Option A · $300-500K base + 6-9 mo ramp
Full-time Head of AI
Risk: One person's bet on which patterns survive.
Lock-in: 24+ months of inherited architecture.
When right: $5M+ AI budget, 50+ engineers, AI core to product.
Flagship · Fractional Engagement · $12-20k/mo
A peer running your AI strategy. By the month. Your board sees results, not slides.
You stop being on call for AI. The board stops asking. I bring the patterns. Your team runs it after. 6-month minimum. I hold ~4 active client commitments across Fractional, Scoped Build, and Audit. Mix depends on what's already booked.
§01
Fractional AI leadership: the three options on the table.
How the math shapes up in 2026.
Option B · $150-300/hr
AI automation contractor
What you get: They ship the agent. Not the strategy.
Lock-in: Undocumented prompts, brittle pipelines.
When right: You already have a Director-altitude AI leader in-house.
Option C · Quarterly or month-to-month
Fractional Head of AI Transformation (this engagement)
Structure: allocated-time or quarterly retainer. Quoted in writing within 48 hours.
What you get: Director-altitude strategy. Three-Horizon allocation. Leadership-Lab-Crowd adoption. Hands-on when leverage is high.
Lock-in: None.
When right: Between "needs AI leadership" and "ready for full-time." Most $5M-$200M ARR.
The train-your-team handoff
Most engagements end with the consultant holding the keys. Wrong handoff.
I bring the pattern library and the program discipline. Your team brings the business. By the end, they name the patterns, run the evals, defend the allocation, and ship without me. The deliverable is a capable team. Not a vendor.
§02
Named frameworks, not vibes. The difference between a roadmap your CFO defends and a deck that gets shelved.
01 · McKinsey, 1999
Three-Horizon AI portfolio
Explicit budget across H1 (0-12 mo), H2 (12-24), H3 (24-48). Each horizon, its own measurement standard. Quick wins stop getting starved.
02 · Mollick, Wharton, 2025
Leadership-Lab-Crowd adoption
Leadership signals safety, Lab experiments, Crowd uses AI daily. The named fix for the 20% adoption ceiling.
03 · ReAct, tool-using, multi-step, sub-agents, self-correction
Agentic pattern catalog
Wrong pattern costs 3-6 months of rebuild. Drawn from Baxie's production system.
04 · eBay Product Strategy and Operations
TPM dependency discipline
The biggest 2026 AI failure mode isn't technical. It's unmapped dependencies across agents, vendors, integrations. Most consultants skip it.
§03
Strategy, execution, and organization layers, in one operator.
Reports into CEO, CTO, or COO. Sits in exec staff.
01 · Strategy
Portfolio defense
Three-Horizon roadmap. Budget defense. Vendor selection, build-vs-buy, eval standards. Quarterly kill list.
02 · Execution
Hands-on across the build
Architecture review on every build. Production code when leverage is high. Multi-model routing. Eval and observability bar.
03 · Organization
Inside the exec staff
Names the Leadership-Lab-Crowd structure. Hires and onboards AI talent. Trains the team across all three layers.
04 · Optional
Board AI conversations + vendor consolidation
Board AI updates. Vendor consolidation across your AI tool stack. Hiring rubric for AI roles.
§04
1 to 3 days per week. Quarterly renewal. No long-term lock-in.
Month one stands up the portfolio. Month two onward, run.
Month 1 · Stand-up
Portfolio bar
Three-Horizon review. Audit current work, set the 90-day plan. Eval bar. Leadership-Lab-Crowd diagnostic.
Month 2+ · Run
Weekly cadence
Weekly exec sync. Daily Slack on high-leverage calls. Hands-on contribution to the highest-stakes builds. Lab and Crowd training in parallel.
Quarterly · Review
Renewal call
What shipped, what stalled, what to redirect. Budget reallocation. Renewal.
§05
Quarter one: you defend the roadmap. Twelve months in: the team runs without me.
The retainer is the bridge to a full-time hire.
End of quarter one
What you walk out with
A roadmap the CEO defends. Eval bar live. Kill list executed, vendor consolidation in motion. Adoption baseline measured.
Twelve months in
The team runs without me
AI spend flat or down, throughput up. H1 in production, H2 on schedule. A team that ships without consultants.
§06
What's included beyond the retainer.
Folded in, not upsold.
Bonus 01 · Value $7-12k
AI-Native Org Audit, folded into month 1
Decision-flow map, AI-native role design, 90-day execution plan.
Bonus 02 · Value $4k/mo
Weekly working sessions
Mondays and Thursdays, 60 minutes. Strategy Monday, execution Thursday.
Bonus 03 · Value $2.5k/quarter
Board-readiness pack
Slides, narrative, Q&A prep. Boardroom AI becomes a status update.
Bonus 04 · Value $15-25k
Shared knowledge base buildout
The layer your team and your AI both work from. Versioned, searchable. New hires ramp in days.
§07
Capacity is honest. ~4 active client commitments at a time.
I hold ~4 active client commitments across Fractional, Scoped Build, and Audit. Mix depends on what's already booked. Engagements are picked, not sold.
§08
Frequently asked questions
A part-time senior AI leader who owns the AI transformation end-to-end: org redesign, production AI build, vendor selection, hiring, and team handoff. Sits in the exec staff, reports into CEO, CTO, or COO. The role bridges the gap between hiring an AI strategy consultant (deck only) and hiring a full-time Head of AI ($300-500k base plus 6-9 month ramp).
$12-20k per month, 6-month minimum engagement, then quarterly renewal. Scoped against company stage, AI surface area, and time commitment (1 to 3 days per week). Quoted in writing within 48 hours of the discovery call.
Operators and founders at mid-market service firms, $5M to $200M+ ARR, between needs-AI-leadership and ready-for-a-full-time-hire. CEOs, CTOs, COOs, and VPs of Ops carrying AI pressure without the headcount or runway to commit to a $300-500k base hire. Below $5M ARR, the scoped build is usually a better starting point.
Org redesign is the work. Month one stands up the portfolio (Three-Horizon allocation, eval bar, Leadership-Lab-Crowd diagnostic). Months two through five run the cadence and ship the H1 wins. Month six is the renewal call or the handoff to a full-time hire. Anything shorter is a workshop, not a transformation.
Three-Horizon portfolio review, audit of current AI work, 90-day plan in writing, eval bar set, Leadership-Lab-Crowd diagnostic (Mollick, Wharton 2025). The AI-Native Org Audit ($7-12k value) is folded into month one at no extra cost. End of month one, the CEO defends the roadmap, not me.
Strategy consultants ship decks and leave. Fractional Head of AI Transformation ships production AI, hires the team, runs the eval bar, and stays in the exec staff until the team can run without me. Director-altitude strategy plus hands-on production build, from one operator. Not advisor. Not contractor.
No. Two to three at a time. Every engagement specifies which days are yours.
I help you find, hire, and hand off. That's the goal.
Yes. Standard enterprise paperwork. Signed mid-market and enterprise MSAs before.
Both. Fits $5M to $200M+ ARR. Below $5M, a scoped build is usually better.
Per-hour looks cheaper until you price in the strategy layer they don't provide. Someone still has to allocate budget, defend spend, break the adoption ceiling. The retainer is both layers.
A Head of AI by the month
A Head of AI by the month. No 12-month lock-in. Your team owns it after.
First call is 30 minutes. If the fit is there, kick off in two weeks.