Fractional head of product jobs · Fractional product leader · Product leadership
Fractional head of product jobs · hire a fractional head of product, or hire one for good
Fractional head of product jobs are senior product roles held for part of the week: one leader who owns product strategy, the roadmap and the product team at a company for an agreed number of days, often alongside other clients. To hire a fractional head of product, decide what the product must achieve, then the days the seat needs.
We recruit fractional, interim, part-time, temporary and permanent product leaders. On every brief we send a shortlist of 3–5, each with pay or day rate, availability and IR35 position set out, after five-stage vetting. Looking for work? Live product leadership roles are on the board below.
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
In the press
Fast Company 16 leaders on when fractional C-suite hires make sense · 24 Jun 2026
Leaders disagree on when a fractional hire makes sense and when a role needs full-time ownership. Useful before you decide whether product leadership needs a part-week leader or a permanent one.
Financial Times The executives going ‘fractional’, not freelance (paywall)
On senior people who choose to sit inside several companies at once at leadership level. It is the working pattern behind most fractional head of product roles.
15 minutes · video or phone
Book 15 minutes to hire a fractional head of product
Tell us the scope and the days a week. We come back with Head of Product 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 Fractional head of product jobs
Live product leadership roles
Fractional recruitment works differently from a permanent search — shorter, scoped by days a week, and priced on the engagement. Send a Head of Product brief and we come back with a shortlist of three to five vetted candidates.
01/ the role
Fractional head of product jobs: what the seat owns
A fractional head of product leads product management, not a single feature. The usual scope: the product strategy that sits under the business plan; a roadmap the company can hold to; discovery, so the team builds what customers will use; prioritisation between sales requests, technical debt and new bets; the measures that show whether a release worked; and the product managers who do the daily work. The difference from a consultant is ownership. A fractional head of product is named on the leadership team and accountable for the roadmap between visits.
The family of product leadership roles
The same part-week seat goes by several titles. When product strategy needs a voice at board level, it is a CPO seat: hire a fractional CPO. When one leader must own both engineering and product, see fractional CTPO. When the gap is day-to-day product work on one product, it is a fractional product manager. A permanent executive appointment runs through chief product officer recruitment, and full-time cover for a fixed period is an interim CPO.
What fractional head of product jobs pay
No source we trust publishes a fractional head of product day rate, so we do not quote one; every candidate on a shortlist states their own. The full-time benchmark is published. Robert Half’s 2026 guide puts a head of product at £77,000 (25th percentile) to £113,250 (75th), median £97,750. A fractional fee is the day rate times the days worked. See CPO salary for pay at the executive level.
02/ scope
How to hire a fractional head of product
1. Write down the product problem
Start with what has to change. A roadmap set by whoever shouted last, releases nobody measures, a founder who is still the only product decision-maker, or product managers with nobody senior to learn from. Then decide the days a week you can fund and who the role reports to.
2. Pitch the level of the seat
The UK government’s Digital and Data capability framework is a useful yardstick. It sets out product manager role levels from associate product manager to head of product. At the top, a head of product leads on product strategy, sets and raises standards for product management, and line manages senior and lead product managers. If the brief is one product and no team, you may need a product manager instead.
3. Test for evidence, not vocabulary
Every candidate can talk about discovery and outcomes. Ask for a roadmap they wrote, a feature they stopped, a metric they moved and how they knew. Take references from the founders, engineering leads and product managers they worked with.
4. Settle the engagement
Agree the days, the outcomes for the first three months, the decisions the head of product can take alone, and who unblocks the team between their days. If they will work through their own company, check IR35 before the start date (below).
What we do on a product brief
We send a shortlist of 3–5 candidates, each with pay or day rate, availability and IR35 position set out. Every candidate goes through our five-stage vetting first.
03/ comparison
Head of product vs CPO vs product manager
Three product seats that overlap at a growing company. Choose by the work, not the title.
04/ vetting
How we vet fractional heads of product
What we undertake on every brief, before a candidate reaches you.
- 01
Qualification screen
Verify Head of Product 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
05/ fractional product leader
Fractional product leader: the title before the seat is defined
A fractional product leader is the name people search for before they know which seat they need. It covers the head of product and the CPO, and sometimes a senior product manager with a team. The UK government’s product community defines product leadership as anyone in a senior product manager, lead product manager or head of product role, and notes that roles above that are equivalent to a chief product officer or director of product.
The same piece names four skills a product leader needs beyond product management: develop and manage product people, define portfolio vision and strategy, understand your organisation, and take part in executive management teams. They make a good interview plan. A strong product manager who has not yet done the first and the last is not yet a product leader.
To choose the seat, look at the gap. If nobody is setting product strategy, hire a head of product. If strategy needs defending at board level and across several product lines, hire a fractional CPO. If the gap is one product that needs managing, hire a product manager. See what a CPO does for the executive end.
06/ standards
Privacy and standards a head of product should own
Product decisions carry legal duties. The ICO’s guidance on data protection by design and by default says you must consider data protection at the design phase of any product and throughout its lifecycle, and integrate it into your processing and business practices. A head of product is usually the person who makes that happen in the roadmap, working with whoever owns data protection.
For public sector products, the government’s Service Standard sets the points a service is assessed against, from understanding users and their needs to iterating and improving frequently. A candidate who has taken a service through assessment can say what that took.
07/ ir35
IR35 and fractional product roles employed part-time or through a company
A fractional head of product 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 the client decides the worker’s status; for a small client outside the public sector, the worker’s own company decides. HMRC sets out the size tests in its guidance for clients.
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.
08/ questions
Fractional head of product jobs FAQ
The questions people ask before bringing in a fractional head of product.
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.
