do not.
Cloud bills, licences and supplier invoices grow every quarter, and nobody can say clearly what the business is getting for them.
A supplier quote you cannot judge.
An agency or integrator has quoted months of work. You need someone on your side who can tell you whether it is right, and what the alternatives are.
The platform will not carry the next stage.
What got you here is creaking. Releases are slow, outages are more frequent, and growth is starting to expose the gaps.
Operations are holding the business back.
Systems, processes and people have drifted out of step. Orders, fulfilment or support cannot keep up, and costs are climbing.
Security, compliance or due diligence.
A customer questionnaire, a pen test, GDPR, a regulator or an acquisition needs a credible technical answer, quickly.
No senior technical voice in the room.
Owners and leadership teams are making technology decisions without someone who can explain the options, the risks and the costs in plain English.
One senior person, in the role you need.
The problem decides the role. Some clients need a CTO for a few days a month, others an adviser, a hands-on architect, or someone to fix operations fast.
Fractional CTO
I take the senior technology seat for a few days a month. Strategy and roadmap, architecture, budgets, suppliers, security and hiring, reported to the board in plain English.
- Technology strategy and roadmap
- Budget and supplier management
- Hiring and team leadership
- Board and investor reporting
Fractional IT Director
For established businesses that need their technology run properly. Systems, infrastructure, security, suppliers and automation, steadied quickly and handed back with a clear roadmap.
- IT strategy and roadmap
- Systems, integration and automation
- Infrastructure and security
- Supplier contracts and costs
Automation & AI
Connect the systems you already have, automate the manual work, and use AI where it genuinely helps. Websites, portals and backends, designed and built properly.
- Systems integration and APIs
- Process automation
- Practical, secure use of AI
- Websites, portals and backends
Technical adviser
An independent view for founders, boards and investors. Due diligence before an acquisition, a second opinion on a supplier proposal, or a clear answer on repair versus rebuild.
- IT due diligence
- Supplier and proposal reviews
- Architecture and risk assessments
- Repair, replace or rebuild decisions
Cloud & platform
Hands-on design and delivery on Azure, AWS and Cloudflare. Migrations, landing zones, cost optimisation, monitoring, disaster recovery and secure-by-design standards.
- Cloud migration and architecture
- Cost optimisation
- Security, DR and business continuity
- DevOps and production support
Operations & turnaround
When systems and operations need fixing fast, I step in, restructure what is not working, and leave the business running better than I found it.
- Operational turnaround
- Process and systems redesign
- Team restructuring
- Handover to a permanent team
Whatever you call the role.
Fractional CTO is the shorthand. Clients also come to me looking for:
- Fractional CTO
- Part-time CTO
- Interim CTO
- Fractional IT Director
- Interim IT Director
- IT Director
- Head of IT
- Head of IT Infrastructure
- Head of Cloud
- Head of Technology
- Technology Consultant
- IT Consultant
- Cloud Architect
- Solutions Architect
- Technical Adviser
- AI Consultant
- Automation Consultant
- Systems Integration Consultant
- Interim Operations Director
- Non-Executive Director
Start small, scale when it helps.
Three ways to engage, from a one-off review to a senior lead in the business.
Independent IT Review
£1,500fixed price, 2 days
A senior second opinion on your systems, in two days.
- Independent: no kit, licences or contracts to sell
- Website, systems, data, security and costs reviewed
- Written report with clear priorities
- Walkthrough of the findings
- A low-risk way to test the fit
Advisory retainer
From £1,000a month
A senior technology adviser on call or on site, whenever a need arises.
- Advice whenever you need it, on a fair-use basis
- WhatsApp, Teams, Zoom, phone or email
- Supplier quotes, decisions and second opinions
- Advice remotely or on site, not day-to-day IT support
- Three-month minimum term
Fractional or interim
Priced individually
A senior technology lead in your business, on a fixed, short-term contract.
- Fractional CTO or IT Director
- Strategy, suppliers, team and board reporting
- Hands-on where it helps
- Days agreed up front, reviewed as needs change
Every option starts with a free 30-minute conversation on Teams or Zoom.
Selected work.
Recent roles, and what changed because of them.
Real Food Source
Interim Operations Director
Turned around an online food business in three months. Reorganised more than 6,000 bin locations across multiple stores and introduced a barcode-scanned, quickest-path picking system to cut errors. Daily order capacity and food production more than doubled, with fewer staff.
Willis Towers Watson
Programme Tech Lead and Azure SME
Led an international team moving 160+ enterprise applications across 20 countries to Azure. Identified £2M a year in savings for a single department, and kept the programme secure by design, heading off a significant GDPR risk before it could become an issue.
Constructionline
Platform Infrastructure Lead
Built the Azure Production, UAT and Dev platforms for a greenfield SaaS product serving 100,000 customers across the UK and Europe. Ran production support and cut the service ticket backlog from 1,000 tickets to single figures. Also advised on development, security, testing and performance.
Royal Mail
Solutions Architect
Assured the proposals of a tier-one global systems integrator, the group’s main IT supplier. Showed how a project they quoted at 395 days could be delivered in five using internal resources, saving around £100k per project.
Pollen Street Capital
Head of IT Infrastructure
Took over all infrastructure from an exiting IT unit in two weeks, across three offices while onboarding a fourth. Led the technology for a move to new offices, including leased lines, the comms room and structured cabling. Cut Azure and Office 365 costs by around 30% and advised on IT due diligence for acquisitions.
NetOTC
Corporate IT Manager
Turned a haphazard set of systems into a managed estate fit for a regulated financial firm. Owned a £2M IT budget, the roadmap, security policy and all supplier contracts. Relocated the entire 40-seat office over a single weekend on three weeks’ notice, with new telecoms, a new comms room and every piece of equipment moved and running.
Earlier work includes
- Apps 365
- Barclays Capital
- Bluecrest Capital
- Brit Insurance
- British American Tobacco
- Crédit Agricole
- Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank
- E&W Cricket Board
- easyJet
- Grass Roots
- Harrods
- KPMG
- Laserform
- Luffa
- Microsoft
- Mimecast
- Nomura
- Omnicom
- Racecourse Holdings
- Royal Bank of Scotland
- Shell
- Super Golf
Inheritable. Built end to end, secured properly.
Alongside client work, I founded and built Inheritable, an encrypted life planner for the documents, passwords, finances, plans and wishes people want kept together, and shared only on the terms they set. I designed it, built it, published it and run it as a part-time business. It is live on the web, the App Store and Google Play.
Concept
Shaped the product from a simple problem: the documents, accounts and wishes that matter most are scattered across drawers, inboxes and memories.
Brand and artwork
The identity, artwork and public website, designed to feel calm and trustworthy for a subject most people put off.
Mobile apps
iOS and Android apps, published on the App Store and Google Play. The same account works on the phone and in the browser.
Web portal and extension
The full portal: digital vault, password vault, trusted sharing, digital executors and wills, plus a browser extension for Chrome, Edge and Opera.
Backend and operations
Database, server functions, payments and email, hosted in the UK, and taken from build through store release into live operation.
AI-assisted, human-reviewed
AI and coding agents used extensively to build quickly, with the security model kept under my own review rather than treating generated code as finished.
Security is how I build, not an add-on.
Security has run through my whole career: security policy and risk in regulated finance, penetration testing and GDPR on insurance and SaaS platforms, and secure-by-design standards on every programme I lead.
Inheritable is where it all comes together. A service holding people’s most private records, with every control designed and built by me, then independently tested.
Visit inheritable.co.ukWhat that looks like at Inheritable
- Row-level security enforced in the database, not only in the application
- TLS in transit, AES-256 at rest, and a second layer of encryption for the most sensitive fields
- Passkeys and WebAuthn, with step-up authentication for irreversible actions
- An audit log of every read, share and access attempt
- Rate limiting, a web application firewall and SIEM monitoring
- UK hosting in a SOC 2 and ISO 27001 accredited data centre
- Independent penetration test commissioned, and its findings closed
- Rated A+ by independent checks for encryption and security headers
Practical, plain-spoken, on your side.
Hands-on, not just slides.
I can build the infrastructure, write the code and run production support. Advice comes from doing the work, and I will roll up my sleeves when it helps.
Plain English, common sense.
Technology decisions are business decisions. I explain options in terms of cost, risk, practicality and speed, so owners and leadership teams can decide with confidence.
Advice will be sized to your budget.
It has to be affordable for the business, not just technically right. I plan around what you can sensibly spend, and phase bigger changes so each step pays its way.
Straight, honest answers.
If the right call is a cheaper option, an off-the-shelf tool, a completely different approach, or not needing me at all, I will say so.
Where I am not the right fit.
Being clear about this up front saves us both time.
- Day-to-day IT support. Fixing individual laptops, printers or passwords. Your IT support company is better placed for that, and I can help you get more from them.
- A developer by the day. Hands-on work, yes, but as part of owning the outcome, not as an extra pair of hands without the senior responsibility.
- Equity-only roles. Work paid only in shares. I am happy to talk about how an engagement is structured, but partial ownership is a long-term route, not a consulting one.
- Rubber-stamping. Signing off a decision that has already been made. If I think it is the wrong call, I will say so.
- Technology for its own sake. AI, a rebuild or a new platform where a simpler, cheaper option would do the job just as well.
How it starts
- 01
A free conversation
30 minutes to tell me what is going on. We work out whether I am the right person to help.
- 02
A short review
I look at your systems, team, suppliers and plans, and give you a clear written view with priorities. For smaller businesses, this is the fixed-price Independent IT Review.
- 03
The right engagement
An advisory retainer, a few days a month, a defined project, or interim cover. Whatever the review shows you need.
The tools behind the work.
- Technology strategy and roadmaps
- Budgets and cost control
- Supplier and contract management
- Hiring and team leadership
- Board and steering reporting
- IT due diligence
- Programme management
- Change management
- Agile and waterfall delivery
- Microsoft Azure
- AWS
- Google Cloud
- Cloudflare
- Supabase
- Kubernetes
- Microsoft 365
- SharePoint
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- WordPress
- BigCommerce
- Windows Server
- Linux
- IIS and Apache
- Plesk
- Azure Virtual Desktop
- Citrix
- AI and coding agents
- C#
- PowerShell
- Bash
- JavaScript
- PHP
- HTML and CSS
- APIs and webhooks
- Azure Functions
- Logic Apps
- Service Bus
- Postgres
- SQL Server
- MySQL
- MariaDB
- Azure DevOps
- GitHub
- Jira and Confluence
- Entra ID and IAM
- Azure AD B2C
- Keycloak
- Penetration testing
- Vulnerability management
- Risk assessments
- GDPR
- Firewalls and VPNs
- SIEM monitoring
- Disaster recovery
- Business continuity
- IT service management
- Application Insights
- Azure Monitor
Common questions.
What is a fractional CTO?
A senior technology leader who works with you part time. You get the experience and judgement of a CTO for the days you need, without the cost of a full-time executive hire.
How much time do you commit?
It depends on the need. Typically a set number of days each month, with more at the start or around key decisions. We agree it up front and review it as things change.
Is the first conversation free?
Yes. The first conversation is free and usually takes about 30 minutes. You tell me what is going on, and if I am not the right fit, I will say so.
How do you work with our existing IT support company?
Alongside them. Your IT support company keeps handling the day-to-day fixes, while I set the direction, hold them to clear service levels and check the bigger decisions. If they cannot deliver, I will help you replace them.
Do you work remotely or on site?
Both. I am based in West Kent and work remotely from a dedicated office, and on site in London and the South East as needed. I have also worked on site for longer engagements further from home, regularly in Falkirk and as far away as China.
Which sectors have you worked in?
Finance and FinTech, insurance, eCommerce, FMCG and food, logistics, legal, retail, software and SaaS, sport and aviation, among others.
Are you still technical?
Yes. Day to day I build with AI and coding agents, Cloudflare, Supabase and Postgres, alongside Azure, AWS, Kubernetes, C#, PowerShell and modern web stacks. I build and run my own platforms, including Inheritable.
Tell me what you’re working on.
A few lines is enough. I’ll reply personally, and if I’m not the right fit I’ll tell you, and point you to someone who is, if I can. The first 30-minute conversation is free.
Prefer a call? Leave your number in the form and I’ll ring you back.