The pandemic blew up the full-time hiring playbook — and fractional work quietly stepped into the gap.
COVID-19 changed the landscape of work. But it also created an opportunity for new models of work to thrive — and fractional work is one that has proved it’s here to stay.
Fractional work: a long-term, part-time employment model in which a skilled professional dedicates a fixed number of hours per week to one or more companies — working as an embedded team member with a predictable schedule, rather than as a project vendor delivering discrete deliverables. Unlike freelancing, fractional work is not piecemeal. The relationship is ongoing, and both parties have a clear understanding of availability, expectations, and duration.
Fractional work started in academia, where professors split their time between teaching and long-term private-sector projects. The concept has since expanded into marketing, finance, accounting, and law. The defining feature is consistent, long-term engagement — not the project-by-project contracting that characterizes traditional freelancing.
The US Chamber of Commerce describes fractional hiring as a way “for small businesses to tap into advanced expertise at a lower cost,” giving smaller firms a talent advantage they couldn’t otherwise sustain. For companies that can’t yet support a full-time senior hire, fractional work provides exactly that access — without the overhead.
The concept of fractional work is not new, but it was historically limited to C-suite roles — fractional CMO, CFO, and CTO positions at very early-stage companies. What the pandemic did was stress-test the full-time employment model at scale.
The Great Resignation triggered by COVID forced companies to adopt innovative hiring and work practices. Firms that had always filled every role with a full-time employee suddenly faced a labor market where top talent had options — and leverage. Many experienced professionals discovered they could do meaningful work without being tied to a single employer. Fractional hiring filled that gap on both sides: companies got the expertise they needed without the cost and commitment of a full-time hire, and professionals got flexibility without sacrificing the stability of long-term engagements.
Understanding how contract and freelance work has evolved alongside fractional hiring helps explain why this model accelerated so quickly — the infrastructure for non-traditional work arrangements was already being built before the pandemic hit.
Given the long-term nature of software development, growing startups have embraced fractional work more broadly than almost any other sector. The reason is straightforward: the largest pool of senior developers is already employed.
Top engineers with 5+ years of experience and deep expertise in their tech stack are, by definition, not sitting on job boards. They’re embedded at companies, doing good work. Fractional hiring taps their spare capacity. A startup that couldn’t hire a full-time senior engineer at market rate can engage that same engineer for 10 to 20 hours per week — getting embedded, long-term contribution rather than a series of consulting calls.
Fraction connects growing startups with US-based senior engineers available for long-term fractional engagements. No recruiters, no job boards.
Talk to FractionSenior engineers only. Ongoing engagements, not project contracts.
Two examples from Fraction’s own history illustrate what this model produces when it works.
HiddenLevers, a risk technology platform for wealth management, started with one fractional developer to help scale its portfolio analysis tool. Founded by Fraction CEO Praveen Ghanta, HiddenLevers used the fractional model throughout its growth phase. By the time HiddenLevers was acquired by Orion, fractional developers represented over a third of the engineering team.
Lumiant, an advice engagement platform for financial professionals, used fractional developers to rapidly scale technical capacity following its successful launch in the US market. “By augmenting our already incredible engineering and development team with proven talent, we can continue to scale rapidly and be ahead of the curve in delivering an engaging advice experience,” said Blake Wood, CEO of Lumiant US.
In both cases, fractional work wasn’t a stopgap. It was a deliberate strategy for accessing senior talent quickly, without the lead time and cost of full-time recruiting.
The evidence suggests it is — and not just for early-stage startups. The fractional model works precisely because it aligns the incentives of both sides. Companies get senior expertise at a fraction of the full-time cost, with flexibility to scale up or down. Professionals get meaningful long-term work, the ability to work on multiple interesting problems simultaneously, and the autonomy that full-time employment rarely offers.
There’s also an important distinction between fractional work and the legal and practical questions around working multiple jobs — fractional arrangements are structured to be transparent, mutually understood, and typically disclosed to all parties. This is not moonlighting in the traditional sense. It’s a new category of professional engagement that companies and workers are increasingly building careers around.
The conditions that made fractional work attractive — remote work infrastructure, distributed collaboration tools, and a generation of senior professionals who’ve seen what over-hiring looks like — aren’t going away. If anything, the over-hiring correction in tech has made both companies and professionals more deliberate about when a full-time hire is actually necessary. Fractional work is what the labor market looks like when both sides get smarter about that question.
Fractional work is a long-term, part-time employment model in which a skilled professional dedicates a fixed number of hours per week to one or more companies — working as an embedded team member with a predictable schedule, rather than as a project vendor delivering discrete deliverables. Unlike freelancing, which tends to be project-based and transactional, fractional work is ongoing. The employer knows exactly when the fractional hire is available, and the relationship is built around consistent contribution rather than deliverable-by-deliverable contracting.
The pandemic triggered the Great Resignation and exposed how fragile full-time hiring was as a single strategy. Companies suddenly needed senior talent they couldn’t recruit quickly enough, and many experienced professionals discovered they could do meaningful work without being tied to one employer. Fractional hiring filled that gap: companies got the expertise they needed without the overhead of a full-time hire, and professionals gained flexibility without sacrificing the stability of long-term engagements.
Fractional work started in executive roles — fractional CMO, CFO, and CTO positions — but has expanded significantly. It now spans software development, product management, finance, marketing, accounting, and legal. In tech, fractional developers are especially common: senior engineers with 5+ years of experience who take on long-term engagements with startups that need their expertise but can’t yet support a full-time senior hire.
Both, but the value proposition differs. For startups, fractional hiring provides access to senior expertise that would otherwise be unaffordable — the US Chamber of Commerce describes it as a way for small businesses to access advanced talent at lower cost. Larger companies use fractional talent to fill specific skill gaps quickly, augment teams during high-growth periods, or access niche expertise without creating permanent headcount.
A fractional professional agrees to a set number of hours per week — commonly 10 to 20 — and is available to the company on a predictable schedule. They join team standups, collaborate in Slack, review code or strategy, and contribute to long-term goals. The arrangement is not piecemeal. It is closer to a part-time team member than a contractor delivering isolated deliverables. Both parties understand availability, expectations, and duration upfront.
Praveen Ghanta is a five-time founder and serial entrepreneur. He is the founder of DevHawk.ai, an AI-powered engineering management platform, and Fraction.work, which connects fast-growing companies with top fractional tech and growth marketing talent. Previously, he founded HiddenLevers, a risk analytics platform for wealth management that he bootstrapped from inception to acquisition by Orion Advisor Solutions in 2021, serving thousands of advisors and $600B in assets. He earlier founded SmartWorkGroups, acquired by Intralinks in 2000.
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