Hire a Fractional Chief Digital Officer · Fractional Chief Digital Officer Jobs UK
Hire a Fractional Chief Digital Officer · Fractional Chief Digital Officer Jobs UK
Hire a fractional Chief Digital Officer to own digital strategy and transformation at board level, for the days a week the work needs, without a permanent hire.
A fractional chief digital officer decides how the business uses digital channels, data and technology to serve customers and run operations, and answers to the board for the result. Browse live fractional Chief Digital Officer jobs across the UK, or brief us for a shortlist of 3–5.
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 fractional Chief Digital Officer
Tell us the scope and the days a week. We come back with Chief Digital Officer 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 Chief Digital Officer jobs
No live Chief Digital Officer roles in the last three months. Showing live technology leadership roles instead.
- FractionalSyndicated
Fractional Product Practice Leader - 9 Month Contract
Nestlé · London
est £1,500/day2 d/wk - FractionalSyndicated
Fractional Product Practice Leader - 9 Month Contract
Tails.com | B Corp · London
est £1,500/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
Live Chief Digital Officer and technology leadership roles
How fractional recruitment agencies compare is set out in one place, including how we work: a Chief Digital Officer brief and a shortlist of three to five.
01/ the role
What is a fractional Chief Digital Officer?
A fractional chief digital officer is a senior executive who owns a company's digital strategy and transformation for part of the week, on an ongoing basis. The role sets how the business uses digital channels, data and technology to serve customers and run its operations, and answers to the board for the result. Companies hire a fractional Chief Digital Officer when digital change needs one owner at leadership level, but not five days a week of it.
The civil service's Digital and Data capability framework describes the equivalent senior role, the chief digital and information officer: shaping the organisation's strategy through digital, data and technology, negotiating investment, keeping the organisation secure and resilient to cyber attack, and acting as a trusted adviser to the board. A private-sector CDO's remit varies, but those are the right headings for a brief.
Chief Digital Officer vs Chief Data Officer
Both titles shorten to CDO, which muddles job adverts and searches. A Chief Digital Officer owns digital transformation: customer journeys, digital products and channels, the operating model and the change programme. A Chief Data Officer owns data as an asset: governance, quality, analytics and the data platform. If the problem is that your data cannot be trusted or used, you want a fractional Chief Data Officer instead.
Chief Digital Officer vs CIO, CTO and CMO
A fractional CIO owns the internal systems estate, IT operations and technology risk. A fractional CTO owns the product the business sells and the engineering team that builds it. A fractional CMO owns brand, demand and the marketing budget. The Chief Digital Officer works across all three, accountable for the business working digitally end to end, and is usually brought in when the change cuts across functions that nobody else owns.
02/ scope
What a Fractional Chief Digital Officer Does
Digital strategy tied to the business plan
Turning the company's objectives into a digital roadmap: which customer journeys to rebuild, which processes to automate, what to buy and what to build, and in what order. In the ONS's 2023 Management and Expectations Survey, the most common barrier to AI adoption UK firms reported was difficulty identifying activities or business use cases (39%), ahead of cost (21%) and skills (16%) (ONS). Answering the use-case question is the CDO's job.
Transformation delivery and the operating model
Running the change: setting up multidisciplinary teams, choosing how work is delivered, managing suppliers and measuring whether the change is working. The government's Service Standard is a well-tested public reference for good digital delivery: understand users and their needs, have a multidisciplinary team, iterate and improve frequently, and define what success looks like.
Governance, security and data protection
Digital change moves personal data and widens the attack surface, and the CDO answers for both. The ICO's guidance on data protection by design and by default requires privacy to be considered at the design stage of any system or service and throughout its lifecycle; the government's Cyber Governance Code of Practice sets out what boards and directors should do to govern cyber risk. Where AI is a workstream in its own right, a fractional Chief AI Officer may take it.
How to hire a Chief Digital Officer on a fractional basis
To hire a Chief Digital Officer on a fractional basis, write the mandate first: the outcome, the functions it cuts across, the budget and the days a week. Then assess candidates against it. Ask for a transformation they led end to end at a comparable scale, and take references from the people who worked for them. Our part: a shortlist of 3–5 candidates, each through our five-stage vetting, with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out.
03/ comparison
Chief Digital Officer vs CIO, CTO, CMO and Chief Data Officer
Who usually owns what. General guidance: remits vary by company, and in smaller firms one person may cover two seats.
04/ timing
When to hire a fractional Chief Digital Officer
Situations where one senior owner of digital change, for part of the week, fits better than a permanent hire or a consultancy
Scenario 01
Transformation with no owner
digital change spread across marketing, operations and IT, with nobody accountable for the whole
Scenario 02
Before a permanent CDO
shape the role, the roadmap and the team before committing to a full-time executive
Scenario 03
PE-backed value creation
a digital value-creation plan for the hold period, reported to the board
Scenario 04
AI and automation on the agenda
decide where AI and automation earn their place, and govern the data they use
05/ vetting
How we vet fractional Chief Digital Officers
What we undertake on every brief, before a candidate reaches you.
- 01
Qualification screen
Verify Chief Digital Officer 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/ interim
Interim Chief Digital Officer — the full-time, fixed-term version
An interim Chief Digital Officer does the same job as a fractional one, but full-time and for a fixed term. The usual reasons are covering a departure, holding the seat while a permanent search runs, or taking one transformation from mandate to handover: a replatform, a shift of customers to digital channels, or bringing two digital estates together after an acquisition. A fractional CDO gives you part of the week on an ongoing basis; an interim is in the business every day and leaves when the job is done.
The contract changes with it. Taken on as an employee for a set period, an interim is on a fixed-term contract. Engaged through their own limited company, the off-payroll working rules (IR35) apply: status depends on how the engagement runs in practice, and a medium or large client makes the determination. Our IR35 guide sets out the tests.
Write the exit into the brief: what "done" looks like, who takes over, and what the interim hands on, including the roadmap, supplier contracts, team structure and risk register. If the need is ongoing rather than one push, the fractional model on this page fits better. If the programme is mainly systems and infrastructure, an interim CIO may be the right seat.
07/ part-time
Part-time Chief Digital Officer — days a week, and how to set them
A part-time Chief Digital Officer works a set number of days a week for one company, on a consistent pattern. The terms overlap in practice: "fractional" tends to mean a leader who also works for other clients, "part-time" a steadier arrangement with a single business. Either way, the days should match the work, not a round number.
Set the days from the mandate. A digital strategy with an in-house team to deliver it may need a day a week plus board meetings. A transformation with several workstreams and suppliers needs more, and it front-loads: more days while the roadmap and team are being set, fewer once delivery is running. Agree which days are fixed (leadership meeting, board, supplier reviews) and how urgent issues are escalated in between, so the business knows when its CDO is available.
Employed part-time, the CDO is protected from less favourable treatment than a comparable full-time worker, with benefits such as holiday and pension pro rata; see GOV.UK on part-time workers' rights. Engaged through their own company, employment status for tax is a separate question: HMRC's CEST tool gives HMRC's view on a specific engagement.
08/ questions
Fractional Chief Digital Officer FAQ
The questions people ask before bringing in a fractional Chief Digital Officer.
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.
