Palahepitiya Gamage Amila · Based in Manchester
Fractional CTO in Manchester. AI-first senior leadership.
You need someone in the chair: architecture, roadmap, team, and the calls that cannot wait. Agents and specialists collect the facts and write drafts. I decide. You keep the company moving without a £150k full-time hire.
Who this is for
Founders and leadership teams in Manchester, Greater Manchester, and the wider North who need fractional or interim CTO capacity. Someone who owns the outcome, not another advisory retainer that never does.
I am based in Bowdon, Greater Manchester. From there I work with founders in the city and across the wider North.
- Scaling past the point where a founder-CTO can cover everything
- Bridging a hire, a raise, or a hard architecture turn
- Putting AI-first ways of working in place without losing senior judgement
- Needing a steady operator for weekly decisions, not a one-off workshop
I also work with founders elsewhere when the fit is right. This page is for local search. The practice is not limited to postcode. Start on the homepage if you want the full picture without the Manchester framing.
The retainer
What sits inside the retainer.
The fractional / interim CTO retainer is the seat. The activities below are how that seat shows up. They are not separate products.
- Architecture and technical strategy that hold for the next two growth steps
- Product and engineering roadmap pressure: what ships, what waits, what dies
- Team leadership, hiring judgement, and growing engineers into leads (as part of the retainer, not a hiring pack)
- Board and investor clarity when technology is on the agenda (as part of the retainer, not a board-advisor product)
- AI tooling and operating norms that expand bandwidth without inventing risk
- Hands-on judgement when something is on fire or stuck
Weekly or bi-weekly sessions. Monthly retainer. Three-month minimum, so there is time to change how the company actually works.
How the AI-first approach helps
You are not buying hours of opinion. You are buying decisions I will own, with more of the reading and drafting done by agents and specialists so my time goes to the calls that matter.
Collect and draft
Agents and specialists pull from codebases, docs, product, and ops.
Decide
I decide what matters at your stage and lock the call.
Lead
Clear owners, clear priorities, decisions that stick between sessions.
Your approval before anything external
Nothing goes out under your brand without your approval.
How I work in full →If you want the habits installed before or alongside the retainer, see AI-first engineering leadership setup. When the question is capital rather than the ongoing seat, see technology and product due diligence.
Engagement shape
Quoted after discovery.
Cadence
Weekly or bi-weekly
Commercial
Monthly retainer
Minimum
Three months
Pricing
Quoted after discovery. No invented bands on this page.
Start
Book a discovery call
Discovery is thirty minutes. Fit check both ways. No pitch deck.
Proof
Ferry, BORIS, and VoiceIQ.
Ferry · US fintech
Fractional CTO. App Store 2 → 4.5★ in six months. 40,000+ users. $25M+ monthly transactions. SOC 2. Fortune-100 support including Cheesecake Factory. AI tooling across engineering. Two engineers grown into team leads.
Amila stays calm under pressure, anticipates the technical roadblocks, and creates practical solutions that resolve company-wide issues. His technical depth, and the questions he asks, set him apart. He owns the hardest, highest-stakes work and sees it through independently, from our SOC 2 to the Cheesecake Factory rollout. Fortune-100-level support, delivered, and the major reason that account has been so happy with us.
Trista Kempa, Founder & COO, Ferry
BORIS · UK construction tech
Fractional CTO. Eighteen-month transformation from 200 single-tenant instances to one multi-tenant SaaS. Path from £1.8M toward £10M ARR.
VoiceIQ · B2B SaaS
Founder CTO, 2018–2022. Strategy, architecture, product. Built the team. Shipped ML for voice-based vulnerability detection.
- Ferry
- BORIS
- VoiceIQ
- NHS trusts
- Cheesecake Factory
Local FAQ
Straight answers for Manchester search.
What is a fractional CTO?
A senior technology leader who owns CTO-level judgement on a part-time retainer: architecture, roadmap, team, and hard calls, without a full-time hire. Not a consultant who only advises. Not an agency that sells a team.
Fractional vs interim vs consultant?
Fractional is ongoing capacity in the seat. Interim is the same seat for a defined bridge (hire, raise, turnaround). Consultant usually means recommendations without ownership. I take the seat, fractional or interim, and lock decisions.
Do you only work in Manchester?
I am based in Manchester (Bowdon–Manchester locality). This page is for founders searching locally. I also work with teams further afield when the engagement fits. Book discovery and we will be straight about logistics.
How is this different from a £150k full-time CTO?
You get senior judgement and locked calls on a retainer, with agents and specialists covering more of the reading and drafting between sessions. You do not carry a full-time package while you are still proving the next stage. When a full-time hire is the right move, I will say so.
What is the minimum commitment?
Three months. Shorter than that and neither of us gets a fair run at changing how the company works.