Hire a Fractional Head of Data
Get a pre-screened Head of Data who has built warehouses, metric definitions, and analytics teams before. You'll meet matched candidates in about 3 days, and they can start fixing your reporting before your next planning cycle.
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When to hire a Fractional Head of Data
Hire a Head of Data when decisions stall because nobody trusts the numbers and nobody owns fixing them.
Every team reports a different revenue number
Finance, sales, and product each pull their own figures, and leadership meetings turn into arguments over whose spreadsheet is right.
Your analysts have no one to report to
You hired one or two analysts or engineers, but they field ad hoc requests all day with no roadmap, standards, or senior review.
The warehouse grew without a plan
Pipelines break silently, dbt models duplicate each other, and cloud warehouse costs keep climbing without a clear owner.
Investors are asking for cohort and unit economics
A fundraise or board review needs clean retention, CAC, and LTV analysis, and your current reporting can't produce it with confidence.
AI and ML ideas have no data foundation
Leadership wants predictive models or AI features, but the data is undocumented, ungoverned, and not ready for modeling.
Privacy and governance questions keep surfacing
Customer data is spread across tools with unclear access controls, and nobody can answer audit or compliance questions quickly.
The benefits of hiring a Fractional Head of Data
A fractional Head of Data gives you one accountable owner for your data strategy, pipelines, and reporting. You don't have to take on a full executive salary to get it.
Build a data strategy before a data team
Get senior direction on warehouse design, KPI definitions, and analytics priorities without the full-time salary, equity, and benefits of a permanent data executive.
Get your metrics straight before the board meets
Pre-screened candidates arrive in about 3 days, so reconciling revenue, churn, and pipeline numbers starts this month, not after a long search.
Hire a leader who has shipped a modern stack
Meet operators who have already worked with tools like Snowflake, BigQuery, dbt, and Looker, run governance programs, and put ML models into production.
How to hire a Fractional Head of Data
No more juggling job boards and sorting through pools of unqualified applicants. Hiring a Fractional Head of Data is easy with Go Fractional.
Intro Call
Answer a few quick questions, then book a free 30-minute intro call with our team to review your goals, needs, and team dynamics.
Meet Experts
Our AI finds Fractional Head of Data candidates whose past clients and projects match your brief, which you won’t find on LinkedIn. A dedicated executive recruiter verifies each one’s experience, fit, and genuine interest, and you meet the ones who fit in about 3 days.
Start Work
Book time with candidates right from your shortlist, choose your operator, and sign a simple month-to-month agreement. We move as fast as you do.
Engagements that fit how you work
Every Go Fractional engagement is structured for senior leadership without full-time overhead. Start fractional, scale up, or convert to full-time when you’re ready.
Fractional Head of Data
- Senior leadership on a part-time schedule
- Monthly retainer, no recruiting fees
- Scale hours up or down as needs change
Contract-to-Hire
Trial a Fractional Head of Data on a fractional engagement before converting them to a full-time hire.
- Keep the expert's learnings or convert to full-time
- Try the fit before you commit, no hiring risk
- Faster speed to market, conserving time and resources
Interim Head of Data
Full-time coverage for a defined stretch: a leadership gap, a transition, or a critical project.
Fractional Head of Data rates average $186/hr across our live benchmarks. Pricing scales with hours and scope.
Head of Data Hourly RatesFractional vs full-time vs agency
Three ways to get Head of Data leadership, and where each one wins.
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| Factor | Fractional Head of Data | Full-time Head of Data | Data agency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to hire | ~3 days to match | 2-4 months | 1-4 weeks |
| Engagement | Monthly retainer | Salary + equity + benefits | Project fee with markup |
| Owns data strategy and KPIs | Yes, as your accountable leader | Yes | Rarely, scoped to deliverables |
| Governance and data quality | Sets policy and coaches your team | Sets policy and builds the team | Delivers to spec, then exits |
| Team building | Hires and mentors your first analysts and engineers | Builds and manages the full org | Supplies its own staff |
| Best for | Strategy + leadership, flexible | Large, mature data org at scale | Pure pipeline or dashboard build |
We’ve helped hundreds of organizations Go Fractional
Twelve years: the average experience across a network of handpicked executives ready to make an impact on day one.
“Hiring a fractional Head of Data Science has been transformative for our company. At just 50% of the cost of a full-time data scientist, we secured a seasoned data leader with over 12 years of experience in top startups. This strategic move has significantly enhanced our data strategy and execution. The expert leadership has instilled confidence in our data capabilities, driving measurable results for our business.”
“It was literally three days after he started with us fractionally, our CEO was calling me and asking if we could get a full-time offer out.”
“It's a can't-lose scenario. You either get the learnings from the subject matter expert, or you get the full-time capability. It provided a ton of flexibility, much faster speed to market, and conservation of time and resources.”
Frequently asked questions
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