What it means.
01Fractional
A senior leader on your team for part of the week. Fixed days. Real ownership. In your Slack, your standups, your roadmap.
Not a freelancer taking tickets. Not a consultant dropping a deck and leaving. Someone who owns the outcome, just not five days a week.
Startups use it when design matters now but a full‑time head of design doesn’t make sense yet. Before the first design hire. Between rounds. When the product is ahead of the brand, or the brand is ahead of the product.
Choose your own adventure.
02Do the work
Hands on. Shipping alongside your engineers.
- Product and UX for the surfaces that matter most
- Prototypes in code, not just Figma
- Design systems that engineering actually adopts
- Brand, identity, and launch creative
- Demos and pitch work that close deals and rounds
03Build the team
Design as part of how the company runs.
- Design strategy tied to the product roadmap
- A team plan: which roles, in what order, and when
- Job descriptions, interview loops, and portfolio reviews
- Hiring your first designers, or your head of design
- How design works with product and engineering, day to day
- Onboarding the people who come next
Do you have a plan? Yes.
04Days 1–30
Get in deep.
- Meet the founders, product, engineering, and go‑to‑market leads
- Audit the product, brand, and how design gets made today
- Learn your users, your tools, and your workflows
- Ship quick wins. Something real goes out in week one.
- Agree on what design success looks like here
05Days 31–60
Set the direction.
- A design roadmap tied to the product roadmap
- System foundations: tokens, components, standards
- A working rhythm with engineering: reviews, handoff, sprints
- Prototypes for the bigger bets
06Days 61–90
Build to last.
- The system and process in daily use, not on a shelf
- Brand guidelines across product and marketing
- A team plan, with roles, order, and timing
- Research that feeds the next roadmap
- A clear call on what comes next: keep going, scale up, or hand off
The shape stays the same. The mix changes with what you need.
07Sooner
Ninety days is the runway, not the wait.
Something real lands in week one. An audit, a prototype, a first pass at the thing keeping you up at night.
Sprint start. A pitch, a demo, or a launch that has to go out fast? Start with a focused sprint. One problem, one date, more days that week. Then roll into the monthly rhythm, or don’t.
Rush work. Tight deadline mid‑engagement? Extra days are available, agreed up front. Priced as a sprint, never a surprise.
Simple on purpose.
08How it works
One or two days a week. Fixed days, so your team knows when I’m in. One day suits a focused problem. Two days suits building the function.
Monthly scope. Before each month starts, we agree on focus, deliverables, and owners. One page. No surprises.
Fast responses. Within a couple of hours on my days. Within a business day otherwise. Evenings and weekends stay quiet, for both of us.
A monthly retainer. Billed at the start of the month. It holds my time for you. Anything outside scope gets flagged before it starts, never after.
Three months to start. Long enough to do real work. Then month to month, with 30 days’ notice either way.
In person when it counts. On site for kickoffs, workshops, and the moments that need a room.
Your tools. Your Figma, your repo, your Slack, your docs. Plus the AI tooling I use every day to move faster.
Three good endings.
09Where it goes
Full‑time. Sometimes the fit is obvious and the role becomes permanent. That’s a win.
A handoff. Sometimes the right move is a full‑time design lead who isn’t me. I’ll help you write the role, find them, interview them, and set them up to win. That’s a win too.
An advisor. Sometimes the team is in place and you just want a senior eye. We drop to a lighter rhythm. Also a win.
We decide together, with real information, not on day one.
I’ve walked both of these paths. Contract that became full‑time. Teams I built and handed to leaders I hired.
Fair questions.
10FAQ
Have you done this before?
Yes. Studio y Studio has run since 2011, for clients from seed stage to Fortune 500. In‑house, I’ve built and led design orgs of up to 24.
Is one day a week enough?
For a focused problem, yes. A system, a launch, a product area. For building a function from zero, two days works better.
Do you work with our designers, or replace them?
With them. I can lead an existing team, raise the bar, and leave them stronger. No team yet? I’ll help you hire one, or bring in contract designers I trust while you do.
Do you code?
I prototype in code and ship front‑end work with engineering, using modern AI tooling. I’m not your back end. But I speak its language, and I won’t hand engineering anything they can’t build.
Who owns the work?
You do, once it’s paid for. All of it. No licensing, no usage fees, no strings.
Can I see your work under NDA?
Yes. A lot of my best work is private. I’ll walk you through it live.
Do you do spec work?
No. Every engagement is paid. Happy to dig into your problem on the first call, and to walk through past work in detail.
Will you work on site?
Yes, for teams or projects that need it. I travel regularly and can commit to a set rhythm and location. Comfortable working forward‑deployed, embedded with your team or alongside your customers.
Do you take equity?
Open to it as part of the mix, for the right team. Let’s talk.
What if it’s not working?
We’ll know early, and we’ll say so. After the first three months, either of us can end it with 30 days’ notice.