Fractional chief growth officer jobs · hire a fractional chief growth officer, or hire a CGO for good

Fractional chief growth officer: one executive for the whole growth number

The chief growth officer title exists because growth rarely sits in one team. Marketing owns demand, sales owns the pipeline, product owns activation, customer success owns retention, and each reports its own number. A CGO is the executive who owns the combined result and has the authority to move work and budget between those teams to improve it.

Why fractional

Most companies that want a CGO want one for a stage, not for ever: after a round of funding, before a new market, or when growth has stalled and each team blames another. A fractional chief growth officer brings C-suite judgement for one to three agreed days a week, sets the growth model and the targets, and builds the team that runs it between visits.

Where the CGO sits

The CGO reports to the CEO and sits on the executive team. Below the seat, the functional leads keep their jobs: a head of growth running experiments, a marketing leader, a sales leader. Beside it, many companies keep a CMO or a CRO instead; the table below sets out when each fits.

What the seat pays

No UK source we would stand behind publishes a chief growth officer salary or day rate, so we quote none; each candidate on a shortlist states their own. For the nearest published benchmark, Robert Half’s 2026 figures for a CMO run from £110,250 (25th percentile) to £183,750 (75th), median £147,000. A fractional cost is the day rate times the days worked.

What does a chief growth officer do? owns growth across the customer journey

A chief growth officer sets the company’s growth strategy and owns the result across the whole customer journey: acquisition, conversion, retention and expansion. In practice that means choosing where the business grows (which customers, markets and channels), setting the targets each team works to, owning the data and reporting that show what is working, and moving budget and people to it.

The week of a fractional chief growth officer is mostly decisions and cadence: the weekly growth review with the functional leads, the experiment backlog and what it is expected to move, the pricing and packaging questions, the handoffs where customers drop out, and the board report. The execution stays with the teams below.

Growth work carries rules. Tracking for experiments and attribution needs consent for non-essential cookies, which must be actively and clearly given (ICO cookies guidance); marketing email and text need their own consent under PECR (ICO direct marketing guidance). Since 6 April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 bans fake and concealed incentivised reviews and drip pricing; the CMA sets out the rules in its unfair commercial practices guidance. A CGO should own compliance with all three.

On the board or reporting to it, and IR35

Some companies appoint their chief growth officer as a statutory director. That brings duties with it: GOV.UK notes that directors can hire others to manage things day to day but remain legally responsible for the company’s records, accounts and performance. Agree in writing whether the fractional CGO joins the board or leads growth while reporting to it, and check the directors’ and officers’ insurance before any appointment.

Most fractional chief growth officers work through their own limited company, so the off-payroll working rules (IR35) may apply. In most cases the client decides the status; for a small client outside the public sector, the CGO’s own company decides, and HMRC sets out the size tests in its guidance for clients. Status turns on how the engagement runs in practice. Our IR35 guide sets out the tests.