Hire a CRO · Chief Revenue Officer Recruitment UK
Hire a CRO · Chief Revenue Officer Recruitment UK
How to hire a CRO in the UK: what a Chief Revenue Officer owns, when you need one, how to assess candidates, what search costs, and when a fractional or interim CRO is the better fit.
For a permanent or senior contract CRO brief we come back with a shortlist of 3–5 candidates, each with pay or day rate, availability and IR35 position where relevant set out.
How a brief runswhat we undertake
- 01Brief30-MINUTE SCOPING CALLDay 0
- 02Shortlist of 3–5VETTED · RATE BENCHMARK · IR35After the brief
- 03InterviewsYOU MEET THE SHORTLISTYour diary
- 04Scoped startFIRST-MONTH OUTCOMES AGREEDYou set the date
- 05Fractional, interim and permanentIR35 POSITION SET OUTOn every brief
Shortlist3–5
15 minutes · video or phone
Book 15 minutes to hire a CRO
Tell us the scope and the days a week. We come back with CRO candidates, their day rates and availability.
- 0115 minutes, video or phone
- 02We scope the role and the days a week
- 03A shortlist of 3–5 after the call
- 04Fractional, interim and permanent briefs
Pick a day that suits · live availability
Live roles · last 3 months
Live CRO jobs
No live CRO roles in the last three months. Showing live fractional executive roles instead.
- FractionalSyndicated
Head of Medical Compliance, Governance & Diligence (Fractional)
CNX Therapeutics Ltd · Greater London
est £1,000/dayGreater London - FractionalSyndicated
Head of Applied Legal – AI Product (Fractional)
Stealth Startup · London
est £1,600/day2 d/wk - FractionalSyndicated
Fractional Product Practice Leader - 9 Month Contract
Tails.com · London
est £1,000/day2 d/wk - FractionalSyndicated
Fractional CPO
Log my Care · City of London
est £3,250/day3 d/wk - FractionalSyndicated
Fractional Finance Directors
PWF Associates Limited · Manchester
est £750/dayManchester - FractionalSyndicated
Fractional legal counsel
Nifina · London
est £750/dayLondon - FractionalExclusive
Fractional COO
Confidential client (Fractional Quest mandate) · London
Rate n/aLondon - FractionalSyndicated
Fractional Financial Controller
MarcoPolo Learning · City of Westminster
est £750/day2 d/wk - FractionalSyndicated
Chief Financial Officer
Fiberpay · Marlow
Rate n/a2 d/wk
Current CRO and revenue leadership roles
Fractional Quest is a fractional recruitment agency: send a CRO brief and we come back with a shortlist of three to five vetted candidates.
01/ the role
What is a Chief Revenue Officer?
A Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) owns the company’s revenue number and the functions that produce it: sales, and often marketing, customer success, revenue operations and partnerships, answering to the CEO and the board for the whole number. SFIA’s selling skill describes the core of the work at practitioner level — finding and qualifying prospects, proposing, negotiating and closing, and growing existing accounts. A CRO is accountable for all of that across several teams, and for the forecast.
The title overlaps with others. A Chief Sales Officer or sales director usually owns sales alone; a Chief Commercial Officer may add pricing and partnerships; a CMO owns marketing. A CRO seat makes sense when one person should answer for every revenue-producing function at once.
When you need one
The usual signals: sales, marketing and customer success report separately and disagree about the pipeline; the founder still closes most deals; forecasts miss and nobody owns the miss; or the company is moving from founder-led sales to a repeatable motion, a new segment or a new region. For the go-to-market work around the hire, our family site gtm.quest covers go-to-market strategy.
Not every gap needs a full-time executive. If the revenue functions need joining up but not five days a week, hire a fractional CRO. If you need full-time cover for a fixed period, hire an interim CRO. If what you need is a sales leader rather than an executive over several functions, hire a fractional head of sales.
02/ scope
How to assess a Chief Revenue Officer
Ask for the numbers behind the story
Ask each candidate to take you through a period of their own: revenue at the start and the end, win rates and sales-cycle length, what they changed in the team and the process, and a quarter they missed and why. Then check those figures with a reference who saw them — ideally a CEO or board member, not only people who reported to them.
Run the same process for everyone
Agree the criteria before the first interview and give every candidate the same questions and the same task — for example, a review of your current pipeline and forecast. CIPD’s guidance on selection methods favours clear, structured and transparent processes, and Acas sets out the steps for an employed hire, from job description to offer.
Check how their teams sell
A CRO answers for how the revenue is won as well as how much. Electronic marketing by email, text or phone falls under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, which the ICO explains in its guide to PECR. In financial services, the FCA’s Consumer Duty requires firms to put their customers’ needs first. Ask how the candidate has set targets and commission plans in that setting.
What we do on a CRO brief
We come back with a shortlist of 3–5 candidates, each with pay or day rate, availability and, for a contract, IR35 position set out. Every candidate goes through our five-stage vetting.
03/ economics
What it costs to hire a CRO
Pay. A CRO package usually splits between base salary, variable pay tied to revenue, and often equity. Agree the split, and what the variable pay is measured on, before you speak to candidates. Benchmarks for sales roles need both numbers: Morgan McKinley’s salary guide, for example, treats variable pay as a core part of sales compensation and, where it can, gives on-target earnings as well as base. For published CRO pay and how it compares with fractional day rates, see Chief Revenue Officer salary.
Equity. Under Enterprise Management Incentives, a qualifying company — since 6 April 2026, one with assets of £120 million or less and fewer than 500 full-time employees — can grant share options worth up to £250,000 in a three-year period. The employee must work at least 25 hours a week, or 75% of their working time, for the company, which a part-week fractional CRO may not meet.
Search fee. Retained and contingent search are priced differently — see the section on CRO headhunters below.
04/ comparison
Full-time, fractional or interim CRO?
Three ways to put revenue leadership in the seat. Choose by how much of the week the job needs, and for how long.
05/ vetting
How we vet CROs
What we undertake on every brief, before a candidate reaches you.
- 01
Qualification screen
Verify CRO tenure, sector context and stage fit.
SOURCING - 02
Mandate fit
Match to your situation — stage, board dynamics, timing.
MATCHING - 03
Reference deep-dive
We take references ourselves, from recent past clients — real outcomes, not titles.
VERIFY - 04
Shortlist
Three to five candidates with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out.
SHORTLIST OF 3–5
06/ executive search
Chief Revenue Officer executive search: when retained search earns its fee
Chief Revenue Officer executive search is usually retained: one firm, engaged exclusively, maps the companies where your CRO might be working now, approaches people who are not on the market, assesses them and runs the process to offer. It earns its fee when the strongest candidates are employed, doing well and not looking — often the case for a CRO who is hitting their number.
It is a weaker fit while the brief is still moving. If the board has not agreed whether the seat owns marketing and customer success, or whether the company needs a CRO or a sales leader, settle that first; a search run on an open brief tends to return a shortlist that answers a different question.
Whoever runs the search, the checks on the hire are yours. For an employee, check their right to work before they start. If the CRO will join the board, the general duties of directors in the Companies Act 2006 apply. The firm handling candidates’ data has duties of its own under the ICO’s recruitment and selection guidance. For a senior contract CRO working through their own company, IR35 status depends on how the engagement runs, and a medium or large client makes the determination (HMRC); see our IR35 guide.
07/ cro headhunters
CRO headhunters: what to ask before you sign
CRO headhunters range from retained executive search firms to contingent agencies and specialists in fractional and interim leadership. The same law covers them all: the Employment Agencies Act and the Conduct Regulations apply to executive search consultants, bar any fee to candidates for finding them work, and leave the fee you pay to your contract with the firm (GOV.UK guidance on the Conduct Regulations).
Before you sign, ask four things in writing: the fee, what it is calculated on (base salary alone, or base plus on-target variable pay) and when each part falls due; who runs the search day to day; how candidates are assessed and referenced; and what happens if you stop the search. Retained firms often belong to the AESC, whose members are guided by its Code of Professional Conduct. Check the firm itself on the Companies House register.
For permanent and contract CRO briefs, we come back with a shortlist of 3–5 with pay or day rate, availability and IR35 position where relevant set out, after five-stage vetting. To compare search models side by side, see fractional executive search firms.
08/ questions
CRO headhunter FAQ
The questions people ask before bringing in a CRO.
Book 15 minutes · shortlist of 3–5
Bring the brief. We architect the team.
A shortlist of 3–5 with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out, after five-stage vetting.
