Gemma Whitehouse is a customer-centric Fractional CTO and business developer with extensive experience in solving problems with software technologies, scaling businesses, and creating valuable outcomes. Gemma excels at team management, scaling product development, engineering efficiency, and leading technology vision as a certified Solution Architect. Gemma also has a proven track record of meeting investor expectations, adapting to international environments, and influencing government policy through voluntary advisory work in the UK.
We sat down with Gemma to ask her thoughts on what being a Fractional CTO meant to her.
Complete this sentence as concisely as possible, “I am a… “
I am a consultant CTO and I currently work on a fractional or interim basis. However I am open to salaried positions for the right role.
Are there any other titles/terms that people commonly refer to you or you refer to yourself as?
CPTO is probably the most common alternative title but other hats I have worn are, Technical Director, Technical Advisor, Technical Lead, AWS/Azure Cloud Solution Architect, Investor, New Business Developer, Founder.
How would you say you stand out from others that do a similar job?
Most CTO positions are purely technical leaders, who perform some delivery and people/cost budget management functions. This is mostly because engineering is seen as a cost center, not a value driver.
Whilst I have programmed my own applications, built my own infrastructure and managed engineering teams, I have also worked in new business and product development. Most recently, I completed investment training as part of the Startup Norway Angel Challenge. So I now understand all the financial modeling and how this impacts strategy as well. I think being able to handle new business, product, end-to-end solution architecture and roadmapping, as well as ensuring the organisation will hit its funding targets, is a bit unique in the early stage business space.
Running my own business and supporting other people's organisations has taught me that a CTO role should be a strategic one. Anything else really sits within a cost/people management space. Few businesses understand or recognise this.
I like to build software and software businesses, it's a broader skill set than just a CTO. With so few female entrepreneurs that build their own solutions, I think that's probably what sets me apart.
We are keen to know more about your work as a fractional. Could you perhaps share a few details about projects you have done in the past?
A recent engagement I had was to consult for an Insurtech, a scaleup. They had a good customer base, good financial position and were growing. I was tasked to outline an approach for a competitive product roadmap and pricing strategy for the next phase of their product development and review whether a platform procurement RFP was offering value for money. Once that was defined I also needed to outline what the future end to end architecture should look like and ensure the product roadmap could add value, both to the existing product proposition, and to a new data analytics capability over time.
I often work with non-technical founders, without formal product or software technology experience. One key requirement is being able to support them by outlining product and technical roadmaps and guide cost and delivery outputs. However, budget restraints can limit your ability to hire. One early stage healthtech I worked for, I trained junior data engineers to ensure that data preparation was covered - a necessary and time consuming task. This enabled Data Scientists to be focused just on those tasks which required experience . I also trained product and project delivery managers from scratch in order to ensure all the repetitive administrative tasks were handled, which could then be overseen by more experienced staff.
Another typical startup requirement is to tackle “engineering efficiency” - VC funded high growth firms often suffer from a lot of technical debt, and are operationally inefficient. In one role I worked on for a healthcare startup, we achieved a 30% cost reduction in infrastructure costs, and outlined the end to end target architectural model, from what was a poorly constructed and complex solution, all within 3 months. From there we generated forecasts around engineering capabilities required for the next period of development to evolve the solution.
In many startups they are looking to hire and build engineering capabilities, so typical requests for support I have handled are to procure developer services from outsourcing firms, or build in-house remote teams in different global locations. I will often assess and interview the engineers, ensure contracts meet with security, compliance and standard service SLAs and that you can integrate engineers effectively into existing teams. I have handled all these tasks as part of my previous roles.
Other typical tasks can include automating DevOps workflows, implementing delivery management, testing frameworks, task tracking, and putting appropriate hiring practices in place. Often also identifying cost savings whilst considering auditing security and compliance requirements and ensuring changes are implemented.
I have also drafted policies and SLA contracts and documentation where required, so the role can really vary a lot.
Is there anything you’d share with aspiring fractionals?
My situation is fairly unique. I don't have kids or a big mortgage to pay, I can afford to be flexible and move overseas if required. It almost goes without saying there are fewer female fractional CTOs really because there are simply fewer opportunities for women in these roles. Unfortunately there is still a long way to go for gender equality.
If you only have small team experience (Engineering Manager etc), you may be limited to technical lead roles, but this can be good to build experience in this space. Pre-seed and seed stage businesses often have limited budgets and can’t pay top market rates. Hence the benefit of negotiating fractional roles. Be prepared to be flexible or have another income stream in between contracts, it can take time to build up a network and find roles.
People new to the startup space, I find, are very naive about the chaos of startup environments, and realistically how unprepared you are if you haven’t started a business from scratch before. Expect business growth to be the absolute top priority and be prepared to take on doing the boring simple tasks if required.
I wish I had understood the financial modeling and investment funding requirements in more detail when I started working in this space. It has greatly strengthened my ability to influence decisions as well as advise appropriately on strategy. So much hangs off your ability to forecast accurately and operate within the constraints of the financial model and make sure you meet shareholder returns. Engineers, regardless of their leadership experience, often lose sight of this, but it is critical to your business success.
My final piece of advice is one around business change: I had not anticipated the level of change resistance which is baked into an organisation at an early stage. Beyond pre-seed businesses are most often culturally set in their ways and will only respond to tactical level changes. My top tip is to focus on tasks and desired outcomes which you can identify at the very start of the engagement and adjust as you progress in the role. These tactical wins, really help build confidence and can help to build momentum towards more strategic influence. As a contractor your role is really to advise, offer choices and implement tasks based on up front agreements. The decisions (rightly or wrongly) are up to the founders - it's their learning curve and journey, be respectful of the unique pressures they face and do whatever you can to support them and their team.
How is life as a contractor?
If you run your own business, IR35 legislation does impose some restrictions on the types of activities you can realistically take on. You can’t be a replacement for a full time salaried member of staff, as this would not fit the restrictions of the legislation. You also have to consider the amount of risk you are wearing as a contractor both for the tenure of your contract as well as things like security and compliance and any eventual handovers of work delivered. I strongly recommend having an up front discussion about these aspects, as some businesses are simply unaware and don’t take this into consideration for rates or engagement negotiation.
Where do you find work?
Most of my work comes via my network, or via recruiters. Organisations are often seeking job titles, matches and brand names before they consider tasks and skill sets. If you have the top brand names on your CV you will always be in demand; for those of us who don’t, you have to work harder at finding the opportunities. Generally, it is business people who are looking to engage you, so just knowing lots of other engineers and engineering communities may be limiting your ability to find roles. However, if I am asked by a founder in my network and I can’t help them (either I’m too busy or don’t know the tech stack) I do pass work on.
I have worked directly for investors and their portcos, and for founders in my network, and often find connections via recommendations. Recruiters are always welcome to reach out, I have had some successes finding roles via those channels as well.
What technologies are you currently obsessing over?
As a scale-up CTO, I am mostly managing large teams, so it's not that often I am hands-on with the detail day-to-day. But people often make the false assumption, as my profile is not a stereotypical technical leader, that I don’t practice what I preach! I actually put in a lot of effort to build out prototypes and test out technologies I am not familiar with. I have been looking recently at Web Transport in order to solve some of the restrictions of scaling web sockets, I have also been building out API services and keeping my AWS knowledge up to date learning products like Glue and Apache Spark for Data Analytics.
A CTO is not a hands-on programmer/engineer day-to-day, but you should be able to generate a realistic technology vision, offer support to your team, guide others and solve problems when they come up.
Any final tips for an engineering leadership role ?
My final words of advice are really around skill building. Building soft skills like emotional intelligence, taking formal training within Product, Investment and HR skills, Delivery Management, all these things will help you. Leadership over a certain number of people doesn’t require detailed technical knowledge; it's a generalist's playground and you need a broad range of adaptable skills to handle it. It's a cliche, but some poor tech leads are often the best managers. Consider how you may build these skills over time in order to evolve into more senior roles.
Technology is a brilliant career, there is always something to learn. By contributing to and supporting lots of different businesses at an early growth stage, I have really learnt a lot. If you are looking to consult in this environment, it will be a worthwhile learning curve. I wish you the best of luck. If you'd like to connect with Gemma and find out more about how she could help you can do so on Linkedin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gemma-whitehouse/
