Who is hiring fractional COOs
- Founders of fifteen to fifty person companies where informal coordination has stopped working.
- Venture backed companies after a raise, when the hiring plan triples the headcount and nobody owns how the company runs.
- Family office and PE backed businesses in services, manufacturing, logistics and hospitality that need delivery professionalised without a stranger put in charge.
- Agencies and professional services firms where utilisation, delivery and margin are nobody's job.
- Companies in the UAE scaling a regional operation and wanting somebody who has built one before.
What the engagements look like
| Engagement | Days a week | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Take the founder off operations | Two to three | The operating cadence, the metrics, the people who own them |
| Scale delivery | Two | Processes, systems and the first operations hires through a growth phase |
| Integrate or carve out | Three | A PE backed acquisition or a separation, for a defined number of months |
| Standing operations leadership | One | Ongoing, until the company is ready for a full time COO |
What it pays
The published band for a fractional COO on this bench is £700 to £1,300 a day, set by the operator and printed on the profile. The US and UAE rate pages carry the dollar and dirham bands. Companies see the number before they send the brief.
The profile that gets chosen
- The company sizes run, in people and in revenue ranges, and what changed while the operator was there.
- The sector, named. Operations is the least transferable of the seats and companies filter hard on it.
- The founder relationship. A fractional COO is hired by somebody handing over their own business, and the profile should read like a person they would trust with it.
- A published day rate and Available now switched on, because companies filter for both first.
COO, operations director, chief of staff
British companies often advertise the seat as operations director and American ones as COO, and a chief of staff brief is sometimes a COO brief in disguise. The bench lists the seat as COO and companies find it by what it owns, so the profile should describe the remit rather than argue the title.
How to get on the bench
List yourself in about five minutes: name, LinkedIn, country, the seat, a two line bio, years of experience, your rate and a CV as a PDF. A person verifies the listing against the LinkedIn profile and the CV before it goes live. Companies approach you directly from the profile, and the engagement is yours. There is no registration fee.
Common questions
Are fractional COO jobs mostly in the UK or the US?
Both, with the UAE growing fast. The seat is called operations director as often as COO in the UK, and the engagements cluster around venture backed companies after a raise and owner managed businesses that have outgrown their founder. The bench lists operators in all three markets.
What does a fractional COO earn per day?
The published band on this bench is £700 to £1,300 a day in the UK. Operators set their own rate and it is on the profile. Two clients at two to three days a week is a full practice.
Is fractional COO work done on site?
More often than the other seats, because operations is about people and delivery. Most engagements are hybrid, with days in the business and days remote. The profile states what the operator is open to and companies filter on it.
More of them, on hiring, contracts and what a fractional engagement costs, on the fractional executive FAQ.