Fractional ecommerce director jobs · hire a fractional ecommerce director, or hire one for good

Fractional ecommerce director jobs: what the seat owns

A fractional ecommerce director runs the online channel as a business, not a campaign. The usual scope: the storefront and its platform; trading, merchandising and promotions; paid and organic acquisition; conversion on the site and in the basket; email, CRM and repeat purchase; marketplaces; and the handovers to fulfilment, customer service and finance. The difference from an agency is ownership. The director is named on the leadership team and answers for the channel’s numbers between visits.

Where the seat sits among marketing roles

The same work is advertised under several titles. When the brief is brand, positioning and the whole marketing budget, it is a CMO seat: hire a fractional CMO. When the brief is acquisition, activation and retention run as experiments, it is a fractional head of growth. When digital channels are most of your marketing but not your sales, see fractional digital marketing. For the wider marketing function, hire a fractional marketing director.

What fractional ecommerce director jobs pay

No source we trust publishes an ecommerce director day rate, so we do not quote one; every candidate on a shortlist states their own. The nearest full-time benchmarks are published. Robert Half’s 2026 guide puts a marketing director at £70,000 (25th percentile) to £90,000 (75th), median £79,500, and a chief marketing officer at £110,250 to £183,750, median £147,000. A fractional fee is the day rate times the days worked.

Fractional ecommerce CMO: when online is most of the business

A fractional ecommerce CMO is a chief marketing officer for a company that sells mainly online. When most revenue comes through the website and marketplaces, the marketing seat and the ecommerce seat meet. The CMO still owns brand, positioning and the whole budget, but the plan is written in conversion rates, repeat purchase and the cost of each new customer.

Choose the CMO title when the brief is strategic: a repositioning, a new category, a board that wants one marketing plan across online, retail and wholesale. Choose the ecommerce director title when the brief is running the channel well: trading, the store, the promotions calendar. Many online businesses start with a director and add a CMO later. See what a CMO does, or hire a fractional CMO.

For pay, Robert Half’s 2026 guide puts a full-time chief marketing officer at a median of £147,000. There is no published figure for an ecommerce CMO as a separate role, and we do not invent one. Our shortlist states each candidate’s day rate.

Fractional ecommerce manager roles: what we do and do not cover

A fractional ecommerce manager runs the store day to day: product listings, promotions, site content, orders and the weekly numbers. It is a valuable role, and a more junior one than this page covers. We recruit at director and head level, so we do not run manager-level ecommerce searches.

If the gap is day-to-day digital marketing, see fractional digital marketing. If it is the store as a product, with a roadmap and a backlog, see fractional product manager. If the manager needs someone senior to report to, that is the ecommerce director this page is about.

IR35 and fractional ecommerce roles employed part-time or through a company

A fractional ecommerce director is either employed on a part-time contract or works through their own limited company. Where they work through a company, the off-payroll working rules (IR35) may apply. In most cases a medium or large client decides the worker’s status; for a small client outside the public sector, the worker’s own company decides.

Status turns on how the engagement runs in practice, not on its label. Set out control, substitution and the days in the contract, then run it that way. Our IR35 guide sets out the tests.